Recovering from procrastination

What a complicated word to even pronounce, and what a nasty habit to have…!

If I could simply say I’m lazy, at least I wouldn’t feel remorse over what I didn’t do. Or if I could follow my son’s advice to categorize it as time to ‘chill’, I would at least feel my energy replenished from the rest.

But procrastinating leaves me with a bad feeling, drained energy and the knowledge of missed opportunities or accumulated work for the next day.

I recently discussed this topic with other women, and quite a number of them shared about things they keep putting off – sometimes things as simple as cleaning out a cupboard, sometimes larger things like getting serious about changing jobs.

We talked about ‘crutches’ that sometimes help us: breaking big tasks into small bite-sized chunks, keeping ‘to do today-lists’, building in planned breaks, and so on.

But the two most important helpers to recover from procrastination were these: - Having a bigger ‘why’: a goal that motivates me and which I can link to the task I keep putting off. This provides the necessary motivation to overcome the feeling of dislike luring me into delay, and

- Talking about it, getting peer support.

The simple fact that we talked about it, helped several of our group to tackle the very things they had put off for months before. One of the ladies shared: ‘Our session gave me a boost! I've made good progress with the sorting and tidying that I'd been struggling to start for a long time. Thinking about what makes me put it off until tomorrow has helped me a lot. I feel like I've been set free!’