I decided this morning I would [fill in that thing you’re avoiding].
Instead, I’m organizing the junk drawer. Or cleaning the bathroom. Or… really anything except doing what I promised myself I’d do. Thinking, “I’ll just do that tomorrow.”
That’s often what procrastination looks like, right?
“Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week.”
How do you get yourself to do what you’re “supposed” do? Because you’re supposed to be doing “A”, but instead you’re doing “B”.
But perhaps the problem is in the way you think about it.
Who says you’re supposed to be doing A?
The challenge, especially when you’re a small business owner, working for yourself, is that it’s you. It’s all you.
And we are not trained to be responsible to ourselves. We are trained to be responsible to others – our parents, our teachers, our bosses. So, how do we learn to be responsible to ourselves?
And therein lies the essence of all productivity skills, keeping your word to yourself. This is also called discipline.
The word discipline comes with all kinds of baggage because it’s connected with punishment and deprivation. I prefer this definition:
Discipline is often defined as the ability to control one's actions, thoughts, and emotions in order to achieve a specific goal.
In other words, choosing to take the actions that will move you towards your goals, dreams and vision of your life instead of choosing what feels good in the moment, what you’re in the mood for, what feels comfortable.
As children, we think, “Boyo, when I get to be an adult, I’m going to do whatever I feel like doing!” As if that’s the definition of adulthood. Until we become adults and discover “adulting” doesn’t look like that AT ALL!
Very often we know exactly what we need to do, and somehow, we don’t do it. And that can cause a lot of damage, and not just to the possibility of achieving our goals, but to our self esteem, our confidence, and our trust.
It can also cause or increase overwhelm. Because all the things we’ve been procrastinating about get added to everything else in our world that creates overwhelm.
If this blog post resonates with you, come to the next:
“Turn Procrastination and Overwhelm into Productivity And Transform Obstacles into Action” workshop. To find the current dates – just click the “Sign me up” button.
And let me know what you think in the comments – your questions and comments may become the next post!
One Response
I hear you. . . as a self-employed writer, I definitely found your post resonant, to say the least
I’ve had good results with a new software app. I’ve been trying lately– I blog about it in my entry Stop Watching The Clock. In my experience, small-scale time management has been really helpful in tackling the bigger kinds of situations you talked about here. . . thanks for sharing your insights, Debra.