The Truth about Procrastination

People often tell me how they procrastinate all of the time. My first question when someone wants to have a conversation about procrastination is, “Are you procrastinating on doing things you actually want to do?”

Usually people say, “No, it’s easy doing things I want to do. It’s just the stuff that I have to do that seems too difficult, complicated, or overwhelming.”

Yeah, me too. Honestly, I am all for procrastinating on stuff that we don’t want to do. Eventually we’ll do it with whatever time we have left. By consciously procrastinating on some things, I have saved myself a whole lot of time messing around and tinkering with something to get it just right.

Instead of beating ourselves up over procrastinating, let’s celebrate the fact that we are actually saving ourselves time by waiting until the 11^th hour! Now of course, if you are constantly thinking about doing something and not doing it, that is time that can be much better allocated to other activities until the moment for action arrives.

Now, there are important projects that we need to do, and it is better to do them sooner than later. It could be a challenging conversation, a lengthy report, a grant proposal, a significant purchase, a proposal, a household project, et cetera. By the way I have procrastinated on all of these things. Boy, that list was a little too easy to come up with!

Practices for Handling Procrastination

The first thing that I suggest people do in these kinds of circumstances is release the thoughts and feelings that the project will be as challenging as they believe it will be. Just because we think something is going to be difficult does not make it so. We think all kinds of things that just aren’t true. Thoughts and feelings related to procrastination are no different.

The second suggestion I have is to just pick the first action that makes sense and do that without thinking about any other aspect of the project. Just decide to do one tiny thing, maybe it’s sending an e-mail, making a call, brainstorming some ideas, or making a note. It’s best to choose something that is either fun for you or that you can complete in a matter of a few minutes. Once completed, celebrate! You have taken a step toward the completion of your project!

Often completing that one action leads me to want to complete several other actions as well. And sometimes, the thing I have been putting off is done quickly, easily, effortlessly, and joyfully simply because I made the choice to do one small thing related to it.

Have hope! Your unfinished and unstarted projects will be completed one way or another. I suggest completing them with a much joy, ease, and speed as possible.

Go forth and be fruitful! Woooooo Hoooooo!!!!

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