Dealing With Procrastination?

Last week I was supposed to put a piece talking about some Do's and Don't's of buying and selling online. It's really just a piece I wanted to write about because I'm currently in the middle of selling some of my items that I don't use anymore and could use the money for other things. But obviously, anyone who has use of their eyes can see that I did not put ANYTHING out last week. Lets talk about that.

Before we get into anything about this topic, I just want to put it out there on the internet that there is ABSOLUTELY nothing wrong with being a person who procrastinates. A lot of times we procrastinators like to label ourselves as lazy which simply isn't true. While there is common ground between the two groups someone who procrastinates is someone who doesn't do anything or puts off doing something but worries about the lack of doing anything the whole entire time. Someone who is LAZY however, is someone put doesn't do anything or puts off doing something but doesn't give a shit at all about their lack of action. That is the difference (at least in my opinion, your mileage may vary). I'm not trying to shame someone who is lazy... but it's also not preferable? I don't know. It's difficult to navigate how to not offend certain groups of people and also be as inclusive as possible. The point of this paragraph is that being a procrastinator is not a bad thing and you shouldn't view it as such. We're moving on.

From the title of this post, you would think that I have unlocked some kind of level or skill in my life that would allow me to bypass procrastination. Like somehow someway I would feel like delaying the inevitable and then say to myself "Not today, SATAN!" and then proceed to do the very thing that I had decided I didn't want to do. That's not the case at all, actually. I still very much procrastinate. Shit, I procrastinated on writing THIS piece. WHERE DOES IT END?????

So according to Psychology Today (definitely not a website I just quickly googled before writing this sentence just so I could have some form of statistical data to sound professional) "20 percent of adults (and perhaps 70 to 90 percent of undergraduates) are chronic procrastinators.". Now as of 2019, according to Worldometer there are 329,064,917 people living in the good ol' U.S of A, and according to Statista, in 2019, 246.56 million people were over the age of 20. Now using these two pieces of information, extrapolating 20 percent of that we get the hefty number of 49,312,000 people. This means that roughly 50 million of us adults ranging from ages 20 to 85 and over procrastinate to some extent. But to be honest my math might be completely bullshit and my margin of error could be stupid high. But either way you look at it 20% of adults means that 1 in 5 adults will be more willing to watch paint dry than to pay their credit card bill they've been putting off the last week. This is pretty high, cuz like off the top of my head I know like four other people and that means I'm number 5, the procrasatinator. I know that's not how it works, I'm totally kidding.

The point of this is that if you feel like you fall into that 1 out of 5 category, don't trip man, there are literally like another 50 million of people just like you that'll be able to relate to your struggles to a certain extent. Procrastination feels like a personal and internal struggle that you deal with on your own, but I'm pretty sure if you look around you there are at least another 2-3 people that also procrastinate (unless you're in a room by yourself, in which case this sentence totally doesn't count, might I recommend like a coffee shop or something).

I also don't think that having ADHD helps either. With ADHD, and I don't want to speak for everyone diagnosed with it this is from my own experiences, I like to compare it to that one clip in Malcolm in the Middle where Bryan Cranstons's character comes home and finds that he needs to replace one of his light bulbs but then a whole bunch of complications happen to where he ends up not even replacing his lightbulbs. If you've seen the video then you have a good idea of what I'm talking about but if not I'll leave it here.

How this relates to ADHD and ultimately my skills of procrastination is I start out with the intention of, for example, needing to clean the house. There's a lot of ways people can clean up their house but I like to start by putting things away and that way I can start with a "clean" slate to start vacuuming or mopping or whatever. So then I start putting things back where they belong but then I get distracted by the things I'm putting away, I think back to a memory of something that happened with this object and how great or terrible it was and then that relates to another subject or memory that somehow fall in line with the first memory next thing you know I'm digging through my closet trying to see if I even have a certain thing that relates to that first or second memory. Now I've made a mess on TOP of the original mess that I was trying to clean up and to the outside perspective all I did was dig through my closet and made a whole ass mess but to me, I was cleaning or at least attempting to clean. How this relates to procratination is that now im sitting on the floor cleaning my second mess the thought of having to clean my original mess AND clean the rest of the house seems too effort intensive and too time consuming and so I just push it till tomorrow. In my experiences ADHD, in relation to my thoughts, is like a runaway train. This dude doesn't stop for NOBODY. My thoughts keep chugging and chugging along and I could go from thinking about what's for dinner to how a caterpillar dissolves its ENTIRE body into goo and the reshapes itself into the majestive butterfly you see before you. Which is like super crazy and like fucking amazing if you think about it. Like imagine if WE were able to do that, we'd abuse the SHIT outa that power. Turn into like an ungodly ass table or something and wreck a whole city with your table powers. Sorry, moving on.

ANYWAYS, at this point, I've talked a whole lot of bullshit about how I have this and I have that, and you'll notice how I haven't talked a single bit about how to fix or mitigate this problem. And you'd be absolutely right. The thing is, there's no solution that I've found that works for me yet. There will be things that I do that will eventually lead to me do the thing I should've been doing but those don't usually work for too long. Eventually I just say "Nahhh fuck that" and just not do it and if you're someone who hasn't found the one thing that just clicks with you, it's really not a big deal. So long as you keep trying new methods eventually you'll find the one that works with your lifestyle and your personality.

