Procrastination
I chose this topic because it is precisely what I’ve been doing the last 7 days with my blog. Oh, I’ve had some very good reasons for not blogging (see my earlier post on Rationalization), but the bottom line is I could have prioritized my blogging had I really wanted to, but the fact that I didn’t is evidence enough that I didn’t really want to.
What makes us procrastinate? It’s puzzling, especially when it comes to an inescapable task we absolutely must do. Somehow it’s still better to us to put it off, even though it will be more painful to do it later than now. “Tomorrow guy” is the constant recipient of our screw jobs, and we have a hard time grasping that we in fact are “tomorrow guy”. If we could perform the mental math accurately and truly put ourselves in our “tomorrow guy’s” shoes, I would imagine very few of us would procrastinate nearly as much as we do.
But the ugly truth is that we don’t quite feel bad enough for “tomorrow guy” to alter our behavior. So we procrastinate until the task has somehow achieved mythic and monolithic attributes in our brains. It begins to be associated in our minds with words like impossible, infeasible, and daunting. We notice this and start to tell ourselves that we have put things off for too long, and need to get back on the horse, but how?
Many folks agree the most important (and hardest) part of ending a cycle of procrastination is to just get started on the task, without worrying about how we can possibly finish it. This is usually far easier said than done, and it often seems pointless and/or depressing to begin a task for which there is no hope of any possible completion. One method that is often touted online (I’ve tried it and it works for me) is breaking up the task into small pieces that are each easily measurable and easily completed. As these small pieces are accomplished, your brain registers the progress that’s being made and thus the self-defeat is defeated. More often than not, when I put this method into practice I find that I’ve made my small pieces too small, and I can easily knock out 2-3 of them in one go, giving me even more confidence and positive energy. It isn’t perfect but it’s good enough for me.
Here endeth the lesson on procrastination.
Bike Newbie 