I have a secret for you!
Working is
one of the most dangerous forms of procrastination.
When I have to do something I don’t want to do, any
other task seems irresistibly enticing.
Sometimes, this tendency can be productive. I may not
have gotten that piece written, but my office is clean, my errands are done, and
I’ve cleared out a lot of email. The problem is that—yes, I’ve been productive, but not
in the right way. That icky job still isn’t finished!
Try to be honest with yourself about
what “work” you need to do, and learn to recognize the work-as-procrastination
excuse. Be wary of the related tendency:
busy-work-as-procrastination excuse. Re-formatting a document isn’t
writing! Unfocused reading on the internet isn’t research!
When a task is truly horrible, you could handle it in chunks: "suffer for 15 minutes". This means, work on the task doing whatever needs to be accomplished for only 15 minutes. . ..then reward with 5 minutes of something more fun (even another type of work - just work that may be more fun). For others it is easiest to work all the way through it to completion.
How about you? Do you procrastinate by working—by
cleaning, organizing, answering emails, cruising the internet, making plans, or
the like?