The biggest thing that gets me moving in my life is the motivation to do it. And you might be thinking "Whatever, everybody functions like that." But the thing that seperates me and this type of people with other people is that with them, even if they don't have the motivation they'll still find a way to get that stuff done. Take for example my girlfriend Amy, she doesn't always have the motivation to do certain things like homework and other trivial things like that, she'll complain about how she doesn't want to do that certain task and then she just goes to do it... I KNOW! Completely baffles my mind. Keep in mind there are some things that I don't want to do but I do it anyways. They hold a high enough priority that I'm forced to just do it whether or not I feel like it, my jobs is one example and walking 15K steps everyday is another one, obviously there are others but these are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. These things I view as stuff that I just simply can't put off so I go out and I do them. But once it comes to things like washing dishes, putting away certain things, folding laundry, those are all things that I deem very put-off-able, and so thats exactly what happens. I put them off until the moment that it HAS to be done. Amy is different, she might also see those tasks exactly the same way that I do, but she realizes that she has to do them anyways, and honestly that is what is so amazing about her. Her and anyone else who has the intrinsic motivation to do all those things in a timely manner, I respect you so much.

I feel like this post is going to be a complete waste of your time and so I will leave you with some helpful (maybe) methods that I've done in the past that have helped me get somewhere in my productivity journey that might help you. The first one is the 5 minute rule. When you want to do something but you feel like you can do it later, just commit 5 minutes to it and if you don't want to do it anymore after those 5 minutes you are free to stop whatever it is that you're doing. I can't remember where I saw this rule before but it's definitely not an original idea, someone somewhere in the world deserves this credit, not me. The idea of this rule is that after 5 minutes of doing the action, you will have passed the "slump" that was originally preventing you from starting the action in the first place. Allowing yourself to stop the action after 5 minutes also allows you to stop guilt free because you tried to do whatever it is and maybe in the moment you just weren't feeling it. The point is that its a pretty low risk to reward ratio for yourself and its easy to convince yourself that you'll do it if its only for 5 minutes and thus makes this technique effective to getting started.

The second "tool" or whatever you can try to use is try a more comprehensive To-Do List.  Now you've heard of To-Do lists before from literally anybody who is willing to talk to you and you might have tried once or twice and it may have worked for you or it may not have. BUT, I've personally found that the trick is to categorize your list into "Need to do" and "Should Do". It's pretty simple, the idea is to compile all your tasks into one area instead of having them float inside your head somewhere where you're very likely to forget. Then reflect on these tasks and ask yourself if they can wait or not. If they can't wait and need to be done by tomorrow then put it on your Need To Do list, and if it's not as important then it goes in the Should Do section. Obviously the things on your Need To Do list will hopefully be done tomorrow but the Should Do list still remains. What I would advise you to do is to pick one or two things on that list and try to do it throughout the day. It doesn't have to be right away or even in any order, it just has to be done at some point. And everything else on that list that you didn't do? Not a problem, leave that for tomorrow if you want. This way there's no guilt that you didn't do EVERYTHING on the list and you feel more accomplished for having done something for yourself today.

The idea is that a little bit that gets done every single day will end up amounting to so much more getting done as a whole. If you just wrote a random list of things you need to do tomorrow and you jot down like ten different items, first of all you don't have a visual cue letting you know which ones are more important and should require your most attention and second of all, having so much on your list that you feel like you need to get done is DAUNTING and super stressful for some. This just turns them away from doing anything at all, and then they feel guilty for not having done anything and everything on their list. Allowing yourself the freedom of choosing which tasks you would like to do today makes it more enjoyable and also much less stressful which in turn will make it so that you're more likely to do the task and not put it off.

There might be some other things that I do in my life that has helped me to some degree in productivity but as of right now I can't really think of any besides these two. But if you'd like to see another piece on more of these things please let me know and I'll try to bust out some more for you. I think the main point I'd like the drive home besides these tips above is to not feel guilty about not getting anything done. The feeling of guilt only drives you further down the hole of not doing shit, which in turn compounds how much guilt you feel, its a pretty shitty cycle. As with anything in life, start small, SUPER small if you have to, 5 minutes small but start. Thats the only way (at least that I know how, there might be more, never say never) to break out of a productivity rut you might be going through. If you know another person who might also be in the same rut that you're in, do these things together, keep each other accountable and if you fail at some point try again. Keep trying and keep failing and I think eventually you'll reach a point where you're leagues ahead of who you were before you started trying. And isn't that where we're all trying to be?

This was a super improptu piece for this week. To be honest I had a lot of other ideas that I wanted to write about but alas the procrastination bandit hath struckith again-ith? I'm trying really hard to keep putting out posts at the very least once a week, but if that doesn't happen know that I am kicking myself for it and will try again harder than ever next week. I haven't come up with a particular day that I want to put out these posts but I'm thinking either every Friday or Sunday but thats neither here nor there. Alright I'm getting off topic, next week will HOPEFULLY be a post on the Do's and Don't's of buying or selling online, I might even put it out this week but don't take me word for it. I know that there are some of you that I have reached out for help on a specific topic and if you're one of those poeple, rest assured that I am reading each and every single one and that particular post will come out soon. How soon? No idea, but soon. Lets just leave it at that. I love each and every one of you whether or not you read this and I am super blessed that you tolerate my writing because it's pretty shite. Anyways, have a great life, PEACE AND LOVE. That's gonna be my closer. It's decided. PEACE AND LOVE.

UPDATE: Its getting posted on Friday, so I guess that answers that.