I’ve yet to meet a person who doesn’t procrastinate – it happens to the best of us no matter how hard we try to avoid it.
We’ve got deadlines, so many tasks, people dependent on us, and instead of doing what we need to, we find other, unnecessary things to attend to cause we don’t want to do what we have to.
I just recently found myself cleaning my daughter’s shoes instead of sitting and completing a tedious task I’ve been avoiding.
It happened, I’ve got no excuse, but I also used that time to reflect on the task I’m avoiding, and better prepared myself to attack it once the shoes were clean…really clean 🙂
When we procrastinate, we don’t usually turn to another major task or something that we’ve been delaying, rather we turn to an activity that’s really comfortable, easy to do, and simply fills up our time instead of working on what’s needed. So the alternate task is rather automatic and doesn’t require major concentration or attention. For example, watching Netflix, browsing Youtube, flipping through our phone, cleaning our shoes, or even washing the dishes which is also some kind of therapy for me.
With that, it means we can go ahead and give in to the procrastinating activity, yet we could also utilize that time to our benefit: reflect, think, prepare, rehearse, and consider things to organize in our head to make the real task much more approachable. We can use the time to break the task down, outline our needs, paint the big picture, and get ourselves ready…even mentally.
This doesn’t only make us feel like we’re making some sort of headway, but it reduces the negative feelings we pack on ourselves due to our procrastination. Heck, we’re taking a little time to better prepare ourselves, so we’re actually helping ourselves out – aren’t we?
Right, we’re kind of lying to ourselves, but it is better than beating ourselves up, burning up precious time, and coming out with nothing to show for it.
This way, at least we’ve made a few tiny steps towards the task we’re about to embark upon.
So until you figure out a way to avoid procrastination, at least you can find a way to be better at it.