Have you seen this poster? The one with a polar bear lying on an ice floe? The caption says, “When I get the feeling to do something, I lie down until the feeling goes away.”
Yep, I’m talking about procrastination. I come from a long line of procrastinators. If it’s possible for this sort of thing to be passed down through genes, our family has a lot of this bad ‘P’ type blood 🙂
Procrastination is a terrible thing. You feel horrible. The things you procrastinate about are a constant worry at the forefront of your mind zapping all your energy. Procrastination becomes an exhausting activity and stress generator, as anyone who has ever slipped into the ‘P’ mode will tell you.
I’ve been a procrastinator for as long as I can remember and my mother is the first to say that I “get it honest.” But this year as part of my new life strategy and goals I’m determined to change my wicked ways.
I’m already making some progress. Usually, when I’m putting together a new issue of Bread ‘n Molasses there is always one story that I procrastinate about editing or writing. It might be that I’m not particularly interested in the subject. Or there’s a lot of picture sizing and cropping that goes along with it. Or I have to interview someone that’s difficult to get in touch with. Or the story is in hard copy and I have to retype it from scratch — whatever my reasoning, there’s always one story that seems a bit more daunting than all the others and I procrastinate. And that means I leave it to last.
I know, I know, it makes much better sense to dig into the most difficult story first and get it out of the way, but that’s not how I’ve been going about it — until now. I’m changing the way I work, implementing new systems, and becoming more organised, procrastinating much less. Now, I identify the story I feel most inclined to procrastinate about and do it first. It helps. I have an energy toward the end of the task that I didn’t have before.
I’ve still got a long way to go, of course. Rome wasn’t built in a day, I’m not kicking my life-long procrastination habit in a few short weeks. This is just one example from one part of my life of how I have been procrastinating and what I’m doing to change the situation. I hoped by sharing this that you might be able to help me take this even further. Do you have any tips, tricks or solutions that can help me (and any other procrastinators who might be reading) finally kick procrastination to the curb forever?
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