Turning procrastination into productivity

Let me tell you where I find myself. I am standing on imaginary ground between my old place of comfort and my goals. (I wish I could call them “new” goals, but they are old and have been in hibernation for way too long!)

In the past when I have felt this uncomfortable I have sprinted back to the edge of the cliff like Wile E. Coyote. Yet, despite my ability to defy the laws of gravity, I have not been able to sustain my violation long enough to traverse to the other side. <sigh>

Today, I am out over the ravene farther than I have ever been. And I am *very* uncomfortable. Sometimes this discomfort feels like  panic attack. Other times I feel thrilled as though on a roller coaster.

What has made this difference this time, and “this time” has lasted a lot longer than the times before, is that I am using my occasions of fear as a colorful signal to repeat my new mantra, “I am focused on my goals.” There is a lot of energy in fear for me. In the past, I have used it as a block. Now, I am refocusing the energy in my fear towards taking action on my goals. It is making all the difference.

According to Wikipedia:

Procrastination is a behavior which is characterized by deferment of actions or tasks to a later time. [Why do today what we can put off until tomorrow?] Psychologists often cite procrastination as a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision. [Sometimes it is more of a matter of waiting for there to be enough anxiety to motivate us to action.] Psychology researchers also have three criteria they use to categorize procrastination. For a behavior to be classified as procrastination, it must be counterproductive, needless, and delaying. [I think this lets a lot of us off the hook! I procrastinate by doing productive things like sitting around feeling sorry for myself. It *produces* a sense of failure.]

For an individual, procrastination may result in stress, a sense of guilt, the loss of personal productivity, the creation of crisis and disapproval from others for not fulfilling one’s responsibilities or commitments. [Did they put a camera in my house?] These combined feelings can promote further procrastination. While it is normal for people to procrastinate to some degree, it becomes a problem when it impedes normal functioning. [What's that word again? [Read more →]

Do you ever feel like you have to abuse yourself to get yourself to do anything? Do you feel unmotivated until you have made yourself feel so bad that you simply must take action to relieve the guilt? I feel this way sometimes. I am not convinced that it is the self-abuse that leads to the productivity, however. I wonder if the relationship between guilt and action is coincidental rather than causal.

Actually, I conducted a little experiment on myself many years ago. My life took a new turn in 2000 when I was laid off from my outside sales manager position a few weeks before my first son was born. Being a single mom, I decided to take over my therapist father’s insurance billing duties to earn some extra money. I needed to get claims in on a regular time schedule in order for my father to get paid. What I noticed was that I would get increasingly depressed, anxious, and sick feeling as the due date approached. By the time I took action, I was irritable and agitated. Upon task completion (some of you are saying, “What’s that?”), I felt relief. I almost felt ecstatic, in fact. Celebration time!

I had never been able to do any project with a slow and steady pace or before what I perceived to be The Last Minute. [Read more →]

Procrastinators, you may not need therapy. You may not need to understand why you procrastinate. In fact, I would hazard to say that trying to figure out why you procrastinate may be just another form of procrastination. (Of course, there are also some fairly serious issues that can cause procrastination that do require treatment from a licensed mental health practitioner.)

Now if you are attached to understanding why you procrastinate before you will even be willing to move forward, then pick a reason and move on. Yes. Pick a reason! Make one up! We make up all our interpretations anyway, so [Read more →]

The Serenity Prayer

“God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.”

–Reinhold Niebuhr

The “Serenity Prayer” is about gaining clarity around the things we can and cannot change and learning to accept the latter. Sometimes the change we cannot seem to make is within ourselves. We try; we fail. We then assume that we simply cannot change. We stop trying. But maybe we just don’t know how to change. We don’t know who to ask. We don’t want to ask because that will make us feel inferior or vulnerable.

We look at others and see how capable and together they seem. We don’t want them to discover our flaws. Or, we see the flaws of others all too clearly and judge them sternly. We don’t want to draw the same magnitude of judgment we so unconsciously lavish onto others.

The process of change begins with humility. [Read more →]

Do you believe that there is a truth out there with a capitol T that you are simply learning more about? Or do you like the idea that you are the creator of your reality? I do not know the answer to the quandary about the nature of reality. I have an intellectual perspective that evaluates hypotheses based on my sense of what is scientifically demonstrable and repeatable. And then I have a subtler intuitive “knowing” based on experiences that I can neither explain nor repeat systematically. I am torn between two interpretations of the nature of reality.

My intellect tells me that, logically speaking, I, and everything else, is an emanation from the matter of the universe. Whatever is has co-evolved following the same laws of science. I am one with all matter. While I may think of myself as a distinct entity separate from the other, mostly carbon-based, beings, I have emerged much the same way grass, oceans, and planetary systems have emerged. The thing that largely distinguishes me from the moss on the roof is that I can talk about my experience. From this intellectual perspective (which is likely in direct opposition to the carefully thought out intellectual analysis of someone else) I see reality in certain ways.

