Procrastination Is Not Always Laziness

I had a presentation to put together with a tight deadline.?So naturally, I needed to clean my house, organize my closet, clean out my fridge, and about ten other things first.?I recognized that I was procrastinating.?I wasn’t doing it because I was lazy, and in fact, it was motivating me to do all of these other productive things.?

I asked myself, “Why do you think you’re putting off this presentation?”?When I was honest with myself, the answer was rooted in fear.?I had some anxiety around how this presentation would go.?It was a new group of people I didn’t know.?I had no clue how they were going to respond to the content that I was going to share with them.?I was worried that it wouldn’t be helpful, and they wouldn’t deem the time spent as valuable.?A lot of the fear was based on assumptions or hypothetical scenarios that were unlikely to actually play out. ?We have these fears because of some of our behavioral tendencies, including:

• Social validation: we want people to approve of it (like in my case)
• Perfectionism: we want it to be perfect which can be paralyzing
• Control: we want to feel in control and doing something new would put that at risk
• Confidence: if we have too much, we don’t think we need to do things differently; too little and we don’t think we’re capable

One thing I’ve learned about my anxiety is that the worrying tells me what needs my attention.?Attention should prompt action.?The worry will persist until action is taken.?Sometimes we avoid taking action because the task doesn’t appeal to us.?That could be for any of the following reasons:

• It’s tedious, frustrating, or har
• It’s boring
• It’s new and we don't know how to do it
• It’s not personally important

So a few things you can do, that have helped me…

• Gain self-awareness: Which of the behavioral tendencies sounds like you??Have a conversation with yourself to sort through what’s real and what your subconscious could be making up out of fear.
• Reframe your perspective so you can take action (shift your mindset): Instead of looking at something as being hard (or insert one of the above adjectives here), tell yourself, “This is going to be a fun challenge. ?I’m going to learn a lot from it!”?Find something in the task that you can appreciate, enjoy, or look forward to.
• Break it down into smaller chunks and create a plan: It can feel overwhelming taking on a new project, so figure out what the first step should be. Then get it on the calendar and reserve time to focus on that firs step.