Are you REALLY procrastinating?

A

Anonymous

Guest
I noticed on the front of a newspaper this morning “Inside: Stress – how to beat it once and for all”.

A couple of years ago I would have jumped on it. But now I know I don't suffer from stress; however I would like to be more organised, and maybe have a more positive outlook on life.

When you know things are not quite right, you can be vulnerable to suggestions that you might have certain particular problems.

“Hmm. Things are not going as well as they could I work. I seem to have a lot of stuff undone at the end of the day. Why did I not get them done? Could it be ADD? Fear of failure? Fear of success? Low self esteem? Problems in my personal life?”

All of the people offering solutions to the above will artfully write their introductions to make it seem that I might suffer from what they are curing. Hopefully (before I buy the book, the course, and the seminar) I will realise that my problem is that I make inaccurate estimates of how long a piece of work is going to take; or that our filing system is so bad that a file can go AWOL for a half day at a time, thus holding up all related work.

There is a joke about a man who has an uneasy relationship with his mother-in-law. She buys him two ties for Christmas. He wears one down to dinner. “What was wrong with the other one?” she demands.

The answer of course is that he cannot wear both at the same time.

If you have 25 projects on the go, and a choice of at least twenty five next actions in the office, are you REALLY procrastinating on the other twenty four when you select which one to do first?

I found that I was attributing every shortcoming in my work productivity to some PROBLEM or other, and surfing the web looking for possible solutions. In fact, all I was suffering from was reality. A lot of things are as they are because they cannot be any other way. I now accept that my performance levels will go through a whole spectrum of intensities as the day progresses.

I don’t procrastinate, I choose.

DFE
 

TesTeq

Registered
Procrastination

It is not the procrastination when you have 25 active projects and progress only in some of them. The procrastination is when you have 25 active projects and there is no progress in any one of them - you are watching TV or playing solitare instead of doing something important.
TesTeq
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
playing solitaire (or free cell)

... or reading this forum, TesTeq?? :)
 

Scott_L_Lewis

Registered
Re: Procrastination

TesTeq said:
It is not the procrastination when you have 25 active projects and progress only in some of them. The procrastination is when you have 25 active projects and there is no progress in any one of them - you are watching TV or playing solitare instead of doing something important.
TesTeq

Agreed.

But it's also procrastination when you have 25 projects, and you use working on 24 of them as an excuse for not working on one that you are avoiding like the plague. It's called productive procrastination. It's sometimes tough to spot in people. It can also be tough to spot in ourselves, especially if we start believing our own B.S.
 

TesTeq

Registered
26th project

I agree with you, Scott.
Sometimes people even create virtual projects that are really unimportant to justify their procrastination.
TesTeq
 
C

CosmoGTD

Guest
For certain complex creative projects i have found...

Sometimes when it seemed i was Procrastinating.
I was actually still Incubating.

Coz
 
C

CosmoGTD

Guest
Ok, you gotta read this article. Too funny. Too True.

Coz
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Startup Builds Profits From Procrastination
By GWENDOLYN BOUNDS Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal.

Distraction is now deeply ingrained into our culture, given the advent of the Internet, e-mail and cable television, says Timothy A. Pychyl, founder of the Procrastination Research Group (indeed, there is one) and associate professor of psychology at Carleton University in Ottawa. "When people purchase productivity tools, they don't necessarily want to get on with doing it," he says. "They look for the panacea.

"It's the inspiration of believing you can get your life organized that leads you to purchase the product," says Susan Corcoran, owner of Black Ink, a chain of three stationery and gift stores in the Boston metropolitan area. "But whether you follow through on that, well, I can't say."

http://www.startupjournal.com/columnists/enterprise/20040617-bounds.html
 
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