Good vs. Lucky
dal1mdm wrote:
As a committed procrastinator I have to mention that there have been some positive outcomes. The sales prospect that went broke as I was procrastinating (that one has happened more than once).
Rabbi Harold Kushner, in his book When Bad Things Happen to Good People cautions against confusing intentions with results. Everyone who procrastinates (me included) can point to times when having been more proactive would have led to wasted effort or worse. But let's face it. We weren't smart, we were just lucky.
My experience has been that for every time I luck out by procrastinating, there are ten times where procrastinating just made things worse. In your case, I wonder how many sales you have lost because you did not follow up with customers in a timely manner.
On top of that, when I procrastinate, there is a constant mental pressure of knowing that I need to do something and mentally pushing it away at the same time.
However, your post makes me wonder if it is possible to be
too proactive. In some cases it may be a good idea to allow things to settle for a while in order to let emotions cool down, or to just see if there really is a need for action on our part.
Of course, that kind of deliberate and planned delay in responding to demands on our time is not what we're really talking about here. We're talking about senseless and counterproductive delay that is driven by the kinds of emotional and psychological issues Rainer listed in his post above. The real test is when our planned delay period expires. Can we just start working on the project, or do we just start looking for the next excuse not to.