The curse of procrastination

I’ve been cursed to be a procrastinator. No actually, it’s not right. Saying it’s a curse makes it outside of my control which is not true. See, I’m being brutally honest here. I am guilty of procrastination, a really hard case. I procrastinate when I have to call others or returning their calls, replying to emails, writing a paper or finishing an assignment or even calling my friends. Everything is so hard for me.

I have a few favorite ways of procrastination: 1- sometimes I just don’t do anything, keep postponing something (a chore, a phone call, an email) and postponing and…. and hoping that it eventually will go away! The whole time I am ignoring what I have to do while my conscious is torturing me, but I keep ignoring my conscious too. Meanwhile my anxiety is building up: what if I get caught, what if they find out, what if something serious goes wrong because I didn’t do what I had to…. Yes, it gets bad: anxiety, guilt, tortured conscious all make me lose my cool, look for excuses to become upset and angry or to have a good cry. Sounds crazy, I know, but it is one of my patterns. It can go on for months at a time!

2- I decide to do something, like sit down and write a statement or a paper or whatever, then I look around and see all these papers piling up on my desk and how messy my bookcase is and …oh, look, the files in my “whatever” folder need organizing… and don’t you know it? There are dishes in the sink and the house needs vacuuming and maybe even maybe the windows need washing! Yeah… I would do all those extra unnecessary chores simply because I can’t bring myself to do the one I had to. This also can go on for months at a time, meanwhile my house is sparkling clean and not only I have cooked lunch and dinner every single day, I have baked desserts and pastry too!

So here it is, my full confession. The worse part? I know what I’m doing and I feel bad about it too! All those bad feeling are making me quite miserable and unhappy. It is one of those cases when I deliberately make myself unhappy, regularly and on day to day basis.

It has to stop sometime, right? I mean, when I know I’m doing something wrong and when I suffer severely because of it, the logical mind would conclude: It has to stop! Right?!

Procrastination increases along with Pain.

OK, I can’t promise I will stop procrastinating right away (I’m not sure I have the will power), but I tell you one thing: I made headway today and took one right step. I had to send out 4 or 5 emails today which I’ve been postponing for … ummm, maybe 2-3 months (?!) and I kept postponing time and again! As soon as I started my first round of regular excuses, I poured a glass of water and turned my computer on, sat down and wrote those emails. Yes, it was hard… yes, it took 3 hours … yes, I had to apologize to a whole lot of people for late replies. But you know what? I did it! I sent those emails and I feel so much better for it. I feel relieved and light as if a heavy weight is off of my shoulders at last. You know, I feel happy!

The way to lift the procrastination curse:  Dive in and do it! Just do it!