Even the best of us can get bogged down by the amount and magnitude of ideas we want to implement. Procrastination seems to be even easier to slip into the higher up on the ladder you are because many of your ‘to do’ items are more complex and there is always something else very important you can task yourself with to avoid that item you just can’t seem to get traction on.
“Ideas about overcoming procrastination with momentum are nothing new. There is probably a motivational cave drawing somewhere of a caveman breaking down starting a fire into manageable bits.”
Ideas about overcoming procrastination with momentum are nothing new. There is probably a motivational cave drawing somewhere of a caveman breaking down starting a fire into manageable bits. Remedies for procrastination have been thought about, spoken about and written about more times than I can count. There are innumerable adages, quotes and idioms that speak to this idea of something difficult getting easier once you get started.
How do you eat an elephant? One bit at a time.
A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step
A year from now you will wish you had started today
We tend to label procrastination as a negative thing but really, the reason we have so many offered remedies for it is because procrastination is such a near universal human quality. Every single person I know, leaders included, procrastinates. Do ants procrastinate getting their hills ready or do beavers put off gathering the sticks for their dams? I don’t think so. I think procrastination is a human problem because we operate less on instinct and more on thinking. Thinking is good and necessary, perhaps what we sometimes label as procrastination is simply our brain needing more time to chug through information.
"Procrastination is a human problem because we operate less on instinct and more on thinking."
But quite often, we tend to over think things and can get ourselves so enraptured by the thinking, planning and doubting that we can get out of our own way and get started. Many times we want a certainty that is simply not possible. Sometimes when we avoid getting started, it is because we have created resistance in our own mind. Of course, I can remind you of the things everybody tells us when we are trying to overcome our own natural tendency to drag our feet, build momentum, break a big task down into smaller actions, don’t look for immediate results just build momentum…you get it.
Or perhaps, at least in some instances, you can just give in to this natural tendency to procrastinate and let it wear itself out like a toddler’s tantrum. What if the next time you didn’t feel like doing something, instead of scolding yourself to just get it done, you told yourself you didn’t have to? I think that sometimes we add to the process of over thinking and slow down our momentum even further by trying to strong arm ourselves out of it. What would happen if you gave yourself permission to put something off without another thought?
Leave a Reply