"Telephones, Newspapers, and a Cup of Joe: How we wasted time before computers."
For Years - high school, college, 19 years of work in sales, I have been a very organized, "ahead of schedule", reliable individual. Now that I stay at home working - running company things and writing - I am truly on my own. Even though I've always worked out of my house, I've also had "big Corporate" making demands and setting deadlines on my time. That's gone. It's all mine now - and my childrens...(boy do they have a ton of demands on my evening and weekend hours).
Due to my new found "Freedom", I have become a 100% true procrasinator...always putting off things like grocery shopping, laundry, bills... as long as I possibly can...(kids will be running around naked quite soon at the rate I'm going too :)
There is no gene for idling—it's a learned behavior, I'm told. I agree, I went from a person living by stick-it-notes and lists, to a procrastinator keeping people waiting, pulling all-nighters, paying late fees. This past weekend, so excited about my upcoming vacation, I started packing at 10 p.m. the night before I was to get on a 6 am plane.
It seems ironic to start looking for help to reorganize my life with that Swiss army knife of procrastination tools, the Internet. I began with a visit to a pair of Web sites set up a few years ago: Procrastinators Anonymous and Procrastination Support. Either they would cure me, or I could bookmark them as new places where I could waste time.
Scrolling around, I found it hard to see the benefits of interacting with other people who, like me, spend much of the day on activities like brewing tea and squeezing blackheads. People wrote of their hopes that they could buckle down and achieve goals like flossing and brushing. Other posts were cries of despair: "Of the past 27 hours of work time, I have actually worked for only a few minutes. … When my boss asks me what I have done, I don't know what I am going to say."
Procrastinators Anonymous had an announcement about its weekly phone-in meeting that came with this disclaimer: "This meeting was originally scheduled for every Wednesday, 9 a.m. ET. But people have not been showing up at this time." I called in anyway and listened to the sound of Kenny G-style sax and my own breathing for 15 minutes before giving up.
Finding no solution online, I decided to move to self-help books. I ordered The Complete Idiot's Guide To Overcoming Procrastination by Michelle Tullier. Nothing seemed to motivate me to return to my old behaviors.
Seeing my desperation, my 15-year-old daughter offered me some personal coaching. First there was a critique, all true: "Mom, you sit down to go to work and write, then you go to the bathroom, then you walk the Boo (our Newfy) and play with the puppies, then you say you're checking one last e-mail. You take a lot of breaks. You say you don't get any work done after I get home from school, but I'm 15, and I don't bother you anymore. Then you'll have so much work, you work 15 hours a day and you don't even come down to dinner. You've got to balance it out."
She had a point...
There it was—she didn't need online support or books for Dummies. She figured it out in kindergarten: Save the BEST for last. Which reminds me that I'm kind of hungry, and it's time for a break...
Guess the new behavior is going to be harder to break than I thought? Any good ideas?
