The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play

I ran across this post at Litemind on
The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play and wanted to pass it along to you.

This discussion about avoiding procrastination reminds me of a one liner I heard once, though I don’t recall the source: “Wherever you are, be there.” He was talking about sales people who think about sales when they’re with their family and who think about their family when they should be making sales.

That’s not procrastination per se, but it amounts to the same thing: escape from the present and the loss of productivity.

Procrastination itself is caused because the task ahead is emotionally painful for some reason.  It’s preferable to us to dawdle than get on with what we should be doing.  Sometimes we procrastinate over mundane tasks that bore us. Other times we procrastinate because the task ahead dredges up painful memories of failure.  Sometimes procrastination is confused with information overload  in people who crave new input all the time and it’s more fun to do something new than something boring. Knowing why you’re procrastinating  is important then in finding a way through it. Sometimes it’s because we’ve got ourselves locked into work we’re totally unsuited for… we don’t procrastinate at doing the things we love ordinarily.

So as you’re procrastinating today ask yourself “why am I putting these things I know to do off to a later date?”