The more we put things off, the more anxious about them we are likely to become. Anxiety is bad for our health and bad for our relationships because it usually impacts on our behavior with others. Anxiety can depress our immune system, and therefore we are less likely to fend off virus infections. Anxiety can affect our ability to concentrate, and we are more likely to have accidents. Anxiety can, over time, lead to depression and serious mental illness.

The more we find we cannot deal with some essential tasks, the bigger the workload we end up with. The more things we have to deal with, and the bigger the backlog we carry around with us, the more stress we are under to manage our time and our actions. Stress is good, up to a point. However, too much stress is not good for us. Too much stress can cause physical illness, and make everything appear harder to deal with.

The more we convince ourselves that we can put something off, the more we are deluding ourselves.

The less control we exert over our lives, the less likely we are to be getting the most and the best out of life.

If we don’t manage our lives well, we basically lose out.

By procrastinating about our finances, we can end up in serious debt. This will affect our lives for at least the short to medium term, if not longer.

Generally, debt will affect others – family members – our children – our partners. It can be easy to just not deal with a review of our spending. It is never easy to deal with a huge overdraft, more loans, and a block on our credit – need we say more?

If we procrastinate about health matters, the consequences can be extremely serious. If it is the dentist appointment that really frightens us, we can put it off until the point of having to have all our teeth removed – on the other hand, we could explain to the dentist that we are very frightened and ask for sedation before any work is carried out.

If we put off going to the doctor because we have symptoms that seem to us to be indicative of something serious – well the likelihood is that it isn’t – but it could be, and delays could have major consequences.

Many of us work against deadlines. In many cases it is good to have deadlines. It can help us plan our work load and schedule our tasks when we have deadlines. However, if we have certain jobs that we don’t like doing, and we postpone them, this can have an impact on the business, our colleagues, or ultimately our employment.

In almost every sphere of our lives, there are things that need to be done, and we don’t always like doing them. However, putting them off almost always causes more problems than we had in the beginning.

So whichever way you think about it, you need to get down to dealing with your procrastination, and learn how to ensure that you get things done.