Embracing Procrastination: Why It's Not Always a Bad Thing

Zen Garden (Image by 18121281 from Pixabay

"Hello, my name's Gigi and I'm a Procrasinator".

Seriously... if there was a PA group (Procrastinator's Anonymous), I'd be a card-carrying member for life. I have always held procrastination as a bad thing... or BAD thing.

So much to do, so little time... and I'm scrolling the news on my phone avoiding my to-do list. WTH??? Why am I procrastinating again?? I should have this handled by now?

But I procrastinate. All the time.

And then it came to me... procrastination is NOT a bad thing. It is necessary. We can' escape it. We need to embrace it. We need to make friends with procrastination and see it as a valuable tool in our Life Toolbox.

Ready? Ok... here we go. Let me lay it out.

Time is a Limited Resource

We only have 24 hours in a day. Every single one of us. And out of that, we need to sleep 8 hours (give or take). Which leaves 16 hours to do everything that we need to do in life. That is not a lot of time. So we need to make choices on what we are going to do in any given day. We can't make more time. The only thing we have control over is what we try to squeeze in a day.

We Can't Do it ALL

We can't. Given that time is limited, and energy as well, we can't do it all. It is Impossible. It is physically impossible to go to work for 8 hrs, walk the dog for 2 hrs, watch the kids in the school play for 2 hrs, cook meals for 2 hrs, work on taxes for 2 hrs, clean the Airbnb for 3 hrs, run errands for 2 hrs and work in the garden for 2 hrs... all in the same day. Do the math. It's not possible. Oh sure, you can burn the sleep candle at both ends but for how long?

On some days, my Amazing Marvin to-do system tells me I have 25 hours of tasks scheduled for that day. Um. Let's talk about overwhelm!

Work Faster, Longer, Better is Not a Solution

I think that if I could just work faster, work longer, or work better, more efficiently, that I can get everything done on my to-do list. Society is speeding up, everything is getting faster and faster. There is always more to do. How come everybody else seems able to do more with the same amount of time? What are their secrets? I need to find out! Surely there is a key somewhere that if I just new what it was and where it fit... my life would magically clear up and all would be ease and flow.

More is not always Better. Sometimes Less is More

We can have too much of a good thing. We can volunteer too much. We can take on too much. We can think that we can do more, and more and more but... always we run up against time and energy constraints and the Rule of Life... We can't do it All. Sometimes doing less is... more. 

Procrastination is the Solution

As I said... I have always seen procrastination as a bad thing. But like all things in life, it has a good side and a bad side. Procrastination is not necessarily good or bad, rather it is how we use it. An ax is not good or bad... it's how we use it. Procrastination is just a tool...

And if I use it carelessly, without thought or focus or attention, then I just drift through life, scrolling the news sites and avoiding the problems in my life that just seem too overwhelming. Not today. Tomorrow. I can't deal with this right now. I need chocolate. I need a movie.

But procrastination used mindfully, strategically, can be a very good thing. I only have 8 hours to get stuff done today. What are my priorities. What tasks am I going to focus on. What do I need to defer? Oooohhh... see... good procrastination has a new name... Defer. Or maybe Postpone. A rose by any other name...

I can't get everything I want to get done.... done in one day. I have to defer things, postpone, procrastinate. I have to choose what I am going to work on and say... these things are a "yes" and these things are a "no". For now. For today.

Rather than fighting procrastination, what if I embraced it and used it wisely? Might change things... dramatically.