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.

Staying in Place and Living Simpler Lives

We really desire a simpler life, a life with less stress, less responsibility and more fun. We think that would happen if we sold the house with all of its garden and house maintenance. Which would also mean no Airbnb and all of the headaches that go with that. No house & no Airbnb = Simple/Stressfree living! But does it?

A few weeks back, I shared a post that I had written in March 2023, when we were convinced that selling the house and moving into a condo would solve all of our problems. Well... we haven't sold the house! We quickly learned that condos are expensive and not always without headaches. So many of the ones we looked at, in our price range, were being raced with special assessments for things like building envelope repairs. Not so simple... not so dreamy.

So we backtracked and recalculated... if moving out of the house was not the solution and not an option... Could we live simpler but stay at the house?

Because, while I might blame the house, there is a deeper truth. I do contract work and essentially trade my time doing that for money. And I save us money by doing the yard work and home maintenance. Maybe it is time to actually take some of that contract work money and spend it on things like house cleaning and yard maintenance? To save me the time of doing that... and have more time to walk and hike and travel?

So, we sat down and brainstormed things that would make our life "simpler" and/or "easier". And then we played it out over the summer to see how it went...

1. Airbnb Summer - Ease up on the Airbnb - instead of allowing 1 night stays... make it 3 night minimum stays from May-Aug and don't fill the intervening nights, unless we want to. We don't need to go full-bore and earn the max $$$. Not if it almost kills us!
   Results: We did that over the summer and other than one spate of five back-to-back 1-night stays... we did OK. We even accepted a month-long booking from mid-July to mid-August to give ourselves a break. and it was nice.
   
   
2. Airbnb Winter - Only accept bookings longer than 14 days for Sept-April - less turnover, less cleaning.
   Results: We are doing OK with this! A one month stay from late Aug to late Sept and then a 48 day booking from Oct 1 to mid-November. Yes, we aren't earning as much as we would if we did shorter bookings but... it's not all about money. We are still making our minimum average for those months and that is pure gold.
   
   
3. Airbnb Cleaning - hire cleaners - less headache or more headache?
   Results: Well, we hired a cleaner for upstairs, for our space and... so far, the cleaner is not hitting the quality of cleanliness we would need for the Airbnb. Maybe in the future...
   
   
4. Airbnb Blocking - block it and take the time/days that we want
   Results: We did this too over the summer. If we wanted a break... we just blocked the nights. Less $$ but less stress and more life balance. If we needed an extra day for cleaning, we often blocked a night after a reservation.
   
   
5. Go Off-Platform - advertise on Kijiji or FB Marketplace and get an off-platform rental instead of giving Airbnb $$$ in service fees
   Results: We haven't tried this yet...
   
   
6. Convert to LTR - Turn the suite into a full-on long-term rental with a tenant - less money but less work?
   Results: We haven't tried this either. It would certainly take a big load of work off of us (Airbnb is NOT passive income) but... we are doing OK right now with the Airbnb.
   
   
7. Scale back my contract work hours - There were some weeks where I was doing a half-time job instead of a very part-time job! And that, combined with cleaning the Airbnb was leaving me exhausted.
   Results: So I talked to my contract guy and we have scaled it back to what I had initially committed to... and it's been working so far!
   
   
8. Yard - get someone to help with projects and lawn mowing - costs money but less work
   Results: We did this! And it was nice notto have to do the heavy lifting on some of these! Not sure about regular lawn maintenance though...
   
   
9. Our Cleaning - given all of our Airbnb cleaning... I am too pooped at the end of the day to clean our own place, so... get a cleaner, for us.
   Results: We did this! And it does make a difference. Now, the quality isn't up to my standards but... I am learning to be OK with "clean enough".
   
   
10. Interior Painting - get someone to paint bedrooms rather than me
    Results: We did this!! And it was soooo nice not to have to paint!
    
    
11. Garden Irrigation - my partner spends a LOT of time watering our veggie beds in the summer... a drip irrigation system would make a big difference. It costs $$$$ but... haven't we earned it?
    Results: We did this!! And it makes a huge difference!
    
    
12. Downsizing - could we downsize at home? Could we simplify our life, our hobbies, our commitments? Could we take back our spare room? Could we use the Airbnb as guest accommodation? In order to give us back our space?
    Results: We did get rid of the bed in the spare room! And then put in a murphy bed with storage on either side. Win-win! We get space back and we get storage. Still working on decluttering!

There's a rule of thumb for an overwhelming to-do list...

1. Automate
2. Eliminate
3. Delegate
4. Postpone

We experimented this summer with all of those. We automated the watering of the veggie beds. Everything is on a timer and it works amazing! We eliminated (more or less) one-night bookings as they caused us a lot of stress and exhausted us. We delegated several tasks like cleaning our space and some yard work and painting. We also postponed some projects and tasks.

I realize that it has been a struggle for me to (a) acknowledge that I can't do everything, (b) be open to the idea of spending money and (c) be open to the idea of getting help. I've been a Saver my whole life and it takes a bit to turn into a Spender. But burning myself out trying to do it all myself is not a solution either! So trading our money for some sanity and breathing space seems like a fair trade at this point!