deepstash
Beta
Fear of Failure and Procrastination: 8 Reasons You're Sabotaging Action
Not Wanting A New Challenge
We think we have worked all these years and achieved a certain level, and attempting something new and outrageously out of our league will make us into a ‘newbie’, something learning the ropes and making mistakes.
Getting out of our comfort zones may not feel ‘comfy’ but is good for our personal growth and eventual success. Reaching the next level is not easy, but pays off big in the long run.
66 SAVES
64 READS
SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
7
Key Ideas
Self-Efficacy
A person’s belief and expectation that they are capable of completing a task.
When we don't trust the fact that we'll be able to complete a task (with good results), we're mor...
Value
The more enjoyable a task, the less we procrastinate on it.
Boring tasks are more likely to lead to procrastination than difficult ones, that's why we keep postponing all the busywork (work that keeps us busy but has little value in itself.)
Impulsiveness
Difficulty maintaining focus in the face of immediate and more appealing distractions.
If we work in an environment where we're bombarded with distractions and we are not capable of resisting them, we're more likely to procrastinate.
4
Key Ideas
Fear of abandonment
Some people will pursue multiple relationships simultaneously because of a fear of abandonment.
They want to have a backup relationship in case something goes wrong, but in doing so, they ...
Signs of the fear of abandonment
- You feel jealous often.
- You go overboard in the relationship.
- You have thoughts about their partner or spouse leaving you.
- You demand an unrealistic portion of time with your significant other.
- You have difficulty in trusting their partner or spouse and are controlling.
- You always look out for the next relationship or significant other to replace the one most recently lost.
- You feel unworthy, less than or unworthy of love.
- You have lower self-esteem/ self-confidence.
- You end relationships before the other person can.
- You stay in unhealthy or abusive relationships because of the fear of being abandoned or alone.
- You will pursue relationships with people who are emotionally unavailable.
The reason behind the fear of abandonment
Generally, people who have a fear of abandonment feel they are not worthy of being loved.
When a child is attached to someone, and the person leaves them, they are left feeling that they were not fully loved. Even though this is likely not the truth, the child will wonder what made them unlovable. As an adult, they may still feel there is something about them that makes them not worthy. They often believe they should control things so that the person doesn't leave them.
5
Key Ideas
Procrastination and subjective value
Our choice to work on a project is guided by how much we value finishing that project in that moment. Psychologists call this "subjective value."
Procrastination,...
A trick to defeat procrastination
Find a way to increase the subjective value of working in this moment, related to the value of other things.
You can boost the value of the project you should be working on, decrease the value of the thing that is distracting you, or try combinations of these two.
Delay discounting
Our tendency to devalue money and other goods based on time is called delay discounting.
This is an important aspect in procrastination because the completion of the project happens in the future. Finishing a project is a delayed reward, so its value in the present is reduced: the further away a deadline is, the less attractive it seems to work on the project right now.