Procrastinating with Purpose
I procrastinate. So what? I also get things done. You procrastinate. You also get things done. Not everything, not always, and not always on time. So we need to build a process around our procrastination so that we get things done more often—and more often on time.
That means that it is time to accept and respect our process. Let’s pause there. You are not a trained seal. You are a human being with a process.
Come to think of it, maybe the trained seal has a process, too. And needs to be respected... But that’s for another time.
What if you could learn a process that would take into account the rhythm of your procrastination. Heidi Julavits, acclaimed and prolific literary writer and founder of The Believer magazine:
Once I accepted the rhythm of my procrastination, I was fine.
Wow. “...The rhythm of my procrastination…” My procrastination has a rhythm! And so does yours.
What is your rhythm?
My rhythm—and probably yours—depends on roughly five things:
the importance of the task or project
my feelings about my knowledge and experience in completing the task or project
whether or not I enjoy doing the specific task or tasks involved in the project
my feelings about the outcome
And where I am in the process, whether at the beginning, middle, or the end.
So, if the task or project is moderately important and relatively easy, in other words, it falls into my area of expertise, I enjoy it, and I feel like the outcome is going to likely be very positive, I jump at the chance to accomplish it. If any of those factors are not in the positive end of a continuum, I’m going to procrastinate—especially at the beginning.
That’s usually the spot where I get stuck--the beginning. But, depending upon those factors, above, I can procrastinate like a champ anywhere in the process. But, again, my favorite spot for procrastination is the beginning of a project.
Can you set aside judgement? Can you be curious?
Now it’s time to be curious. To watch when you delay, watch when you procrastinate, and notice what part of the project causes you to do that. Do you procrastinate at the beginning? The middle? Or the end?
But to be curious, you will need to set aside judgement. Judgement comes from the superego, the Inner Critic or the Judge Within. The superego uses shame and embarrassment--or the threat of shame and embarrassment—to get us to conform to our conditioning. Maybe your conditioning actually set you up for procrastination--to sabotage your efforts, convince you that you can’t do certain things, and ensure failure. Whatever it was, and is now, it is all about your conditioning, what you were raised to believe about yourself. And it is antagonistic. It is aggressive. And when it is present, you can’t really be open with yourself. Who opens up to someone who is antagonistic and aggressive?
Recognize the superego
It is time to recognize the superego: it makes us feel small, like we are two or six or 12, and we just made some mistake—big or small—and, as we like to say, gesturing with two fingers about two inches apart, we feel this tall. And it makes us feel less-than, helpless, like we just can’t do it.
Do you know the feeling?
Once we recognize that feeling of helplessness, of smallness, of inadequacy--and, therefore, the superego, we can defend against it regarding the task or project we want to work on. We can decide: do I need to feel small and helpless and less than to accomplish this? Or do I need to pull up my big kid pants and just do it?
The superego was designed to condition us so that we conform to societal expectations, like being clean, dressing appropriately, behaving appropriately. In other words, it was designed to cause us to not stick peas up our nose at the dinner table. If you still have a tendency to stick peas up your nose then you don’t need to read any further. If you don’t, you need to recognize that these bad feelings are not useful, that you can do your work without feeling bad about yourself, thank you very much.
Now we can learn just when in the cycle or productivity we procrastinate. Once we know that, we can allow the procrastination and factor that into the timeline of the project or task, the rhythm of our workday or workweek. We can allow for it, and not beat ourselves up.
When do you procrastinate?
Today I did my first YouTube live! Yay! I had a lot of anxiety and I didn’t know how to answer all the questions that YouTube threw at me, questions about a thumbnail (what’s that?), and WHATEVER. But let me share with you that I intended to start eight days ago.
Yes. Eight days ago.
Some time last week, after about four days of procrastination, I tried to do my first YouTube live. I got a message that something had to set up and it would be 24 hours before I could actually do the live broadcast. It took another four days to try again. That brought me to today. I did it! But I had to allow for my runs up to the hurdle before I jumped it.
Now I feel—fingers crossed—that I will be able to proceed.
Discovering when in the course of a task or project you procrastinate allows you to know when to allow yourself some time. It allows you to get conscious, get clear, and build some structure around your procrastination to allow it to work for you and not against you.