Procrastination...How did you get here?

"In a moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing to do, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing." - Theodore Roosevelt

For a lot of us procrastination is seen in different ways, it could be through staring into the abyss, falling into the rabbit hole of social media or it could be getting lost in our mind. Through personal experience I have found that procrastination is not something you physically want to do. A number of sequences and thoughts happen before we find ourselves 2 hours down the line with a blank page or a task that could've taken a few minutes, within this moment an overwhelming feeling of guilt & in my experience annoyance, but what causes this?

Lately I have found that I have been in an emotion of denial when it comes to productivity and output within my own personal work. Reflecting on the past couple of weeks I have noticed I ignored and pushed the feelings of exhaustion, emotion & stress to the back of my head and continued each day with a sort of half assed attitude as I knew I had this anchor inside holding me down. There have been nights where I just sit watching the TV (I hate the idea of the goggle box generation so you can understand the annoyance with myself for doing this) & I just let this happen, not a single thing, motivational post or goal would get me away from the slump I found myself in. This pro longed period of procrastination lasted for about 2 weeks (in light of things it's not that long to many but for me it is half a month, thats time lost I will never get back) putting this into the larger perspective may seem like a minuscule affect but across the broad spectrum of progress if we were to look at this on a graph based on months the drop would be phenomenal, if you had stocks or shares in my productivity and output you'd be checking up to make sure everything was okay internally. This is our downfall, our internal feelings are never shown on the surface, the fragile parts of our life are never on display for the world to see. We as human beings have started to ignore the natural occurrence of internal issues that bring us down, demotivate our goals & ultimately can destroy years of hard work & consistency. This is normal in this "fake life" we want everyone to see, those peaking into our worlds through our social media windows may judge us if we are anything but the character we have created through our digital selves.

I relate back to stress, stress for me is the number one cause and the igniter to my procrastination. Stress is obviously something that is part of everyday life, but do we actually learn to deal with it, or is it an emotion/feeling we just push to the back of our minds and leave it there to fester into something much larger? I have arguments with myself on a daily basis about what to get completed after work whilst also worrying about work issues & juggling a social life whilst also trying to reach my goals for this year. I'm not complaining and I know it is hard but after the past two weeks this circle has started to form, a circle in which I have found the hardest to get out of. This circle of overthinking and spending to much time contemplating what to complete first or where to start has caused even more stress as I then get the sense of guilt for not completing anything and within this guilt I sit and watch shit on the TV, then go to bed to have the same arguments with myself the next day.

Some of you may be reading this and be thinking this is a simple sign of burnout, however I know the difference and I have had the burnout and this feeling is nothing like this. For me personally procrastination is worse than a burnout, at least a burnout is over and done with in one big bang, procrastination is time consuming, it eats away at you slowly without you realising until time has past and you have not moved from where you were to where you are.

Tierneys Top Tip

"Stress comes in all shapes, forms & sizes, life is not a smooth ride & our daily lives are full of emotion. Learn to understand your process, spot the signs of new circles and behavioural routines that you never find yourself doing. The earlier you spot these issues the sooner you will realise what you have been hiding internally, face to issues rather than avoid them & hopefully with this process you wont loose the key value of life...time."

Thanks

T.