As a teenager our son, Brad, a notorious procrastinator, purchased a book, Overcoming Procrastination. He never read it. Later his college studies and two jobs forced him to abandon procrastination in the Lake of Sloth from where it never raised its ugly head again.
Unfortunately some of us don’t jettison procrastination allowing low-priority tasks to rise above high priority activities dissipating valuable time. We tend to do the least important things first because they are easier. We put off the most important things because they are hardier. When we work on the unimportant, we worry about the crucial tasks that aren’t getting done. We get tension headaches. Ulcers. High blood pressure. Psychiatrists get wealthy, but we still haven’t done what’s most important.
Four major defects explain most reasons for procrastination:
1. Laziness
To defeat laziness, begin. Once moving, you’ll tend to keep going. For example, if you’re writing a screen play, put something on paper. Forget about sharpening pencils, arranging paper, reading one more script for inspiration. Write. Writers write.
2. The Quest for Perfection
Nobody is perfect. Expecting perfection never gets anything accomplished. Be kind to yourself. Allow yourself to make mistakes and you’ll find that your family and friends will love you anyway; indeed they’ll love you more because you’re not so uptight. Learn to do your best and accept the results. To continue with the writing analogy, get that first draft done. Forget semicolons, active verbs, dangling participles, mixed metaphors. Just get something down on paper. You can revise and rewrite the screenplay later.
3. Indecisiveness
To overcome indecisiveness, use the ready, fire, aim approach. Fire it up there. Then aim it. Make some mistakes. Learn. Adjust. Move on.
4. Difficult Tasks
Break down a difficult task into easy steps. Take the swiss cheese approach: take a bite out a little at a the time. You write a screenplay or a book one page at a time. Write one page a day and at the end of a year you will have written 365 pages.