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The Right Time
"Some people make things happen. Some people watch things happen. Some people say 'what happened?'"
Popular saying
Do you procrastinate? Do you put things off, change your mind about what to do next or find yourself doing stuff at the last minute? Ever wondered why?
What if I were to tell you that there is no such thing as procrastination that it’s a label you’ve attached to yourself, but only in certain areas of your life. So, really it’s a lie.
"It's no lie," I hear you say – "I know because I’m suffering from it." Well I beg to differ. Let me explain.
Precious Time
As we all know, time is our most precious commodity so not many of us would truly want to waste it if really thought about it. But procrastination, the biggest time waster of all, is an insidious disease with a horribly sounding name that if we apply to our selves, suggests a wasted life.
“Oh I’ve got ‘procrastination’ in the area of writing my book/getting my website up and running/marketing my business/doing my filing. Yes, I was diagnosed with it 5 years ago and its quite incurable.”
When this disease takes hold, nothing moves forward and nothing gets done and hours, days and weeks pass by and nothing changes.
If you believe you have "procrastination" you may also come to believe that it’s a killer disease and you’d be right. People who believe they have "procrastination" - for instance, in the area of their business - probably kill all their best ideas by putting them off for too long, they miss opportunities and then get glum when someone else "does it" or "has it" instead of them.
Selective Procrastination
Notice you don’t procrastinate in every area of your life. Even the worst procrastinators have areas where they never procrastinate. Perhaps you never miss your favourite TV show, or you always manage to buy a lottery ticket every week.
Here’s what I’d like to suggest. Procrastination is an attempt to cope with our emotional reactions to something we simply don’t like the idea of doing, don’t do well, are afraid of succeeding at (yes, that’s right) or are afraid of failing at.
Let me explain. Lets take boredom. How boring is it to do mundane tasks like filing your tax return or washing up, or for some people going to the gym, or whatever it is for you. You’d want to put that off wouldn’t you?
What about a part of our job or daily life that we need to do but we are not very good at. Cooking is one for me. I often fail spectacularly. I put it off till the last minute and have ruined some very fine ingredients over the past years. What’s one for you?
The Fear Factor
How scary is it to start something new, a new business, a new relationship, a new project, a new job or have that "conversation." As Abraham Lincoln said, “Better to remain silent and appear a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”
These are out of the comfort zone type experiences that we think about but often put off for ages. We could fail, get hurt, mess up or not be chosen. We don’t want to go there in a hurry.
And what about if we know we are successful at something, but every time we do it, we just build the expectation that people will want us to do it again, perhaps even better than the last time. That can cause pressure, why even bother?
The truth is that if you relate any kind of pain to a task, you virtually ensure that you will put it off. When you associate discomfort to starting a new relationship, doing the boring part of your job, going for a promotion or stepping in to unchartertered territory you begin to have an attack of procrastination.
If you can associate enough pain to whatever "it" is for a long enough amount of time, then you will never do it. Fear will kick in and kick out any hope of achievement.
This means you must be able to associate some form of pleasure to doing it. You have to be able to see an outcome that has value, one that will add to the quality of your life rather than detract from it.
When you can see that life would work more effectively, that you’d have more fun, free up more time to do what you’d like to do, improve a situation (even if it’s a bit uncomfortable to start with), or feel pride in your achievement, then you are much more likely to do what needs to be done.
Baby Steps
At that point, one of the simplest rules of time management is to start one step at a time. Do a little. At least begin, but only when you can see the pleasure of the outcome. A tidy desk, a surge of energy, a peaceful heart.
However if you can only envision pain, you must make a choice to either do it anyway, or don’t do it at all. But you must make a choice and believe me you always have a choice.
Here’s what I can guarantee – by making a choice you will eliminate procrastination. It cannot exist any more. Choice and procrastination cannot live side by side. All that wasted time and energy spent in putting it off, will simply be over. And, just imagine how much time you’ll now have to do the things you love.
I believe that now is exactly the Right Time to stop procrastinating and get on with your life. And if you’ll excuse, me I’m just off to the kitchen to cook, because the thought of a family dinner is just too pleasurable to miss!
