Procrastination is a theme that keeps popping up for me at the moment – for myself, my clients and others around me too.
The slightly frustrating thing is that I am so aware of it when it comes up for other people because it’s also so very true of me.
There’s loads of stuff I could be doing to move myself forward – but I find I’m not doing them. A tale as old as time. I sat down at my desk over an hour ago to start writing this and have only just started. Other little tasks became more important all of a sudden!
I find that I go through phases of filling my days with the minutiae of life, in order to not have time to do the other things. I don’t even have the excuse that it’s unconscious behaviour anymore, I’m very much aware of it.
It normally comes down to one of 2 things. Fear of failure, or fear of success.
Perfectionism and indecisiveness are often key components to procrastination. If it might not be perfect, it’s better not to start. If you don’t make a choice, you can’t make the wrong choice. At some point in our lives, probably in our early years, some of us learnt it wasn’t safe to get things wrong. Maybe we got told off by a parent or teacher or got made fun of by our peers for making a mistake, and at that point decided we wouldn’t be doing that again!
But as Brene Brown says, if you’re in the arena, you ARE going to get your ass kicked. Not “you might” or “there’s a risk of”, you WILL.
It’s easy to say just be alright with failure, but it’s much harder to do.
A fear of success leads us to playing it small. Keeping our heads down. And this one is a tricky one, because we all are programmed to WANT success (and how we define success is a whole different topic!) but look at the way we talk about people who have been successful in the media? Successful politicians, businesspeople, actors, musicians – once you are successful enough for people to notice you, they have something to say. And we scrutinize every aspect of them. And no one is universally liked or admired. There are always going to be haters.
The more successful you are, the more people are going to question whether you are deserving of that success. And although that may not be on a public stage, it happens within our own circles too.
Can you think of a time when someone you love, a close friend or family member, did really well at something, and to yourself, or with someone else, you gossiped about how they fluked it? I’ll not ask you for raised hands, but I know I have.
It’s not to say you’ll never procrastinate again but figuring out the beliefs and drivers behind it for you is a good start to understanding what’s going on.
They also say that in order to prevent procrastination, it’s best to take action of some kind within 5 seconds of having a thought – so whatever you’re thinking about doing, take an action towards that right now.
To make it super easy for you – you can send me a message to commit to taking that action and I’ll pop back and check on you to see if it’s done! The button is just below!