Procrastination can be a serious issue, especially for PhD students. If you avoid writing your dissertation or even starting on your dissertation, then you might end up not doing your best work towards the end of your journey because you’ll rush through the rest of it. This series is about identifying and avoiding procrastination. The first step to ending procrastination is examining yourself and identifying the symptoms you possess. Here are some questions for you to start asking yourself:

Am I a Procrastinator?

You could probably answer this question on your own without any help from outside sources, but I found an online quiz that can help guide you on your way to ridding your life of procrastination. This short quiz is only 10 questions. There are many similar quizzes online, if you need more support for the results you find here. The quiz was created by an About.com writer named Kendra Cherry and is available here.

If you feel that this short quiz doesn’t help you identify whether or not you are a procrastinator, then read over Ciara Conlon’s article, 7 Symptoms of Procrastination and How to Fight Them. Conlon provides many issues that procrastinators struggle with. This list of symptoms might help you narrow down your personal problems with procrastination. While reading this list, I’m sure you will relate to at least a few of these symptoms of procrastination; I know I related to a few of them myself, but I now know how to attack those issues and begin getting rid of my procrastination tendencies.

Why do I Procrastinate?

Now that you’ve found out if you’re a procrastinator or not, you can start getting to business and taking the steps toward procrastinating less. The following list is made only of explanations for why people procrastinate so much; it doesn’t describe how to prevent these reasons from entering our professional and academic work. Preventative tips for procrastination will come in a later part to this series. According to a guest author on Lifehack, there are six reasons we procrastinate:

1. You might feel overwhelmed either by the amount of projects you have at once or the size of one project that demands strict focus from you. You’d probably avoid working on an intimidating project more than you would an easier and shorter task.
2. A project that you simply don’t want to complete is also a reason you might procrastinate. Similar to children waiting until the last minute to clean their rooms, we tend to procrastinate on projects that we don’t look forward to doing.
3. Some people aren’t great at prioritizing tasks, so they get easily distracted by working on many tasks at once and not really completing any one task.
4. People who procrastinate struggle with making decisions. To name a few, these decisions can include how to begin a project, what medium to use for the project, and the topic on which to base the project.
5. By getting started on a project right away, many people might feel they are setting themselves up for failure. If you automatically feel that you will fail in a project, then you probably won’t jump at the chance to get started on it.
6. If you are distracted easily by your environment, you will likely procrastinate working on a project. An environment that distracts easily might include your phone that’s turned on and constantly beeping with new notifications or talkative colleagues.

If you have any questions or further comments about what makes you procrastinate in your own work, don’t hesitate to comment on this post. As you begin identifying your procrastination symptoms and start learning how you react to projects, keep a look out for the next part to this series because I will provide many tips and resources that will help you decrease the amount of procrastination tendencies you possess.