What is Your Procrastination Costing you?

Procrastination is defined as the act of delaying or postponing something. It’s intentionally avoiding or putting off something that you’ve committed to doing. Some people pride themselves on being a procrastinator. You know that person in college who waited till the last minute to write their thesis, or the colleague at work who has a huge presentation that they knew about for weeks due the next day, and then wants to take up your time to help them with identifying the salient points. That parent who knows that their turn to supply the class with baked goods is on Monday, and on Sunday night at 8pm, they’re searching for a bakery that’s open or starting to pull out the ingredients from the cabinet.

To understand what procrastination is costing us, we must first understand why we do it. People generally don’t procrastinate because they are lazy, but they actively and intentionally avoid doing the very thing that they have committed to do. There are 3 main reasons why people procrastinate; lack of time management, fear of failure, and fear of saying no. Time management is a skill that not everyone has mastered. Depending on the stage of your life, and what you have going on, you may need to be more intentional about your time. If you’re the type of person who time always seems to get away from you, you need to start getting curious and asking yourself why. What am I filling up my time with, and is that serving me? How does it relate to my intentions? Once you’ve uncovered that, you can reduce the activity around the things that don’t support intentions, and then you can start focusing on what you do want to accomplish. Goal setting can help you set a cadence on the smaller items needed to accomplish that bigger task. So for instance if you know you have a huge presentation coming up in a week, lay out the plan. What are the things you need to do in order to rock the presentation? Maybe things like- know your audience, understand their point of view, define your objective, note taking, review draft with stakeholders, create final presentation, ensure technology is working, etc. You need to prioritize the list according to what needs to be done first, and then back them all in to your timeline. If your intention is to show up at your best, or if your intention is to be CEO, you need to start showing up today as the CEO even if today you are a junior associate. In order to be the CEO you need to show that you display those qualities, consistently.

Fear of failure is another main reason why we tend to procrastinate. Maybe if we wait longer, no one will notice. Maybe If we wait long enough, someone else can do it. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, energy is everything. If you want to thrive in life and in business, you need to resonate at a higher level, energetically. We need to shift our thinking by shifting our energy to be more anabolic or uplifting. When we remain in catabolic energy, our minds are bombarded by unsupportive thoughts. Our thoughts determine our feelings. If we think unsupportive thoughts, we feel unsupported, and thus we begin to live that out in our behavior. We need to shift our energy and focus on reality, the truth, and not the inner thoughts that are fueled by the altered reality we created because we’re not seeing thru the lens of opportunity.

Fear of saying no is another big reason that we can’t get things done. We are over-committers because we want to make everyone happy. We don’t want to say no because we want people to like us and rely on us. What is that costing us? It’s costing us to sacrifice our goals and priorities because we want to be people pleasers. Let’s think about this, most of us are service oriented, compassionate, and want to do our best to help out others. That’s a trait that most of us want to have, and there is nothing wrong with it, but if you’re sacrificing yourself and losing focus on your intentions, you are out of alignment. When you’re out of alignment, you are no longer living in your truth. You’re doing things out of guilt, and out of fear. Soon you’re going to be resentful, and realize you’ve got all of this negative energy controlling your thoughts, and you end up in angry and bitter battle.

So what is procrastination costing you? It’s costing you, you. You might be stuck filling your time with things that are not adding value to your life. How much time are you scrolling viral videos on facebook? Do you realize that if you choose not honor yourself and your intentions, you’re passing up that promotion? You are showing up like a procrastinator; unprepared and out of alignment. If you don’t get the fear of failure under control, fear is going to take over your life. You’re stuck with unsupportive thoughts that will be fueling the actions that don’t support you. Instead of showing up confident, and prepared, you’ll start to exhibit insecurity. If you continue to fear saying no to others, you’ll be on the sidelines watching them thrive, and then you’ll notice that you are so far off track because you forgot about you.

Maybe you thought that procrastination was the thing that drove you. You like waiting until the last minute because you need that pressure or adrenaline to get moving. I would just ask you to start getting curious about why? In the moment when you intentionally chose not to do or to delay doing the very thing that you’ve committed to doing, check in with how you are feeling. Start by evaluating you’re energy – are you feeling fueled or drained? Is what you’re doing to fill you’re time serving you or costing you?

If you find that you’re stuck procrastinating more than not, schedule a free 30 min discovery call so we can work to get you unstuck.