“Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.” – Pablo Picasso
Well, this quote deals with procrastination.
Why do we procrastinate? There are quite a few reasons. These reasons can all be distilled to two things—Fear and Discomfort.
We fear we’ll screw up. We’ll fear that we aren’t good enough. We’ll fear that we’re wasting time.
Discomfort deals with those tasks we just don’t want to do. We don’t want to clean our home, cook that meal, or go to the gym. They are all uncomfortable. Most people don’t want to do these things. So, we put things off and off and off and we end up adding to a pile of things we haven’t done that we should have.
How do we counter procrastination? By taking action. We do something. Whether it’s writing a page toward your new book, grabbing a vacuum cleaner and do one room in your house, or grabbing that first dirt dish and putting in the dishwasher. Take action, regardless of how small that thing we have to do is.
Once you complete this little action you’ll feel better. You’ll feel a sense of accomplishment. You’ll feel relief that you did one thing on that long list of to-dos.
Or don’t. It’s your life. You can let the things you need to do pile up and get to a point where you won’t know where to start. You’ll be paralyzed. Your stress levels will increase because things that are not done produce stress, particularly if you know you have to do them at some point.
So, take some time today to brainstorm and write all of the things down you need to do. Some of these things will be daily activities that you’ll have to add to some sort of checklist. Others will be “one and done” tasks. You do them once and they’re done. Others will be more complex and tasks that may take a few months to complete. With these, you’ll have to spend some time breaking that task down into meaningful steps and knock each one out as you go in the order that makes the most sense to you.
One book I read every year is Getting Things Done by David Allen. This is one of the best “how to” books on personal time management there is. I highly recommend it. The book will give you a system of tracking your tasks, executing those tasks, and how to keep moving forward. I highly recommend it.
Well, that’s it for today folks.
Until next time…
Dave
