Learnings from my Procrastination

Disclaimer: This is not a post that’ll teach anyone how to beat procrastination. There are better resources out there if some research is done. I’m just sharing my own experiences about being an on-and-off procrastinator my whole life.

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I’ve been putting off writing on this topic for 6 days now. Everyday, as I sit down to write, something else suddenly rises up in my made-up “priority list” and I have to get it done before I can write anything, or maybe I want to watch some videos before I start writing and then go down the YouTube rabbit-hole, once again putting off writing for another day.

I’m not lazy either. I could clean all the dishes that need cleaning, or research and write code to build a new project from scratch, if it means I get to put off writing for just a little longer.

Sometimes my mind just dreads it because it thinks it’s really hard to write on the topic. This thought overwhelms me and I instantly lose focus. Sometimes I have self-doubts and fear. I’m not sure if I can write anything in a meaningful way. I worry about what the people who read the post would think or say about what I have written, which is pretty ironic considering the fact that I always tell people to not think about what others might think or say about them, or that I haven’t even started writing anything in the first place.

Often times my excuses are that “I have other important things to do first”, or “I’m not motivated enough to do it right now”, or “This is not a priority right now”, or “Hey this video/article looks really interesting, let me finish it first and then I’ll get to the writing part”. But in reality, I’m just delaying it for no good reason.

The award-winning American writer John McPhee, in his interview with the Columbia Journal had this to say about his procrastination:

… So I go along and I know today what I’m going to do, but that’s easy to say. It’s another thing [to do it]. I go there, and I sit, and I stare at the wall, and I used to sharpen pencils but nobody needs to do that anymore, and I made tea for years and I don’t drink tea much anymore. And, in short, I procrastinate, mess around, but I think there’s a little touch of writer’s block that gets in a writer’s way every day when a writer tries to write…

I’ve procrastinated on many different tasks, under different circumstances my whole life. I have given in to procrastination even when I had known that it was inevitable for me to get the things done sooner or later, and the sooner I got them done, the better it would have been for me. This has landed me in hot water many times and at times caused avoidable conflicts. And still I have procrastinated time and again, and at times avoided doing what’s necessary.

I know that I could get things done insted of putting them off for later if I just let go of my fears and insecurities, begin to focus on the task and just do it. I know this because I have done it many times.

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”

— Laozi in Dao De Jing

From my experiences, I have learnt that the first step to get things done is always to just start. Just beginning to do something sets the wheels in motion towards one’s goal of completing a task. Once I have completed the task at hand, a surge of positive emotions start flowing in my mind. I feel relieved, I feel accomplished, my mind feels energized and I become less anxious knowing that the task is done. I’m motivated to put in even more effort in doing different tasks going forward.

What has also helped me at times is the thought of what would happen once I get the task done—I’ll have one less thing to do, I’ll learn something new from doing the task, maybe people will appreciate me if I get it done, I might get to rest after completing it, etc. Thinking this way, at least, gets me “motivated” to start, and eventually complete the task.

As I have grown over the years, I have slowly learnt to take responsibility for my thoughts and actions and to stop finding excuses to avoid doing something. Even if I feel like procrastinating, I have learnt to divert the time spent procrastinating towards doing research for what needs to get done. This helps me in gaining more knowledge about the thing I need to do, I can feel a little more confident when I’m doing the task and I can focus on completing the task properly.

I know that I will be procrastinating in one way or the other the rest of my life. But, in time, I have learnt how to identify my procrastination habits and the steps I need to take to mitigate the consequences of procrastinating so that I can accomplish all that I strive for in life.