Procrastination is like that annoying relative who shows up uninvited and convinces you to put off your work for “just a few minutes.” Before you know it, that time turns into six hours and you’re left feeling guilty and unproductive.
This week, like most, I have work, two “work in progress” book drafts to continue, website maintenance and look after the kids. I have barely managed ‘work’ and the kids have not died of starvation – so I guess I can chalk that up as a win. But TikTok and other distractions like moving my music playlist from Amazon to Spotify are keeping me busy instead.
The key apparently is to set small, manageable goals for yourself and to hold yourself accountable for meeting them – so I’ve failed at that quite well – think I might start setting goals of not crossing many things off my list or throwing it away completely.
I love the thrill of putting things off until the last minute. On the other hand, I hate the stress that comes with it. I should be working on my latest stuff as mentioned above right now, but instead, I’m writing about procrastination. Or as Douglas Adams used to say:
“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”
That’s how powerful it can be. Procrastination isn’t all bad. It gives me time to come up with brilliant excuses for why I haven’t finished my work yet or to go down another rabbit hole on the internet or even get some inspiration on what will be a very little read blog post on the internet.
Let me give you a real world example – this weekend I was planning on getting some more of my book about Scouting completed, but I’ve just booked our summer holiday for this year, so I have a new shiny thing to focus on. I have therefore started the planning as detailed in my book about this regular journey south in the book Ascot to Argelès As you can see in the image linked to this post, I have started the route planning and even the petrol station stops – I’ve been very productive I think, just not on what I was supposed to be doing.
Procrastination is a double-edged sword. It can be both your best friend and your worst enemy. But ultimately, you will end up doing the work, just at the last minute and that is ok.
Now I have managed to finish this post, which I started on Friday afternoon, I will now get on and do some work on the book. It may be past midnight in the UK but I will now try to get a couple of thousand words down rather than go to sleep. As I always like to say – “A job worth doing is worth doing badly”.
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