procrastination is my nemesis

calling a spade a spade

I was reading a blog post recently, old school style on someone’s actual blog, and in talking about procrastination, they said a common refrain procrastinators say is “I don’t have time to deal with this right now”.

What we really mean most of the time is, “I don’t want to deal with this right now”. I know that there are genuinely times when a task can’t be done because of actual time constraints, but procrastinators know that when something needs to be done and they do not feel like doing it, the task will simply just not get done.

The first time I realized I was a procrastinator was when I was a college student and had a term paper that needed to be written for a class that I did not like or enjoy but was required as part of my degree. Even when I had ample notice of the impending due date, say two to three weeks, I’d be up the night before, typing ferociously on the computer, to turn in said term paper at 8am the next day.

In most things in my life, I do not procrastinate. I am one of those people who has a to-do list and wants to knock each item off as soon as the day starts. I am a very neat and tidy person. Clutter drives me crazy. My books are alphabetized by genre and last name. All of my clothes are organized in the same way in the closet. You get where I am going with this… in my everyday life, I do not put things off for another time or just let something pile up.

The exception being when it is something I really, really do not want to do.

Of course, being an adult in our modern world means doing quite a bit of tasks that you would really rather not do. That is just life.

But I would like not to procrastinate as much. I really am trying to get better at this because the thing with procrastination is that just because you don’t want to do the task, doesn’t mean it goes away. Shocking, I know. Just because I am not taking care of what needs to be done today, doesn’t mean it is going to miraculously disappear tomorrow. It will still be there, only now it is mocking me and taking up headspace that could be better occupied to figuring out what’s for dinner for the millionth time :) I jest, but you know what I mean. Putting off a task doesn’t always make it better. My brain will keep buzzing about what needs to be done, so I ask myself, why didn’t I just do the thing?

So, I am attempting to procrastinate less. It’s like ripping off a band-aid, right? If there’s something you don’t want to do, just dive in and do it, don’t even think about it. Just do it. I’ve also heard of breaking down a task into smaller increments, so it doesn’t seem as overwhelming. We will see how this goes…

I want to hear from you dear readers. Are you a procrastinator? Let me know in the comments!