Tag Archives: procrastination

Necessary procrastination

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The word procrastination does not exist in the swedish language. We have a word that means to push something to the future, but procrastinating is not just postponing something, it’s the verb for what you’re actually doing while pushing something to the future. So it describes doing something, but it describes it not by saying what you’re doing, but by saying what you are NOT. (weird word, I like it)

Sometimes though, I think the subconscious processing of thoughts is undervalued. 

It always makes me think about a story I heard once. It’s about the emperor of China or something, and how he told an artist to paint the most beautiful painting ever (of some motif, I don’t remember). The artist spent years working on his painting, but when he was supposed to be done, he asked for another year, and another, saying he was not quite finished. When he finally appeared before the emperor and uncovered the canvas, it was empty. He then took his paints out, and painted the most beautiful painting in 15 minutes. 

How long did it take for the artist to paint the picture? 15 minutes? Or all those years?

I can usually write a school essay because I’ve been writing it for a long time. Even if I write it the night before it’s due, it’s been in the back of my mind for a long time.

The question is, is it better to consciously decide to do something later, instead of constantly pushing it to the next minute? Do some intentional procrastinating? (I suppose that’s called planning) Or is the stress necessary to constantly have it there in the back of your mind?

I don’t know. I don’t have enough patience to finish writing about this.

How to live now (or Thoughts from the gym – a treadmill lesson)

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Why is it so much easier working out in a gym than it is to put on those workout clothes at home? To me it’s partly because the gym makes me feel awfully cool. But there’s something else to.

When I go cross-country skiing for more than perhaps 20 kilometers, I always have this problem with breathing. And so I break down. And my tactic to get back up again is to focus on what is going on at the exact moment. Look ahead of me, but keep all of my attention at what my body is doing and not on the road that’s still to go.

I think that’s the reason I like the treadmill. I am always right there, I can never put my eyes on the road 20 meters away and think about how much it’s going to take to get me there. I do love running outside but it’s harder for me.

The same lesson applies to life. Focus on the now and you’ll get a future, focus on the future and you’ll live your entire life in something that’s not happening. Start everyday with thinking through what you have to do, then sort out the things you can actually do today from all the things that perhaps needs to be done tomorrow or the day after that. Then push the things you’re not gonna do today out of your mind. Do not worry about them until their time comes. Stop resting the world on your shoulders and stop procrastinating.

Take a deep breath and do what you need to do today.

Procrastination and self doubt

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I never quite realized the connection between those two, procrastination and self doubt. I guess it’s obvious though, self-doubt; as in believing (or not) that you can do it, and procrastination; as in doing it (or not). I suppose I’ve just always seen myself as so confident. In a way not, because I was always the shy little kid, but still, because I was the one who didn’t want to hang out with them, because whenever people didn’t like me, my unconscious though process went: Wow, what’s wrong with them? Always them, never me, and I’ve always thought that was the main difference between confident and non confident people. Either you think Wow what’s wrong with them, when they don’t like you, or you think Wow, what did I suddenly do right? when they do.

Childhood stories and my unsuccessful try at psychology aside, I’ve kind of realized that I’ve always thought of myself as the complete opposite to self doubting (okay, not really psychology aside). So to the point that even when I do doubt myself, I don’t realize it. I don’t realize that the reason behind sudden dips in my mood might be a sudden disbelief in myself. And now, looking back, I wonder how many times that’s happened without me even noticing it.

Now, though, it has showed up in my homework. My ability (well, disability) to get it done. The school I’m in now is so much tougher, the people I hang out spends about 37,8 % of their time worrying about their grades, and I think that’s getting to me. Me always agreeing that yeah, the tasks are impossible, when I used to honestly believe that I could be fine with studying to a test for about one hour. But you can’t just say that to people that it wouldn’t work for. And let’s not blame this only on that development, because I don’t know (and don’t want to know) where my grades would have ended up without those extra few hours of studying, but now I’m one of the people never doing things, until the point where I stop believing I can. Or maybe that’s the reason why I’m not doing it, I don’t even know.

I’ve postponed my essays because I don’t think I could write them if I tried, not because I think I don’t need to spend that much time on them. But I’ve noticed that the big, tremendous difference lies in how I look at the blinking cursor. And looking at it while thinking about how good I am at this, trying to scare my self doubt away to the dark corners of my brain, and then starving it back to death, is how I’ve written this post. So now I’m gonna go try it on some homework.

How to follow through

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When I really want something I’m almost afraid of saying it out loud. It goes with things I want to quit, want to start or want to be really successful in. But I’ve noticed that it doesn’t work like that and that it destroys my goals rather than builds them. As human beings we need community, we need to share and show and talk about things and I want to shout at God for creating us that way at the same time as I want to thank him.

I want to be able to do everything by myself. I really do. But lately I’ve told a few people about a few things that were really important to me. Some of them I never even realized I’d kept as secrets, while some of them were things I’d thought I’d never tell a living soul. And that’s the only thing that worked. Things I’ve thought about quitting for years, my secret dreams of what I would really like to do when I quit school and grow up. If there is one thing I’ve heard way to many times, it is that you should share goals you really want to keep. With family, friends, or someone on the internet. But it was one of those quotes I never thought applied to me until I noticed that it really does.