Why do today what you can do tomorrow

PROCRASTINATION!!! What an ugly word. And I haven’t met a single person immune to this disease. Man oh man. It’s an epidemic. How bad is yours?

What is it about not getting to things that need to be gotten to? Leaving it till the last minute, or sometimes even after the last minute. I can’t remember the last time I got to something as soon as it arrived on my plate. It always gets done but damn, would be so much more wonderful if it wasn’t under the pressure of a deadline. I always say, I do my best work while under pressure, which in no way is a lie. But an addition to that truth is that I don’t know how well I work without the pressure, because I don’t really remember a time that I’ve tried it. Anyone else out there, can I get an Amen!!

So what is this whole procrastination thing all about? Why do we keep doing it? There is a theory that most things we do are not because we want to do it. It makes a lot of sense. Let me make an example. Tell me if this sounds familiar, “I really want to start running/eating healthy/studying”. Who hasn’t said this before? And who has actually started immediately after saying it? If your answer is “Me”, then you are not from this planet. Well done to you. But for the rest of us humans, it is so easy to identify these obvious things that we have to do, but getting to actually do them is not so obviously easy. So back to the theory, where do we get the notion that these things need to be done. Yes, we’ve identified that they are “the right things to do”, but according to who? Who has convinced you that these are what we need to do. And that’s the ringer right there. Someone, somewhere has told us that these are what we need to do, what we should do. We haven’t actually decided for ourselves. We may have convinced ourselves that we have, but if we had really decided we would have started by now. That theory definitely makes sense.

Now the next question is, if we know these things are good for us why is it so difficult to decide for ourselves. Why can our minds not recognise the merits of what needs to be done and that all these things will bring positivity to our lives. Herein lays the key. How do we truly convince ourselves that it is what we want? It needs a mindful shift in the way we look at things. The way we see things. The way we see success. Success doesn’t need to just be meeting that deadline when we start the day before. Imagine success exceeding expectation just because you’ve released the pressure of just “finishing” and you were able to put in a few extra hours/days/weeks of unpressured effort. With a mind focused on quality rather than speed.

The irony of that, who says quality is better than speed. It’s all in your perceived requirements for yourself. Now there is the real decision that needs to be made. What is it that I want to believe and what is it that I want for myself. If we go back to the beginning and the decision is that “I work best under pressure”, then are you really procrastinating or is it exactly how you want it to be. Don’t change what isn’t broke.

Procrastination – a misdiagnosis and a word that has such a bad rep. Next time you question your putting off of something that needs getting done. Think about why it’s happening. Think about whether you want to blame it on the poor innocent word that might not have anything to do with the delay.