So this week, the topic on my mind is my terrible habit of procrastination. I’m 37 years old, and there are times when I revert back to the middle schooler who just doesn’t want to do my vocabulary lessons. However, now the stakes are slightly higher when I’m dealing with important work tasks, school projects, and the myriad of responsibilities that come with family life.
I decided to write about this because I just went through a terrible bout of procrastinating with a handful of important tasks at work. I’ve managed to break through and get things done, but it added a lot of stress and anxiety that makes things a lot harder than they need to be.
One of my strongest memories from middle school was when I went through a period of just not doing homework and my Dad came home very upset from parent-teacher conferences. I was a bright kid who got the material, and didn’t see the point in doing the busy work. But so much of the grades were participation based. So an A on the test and zeroes on homework meant the former A/B student had D’s going into that parent teacher conference. I learned my lesson when they made me do every make up assignment over the next week. But even 20+ years later I still go through bouts of procrastination, like last week. However, having spent some of those years doing self-reflection and developing myself I have a better understanding of why I do this and how to break that cycle (without my parents taking away TV / internet privileges).
One thing that leads to me procrastinating is having too many different things to get done. If I have 3 (or more) big projects it is hard to focus on any one of them. So it is easier to just not do any of them. If I think about one, then at the back of my mind I am still preoccupied with the issues / challenges of the others. The biggest thing for me is just to make myself get one thing done. Choose one and focus. Once it is even in a presentable state, and not even totally finished I find the pressure gets relieved from that one item.
After a lot of self-reflection and reading on the topic I realized fear is what drives me as well. It can be the fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of criticism. I tend to hold myself to a pretty high standard and have a lot of faith in myself when it comes to learning new things and applying it in work. As an accountant I focus on the consulting side of things and I deal with a lot of challenging projects. A lot of times I need to think through an approach and strategy for a project before I invest a lot of time implementing. So it is very common for me to ruminate on a topic and have a full plan before I sit down and get things done. But when I don’t know how to do something, I may freeze. Rather than work on the parts I do know how to do, I just keep seeing some gap in the process that I don’t know how to bridge. So I spent time obsessing on that and ultimately don’t have anything to show. The solution I’ve found for this is to force myself to work on the parts I know what do with. There may still have that gap in the process, but I can see the problem much clearer when that is the only missing piece. There is a lot of value in putting pen to paper, being productive where I can, and only focusing about what I can control. It also makes getting help on the missing piece a lot easier, when everything else is built.
The final thing that enables my bad habit is the fact that I always seem to have a ton of things to do in my life. I am a busy person, and can get other less urgent things done as a way of feeling productive but still completely avoiding the more important tasks. If I need to spend 5 hours on some project, that I am avoiding, I can easily fill those 5 hours with other things. My to-do list at work is never empty and I can always find something to do. Alternatively, maybe I spend a few hours during the work day getting some of my homework done. That is something I need to do anyway, and it feels good to get that out of the way. Or there is always stuff to do around the house. My wife will definitely let me know if I need to get something done. So I can spend all day doing productive things, but make zero progress on my most important task. I am not the middle schooler who spends all of that time watching TV and playing endless games of Goldeneye on my N64, but I still have the ability to procrastinate and put myself in a bad situation.
At the end of the day, I usually still get things done. But it often means some inferior work, working late into the night, and incurring way more stress than necessary. I got those 3 big work projects done recently, but I don’t feel as good about that as I should. I really try to not let things like this hold me back. I have a ton going on at work right now, so I am sure it won’t be the last time I feel this way. But I think I am writing about this, because I believe that awareness is curative. The self-reflection is important. Knowing that the fear of failure holds me back, makes me focus on address that head on rather than just continuing to wallow in it. I can’t let things like this hold me back.
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