Procrastination Station

You may or may not have noticed, but it’s been a couple weeks since I’ve posted on ye ole blog.  Life got kind of hectic with a family reunion and a convention, both of which involved travel and not a lot of time to write.  This post isn’t about that though, it’s about the dread I felt when I got home and realized I had not written a blog post in two weeks.

A tiny voice inside my head whispered something like this:

You didn’t post for two weeks!  Maybe you should avoid your blog…  Even better, just give up.

Now, that voice was super quiet and obviously went against all reason.  I opted not to listen to that little voice.  It sounds a lot easier than it really was.  When I perceive something as hard, I often put it off.  The problem with that sort of thinking is that the problem doesn’t really go away.  I also really enjoy blogging and sharing my little bit of knowledge and experience with the world.

I am by nature a procrastinator, so this kind of behavior is something I’ve had to train out of myself.

So the big question is, what do we do when that little voice tells us to avoid something?  To give up on it?

My process goes something like this:

1. Is it something I really want?  Is it something that moves me toward the goals I am trying to achieve?  If the answer is “Yes” I move on to question 2.
2. If I put it off is it going to become an emergency (or at least, a dire situation where I’m going to be behind on a deadline)?  Is putting it off going to cause my work to suffer?  If the answer is “Yes” then I start to make a plan.

My plan is pretty simple.  If the thing I need to get done doesn’t have a deadline, I create a deadline for myself.  In the case of this blog post, I made the deadline that I had to have it done by the end of the day today.  Even have a deadline, I tell myself that it has to be done a few days early.  That gives me time to go back over the work and edit it if needed, or I just get a good feeling that I finished ahead of schedule.

How about you?  What do you do when that little voice in your head tells you to just put it off a little longer or give up altogether?  I’d love to hear your strategies.