The most important thing in overcoming procrastination is to understand what it is and learn how to recognize it. Let’s begin by taking note of where procrastination always shows up. It always occurs related to something positive that you intend to do in your life. Notice that you will never find yourself procrastinating about doing something harmful.

Here is a common example. Imagine you are starting a healthy diet to lose weight. Let’s say that a bag of potato chips sitting in your cupboard is just beckoning you to finish it off. Would you ever find yourself procrastinating about eating the whole bag? Of course not. The only thing you’d be procrastinating about is embarking on the new, healthy diet. It would go something like this: “Well, I can wait one more day to start my new diet. What’s one more day? Besides, I don’t want those yummy chips to go to waste. That would be wrong!” No procrastination problem when it comes to those chips, right?

Procrastination always acts as an impediment to bettering your life in some way. It does not seem to have any problem staying out of your way when you are in the process of making things worse.