From my intellectual perspective, I see reality as something that is hard and fast and true. If it is observable by others, it is real. If something is only experienced by one person, it is likely a misperception. As for creating reality, intellect says that both the world that I observe and I, the observer, have emerged from the laws of nature and continue to respond in fairly predictable ways based on all the events that have preceded the current moment. I am experiencing myself writing this article partly because I was born human which contributed to my need to express myself and basically do a great deal of chattering. My writing of this article is also due to my history of reinforcement, which includes the attention I receive from readers of my writing. Given the right information, one could predict that I would be writing this article at this moment (several days after it is due, as it so turns out). Just as one can predict that the moon will continue to travel around the earth. The moon’s behavior is based on some things that must have occurred many moons ago, so to speak. And it continues to move around the earth because of the laws of physics. (Please don’t be troubled by the question of what created the laws of physics. A law of nature simply refers to something the cause of which we cannot explain. I guess it is science’s version of faith? Wait, this is screwing up my whole analysis! Never mind.)

In my intellectual world, everything that happens has a rational explanation. Everything that is real makes logical sense. We may not know all the mechanisms at work, yet. But there is an outside reality that is largely independent of what anyone may have to say about it. Right!

Now enter my subjective, illogical, emotional experience of the world. I have had experiences that my skeptical mind has no choice but to reject. I have experienced moments of synchronicity where coincidence decides to dress in very flamboyant colors. In addition to my synchronicity experiences, I have “manifested” things by visualizing exactly what I want. Logic, anyone? Skeptical mind doubts the veracity what I just wrote. It says that I need to operationally define my terms and prove that these experiences are repeatable. Skeptical mind takes itself way too seriously!

Let me give you an example of something that I “created” by mere thought. (Please don’t laugh. I think it’s crazy, too.) When I was moving to Port Townsend two summers ago I was having a terrible time of finding a place to rent. I knew every place in town and didn’t like any of them. One night I decided to use the woo-woo concept referred to as the Secret, sourcing, manifesting, or the Law of Attraction. I visualized what I wanted in some detail. Here is what I picture my house to be: across the street from a playground, wood shakes, vaulted ceiling, wood floors, interior wood “accents”, a trampoline that my son could use, oh, and just so I knew it when I saw it, I want a stained glass window as part of the architecture. The very next day my son and I decided to park on Taylor Street and just walk around. There was a man working on a concrete pathway going up to a new house who explained that the main floor was to be an office and the upstairs was an apartment. He invited us to take a look. This dwelling was across Lawrence Street from the Community Center playground, wood shakes on the upper half (my half) of the house, vaulted wood ceiling, cork floors (I fell in love!), many wood “accents” including visible wood structural cross-beam, and a stained glass window above the hall entry in the wall partition. But no trampoline. Oh well.

The next day I met with the couple who owns the apartment and they explained to me that every summer they put out a trampoline in the back yard for the kids and that my son would be welcomed to use it. My face must have turned white. My skeptical mind had so easily rejected the notion that I had created my own reality because the trampoline was such a glaring omission to my vision. Woo-woo world gave skeptical mind a slap in the face!

So what gives? I have “manifested” other things, too. A friend asked me if I created the apartment or if I merely sensed its existence. I said yes. How should I know?! Maybe there is some kind of primordial knowing that is stored in every atom and is accessible to anyone who knows it is there? Maybe there is some sort of particle/wave pattern that can be perceived by people if they get quiet enough to “hear” it. Maybe there is a collective unconscious that can be tapped at will. Maybe coincidences happen quite often and the odds are good that you will stumble across one if you start playing Nostradamus with your life. It all sounds pretty crazy like magic and witchcraft. But I bet fire was a pretty freaky experience for early people. I bet they thought it was impossible and unexplainable. There was no knowledge to back up their experience and therefore it was probably the workings of some deity or sorcerer. (Hmmm, “source-erer”.)

Let’s suppose for the moment that these experiences are merely coincidence, except for the fire thing because I think we have some pretty solid theories about how that whole thing works, now. Even if we cannot create our reality with our thoughts, it seems much more likely that we will get what we say we want if we pretend that we can create our reality. If you have a solid vision of what you want and live from the certainty that you will get it, aren’t you much more likely to have it come true than if you get the jump on turning your back on it before it can turn its back on you? Many people say they want healthy love relationships but seem completely unwilling to behave as though the possibility even exists. What would happen if such a person went out into the world curious as to when they would meet the person they had solidly imagined? I am guessing that this person’s whole energy and way of being would be different and that something decidedly different would happen to them than the usual. One of my favorite mentors is fond of quoting his mother, “If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.”

What would you like to create with your thoughts? The first step is simply to be open to possibilities beyond what you know. The next step is to create a compelling vision and reserve a space for it to happen in your life. I am visioning that you experiment with this idea and find value in applying it to your life.

Do you ever wish you could just start life over with a clean slate? I sometimes do. But I always imagine that I get to start over knowing everything I know now. Man, I would kick BUTT in the grade school social games!

In the eloquent lyrics of those fabulous Indigo Girls, “Nobody gets a lifetime rehearsal.” And really, if I started my life over knowing what I have learned so far in this life, I would just be dissatisfied with a whole different, all be it more advanced, set of personal criticisms and concerns. I find it somewhat comforting to suspect that I would still find things to criticise about myself. And, ya know what? I think I can be a little kinder to myself in this unrehearsed life with all my false starts, incompletes, and social faux pas knowing that.

We start where we start. We get to learn what we get to learn. I’d like to think the job we do at living our lives is measured in how we choose to serve others with the the wisdom each of our individual challenges have offered us. This is what is meant by “purpose”.

Have a purposeful day!