Procrastination
“Procrastination is the soul rebelling against entrapment” - Nassim Taleb
Procrastination isn’t laziness. Teachers are not lazy - but we can certainly rival kids and teens for the title of the king or queen of procrastination. It’s probably behaviour from our own time as school goers repeating itself in adult tasks: we haven’t resolved ways of fending off unpleasant duties demanding our time and attention. If we can’t finding meaning in them, we don’t want to do them - we only have energy for the things that move us, and none for the things that don’t.
Unfortunately though, procrastination is something we need to face. Those evil twins, Boring and Banal, aren’t going away anytime soon. We have to deal with them and their baggage.
A build-up of work, of mess, of resentment, only compounds our stress.
We may feel relieved when we choose to ignore stuff, it but it’s short-lived. Inevitably, whatever we’re putting off only seems to multiply with each passing day - growing in hassle and worry, until that one little boring or banal thing that we could have conquered in a few minutes, or in one afternoon, is now a monstrous mountain to climb. And with the passage of time, it’s accumulated. It isn’t one set of emails to answer. It’s several. It isn’t one class test to mark. It’s three. It isn’t one form to fill in, it’s seven. It isn’t one shelf to sort out, it’s the whole room. It isn’t one paper to set, it’s all of them.
Deadlines loom. We panic.
We need to grapple with the psychology of procrastination to better understand our strengths and weaknesses in dealing with tasks, so that we can find a system that works, and avoid the unhappiness that comes with a pile-up.
Consciously identifying our emotions and attitudes towards our responsibilities may help us confront the reasons we procrastinate - knowing full well that we’re only making our lives unnecessarily harder in the process, yet feeling unable to change the habit.
Common reasons we avoid or ignore tasks:
being paralysed by perfectionism
not knowing how to do something
being too afraid or too proud to ask for help
believing certain tasks to be irrelevant or purposeless
resenting the person or process responsible for assigning it
lacking confidence or conviction in what we’re doing
diverting attention to entertaining or self-soothing distractions instead
saying yes when we needed to say no
not being mindful about how we spend our time
denial about the consequences for not getting things done
being preoccupied by anger or fear about something in our lives
lack of sleep, good nutrition or general wellness
work overload
Pinpoint the origin of the procrastination and take steps to intervene. If you’re overloaded, demand a reprieve. If you’re going through a crisis, request personal time for recovery, if you’re easily distracted, disengage from time-sucking platforms, and so on. Procrastination is exhausting. But it isn’t inevitable. Try to find meaning in the most annoying of tasks by reframing it in your mind - even if that meaning is merely the relief of ticking it off the to-do list. Or, challenge tasks that can be eliminated and suggest alternatives.
Don’t succumb to being disorganised. Put a plan together for yourself that addresses your needs, and enjoy the peace of mind that comes with running your day your way.