A Personal Confession

procrastination

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At lunch, I told my wife I thought I’d clean my office before working on “the book.”

She laughed hysterically. She laughed so much that I started laughing too.

When she finally stopped, – after starting and stopping several times – I said, “I didn’t think it was that funny.”

She said, with complete honesty and incredulity, “You’d rather clean your office than work on your book? You hate cleaning your office.” Then, she started laughing hysterically again. She laughed so hard that I laughed along, but, with a little less gusto.

Confession:

Why would I chose something I hate over something important?

  1. The things I care most about, I put off the most.
  2. Failing at what doesn’t matter is easier than failing at something that matters deeply.
  3. I let the urgent postpone the meaningful.
  4. The more something reflects who I am, the harder it is to do.

Not:

I’m not a complete loser. I know how to be disciplined and work hard. I’m a farm boy from Maine. We understand things like that. But, it’s so much easier to work hard when failure doesn’t matter.

Do something where failure matters.

Maybe you know what I mean. Perhaps you:

  1. Write emails rather than connecting personally.
  2. Eat cake rather than addressing nagging problems.
  3. Complain and blame rather than shut up, get up, and actually do something.
  4. Chose jokes to saying what you really mean.

The rest of the story:

My wife doesn’t normally lose it when I share my thoughts. But, we’d recently listened to, “The War of Art,” by Steven Pressfield. He describes my preference for office cleaning to a tee. Now I wish we’d listened to a safer book. Something that didn’t apply.

There’s no list of suggested behaviors on today’s post, just a confession.

Don’t miss the great Facebook responses to, “The reasons for procrastination include _________.” (8/27/13)

Category : Fear, Motivation
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