Bill Keefe, Founder HighSchoolBlues.com

Gaining control over the bad habit of procrastination in all areas of your life is fundamental to the successful pursuit of your intentions. Avoidance of difficult, tedious, unpleasant and uninteresting activities is the exact opposite of exhibiting courage and determination. Therefore it is unacceptable to allow procrastination to be a part of the way you operate your life.

Remember This: Your success will be determined by what you make happen and not by what you avoid.

There is no room for delay as each completed task is forward progress towards your success. Failure to engage the challenge, what ever it may be, will result in missed opportunities or consequences from festering problems. Timing is everything when engaged in pursuit of achievement.

There will be many forces determined to slow your progress that you will work hard to overcome. Do not manufacture your own. All too often small problems get bigger over time and what could have been a simple fix takes an emotional and financial toll. Expenditures made to clean up these types of messes will never be recouped and could have been spent so much better.

Each time you delay facing a challenge you weaken your will. You succumb to that side of you that lacks faith in your abilities and creates self-defeating behaviors. Procrastination is only one area where you will be tempted to follow a path that is opposed to your best interest. If you are enticed to follow one of those paths you must demonstrate strength. Reject it and you will proceed towards success. Accept it and you will inevitably experience additional burdens that will need attending to.

Continuous procrastination fills your subconscious mind with apprehension, worry and self-doubt. The "build-up" of these tensions even if they are suppressed from your everyday consciousness, takes a toll on your psyche. As you drag these worries around with you their presence absorbs your energies and limits your vision. They hang over your head like clouds and prevent you from seeing what is available beyond them. Few people are able to exhibit courageous action when burdened with unfinished business.

Moreover, you are apt to surrender your time and thoughts to distractions in order to suppress your anxieties. These distractions may include various forms of entertainment, substances, or any multitude of emotional traps. Regardless of your preferred distraction when it is finished your burden is no better than before and usually the delay has made it worse. As you learn more about the destructive nature of distractions in the coming chapters, you will understand the importance of overcoming procrastination.

Procrastination surrenders your control. Commit to adopting a "Do it now" attitude and you will gain maximum control when facing any challenge. One effective tool for overcoming procrastination is a daily to-do list by which you organize each task by their perceived difficulty. Begin addressing the most difficult task first and continue until they are complete. But even this tested method is useless unless you have developed the discipline to follow it through. End procrastination through consistent decisions to "Do it now".