Stop the procrastination

A messy desk - one thing I used to procrastinate over!

Procrastinating. I've found that only procrastinators know what this word means. Maybe because procrastinators sigh with relief when they find out that their problem actually exists and has a name, which must mean they're not the only one suffering from this horrible curse.

I don't know about you but I used to be one of the biggest procrastinators around. For those who don't know what procrastinating is it's (according to our favourite encyclopaedia Wikipedia): "the act of replacing high-priority actions with tasks of lower priority, or doing something from which one derives enjoyment, and thus putting off important tasks to a later time." In my uni days I'd ALWAYS leave assignments to the last minute pulling an all nighter the night before typing away like a bleary eyed lunatic and drinking red bull (which actually states on the can that it's made for students!). I'd wake up the next morning a living zombie and ask myself WHY oh WHY did I not do it earlier!

It really was a mind/body struggle. I'd laugh, I'd cry, I'd clean the bathroom, do the dishes, weed the garden, go shopping, anything to stop me from sitting down and writing the god damn thing. It's a horrible feeling too, that sickening feeling of dread, that feeling that you can't delay the inevitable forever but your going to try mighty damn hard to anyway.

Just do it!!! You'd tell yourself. Yeah in a minute when I've had a shower, in a minute once I've grabbed a snack, in a minute once I've made my bed, in a minute once I've clipped my toenails. I'm surprised I'm still mentally sane after going through this process with just about every assignment at university.  My how jealous was I when my uni friends would say to me, "oh that assignment, I did that weeks ago!" after I'd been babbling for 10 minutes about how bad I was struggling. I wished badly that I could change and I tried to change my ways but I found that the habit was too deeply ingrained.

I don't remember a thing of my last ever week of uni. All I know is that I had five assignments due and 12,000 words to write. I switched on robot mode, bunkered down in my room and thought if I can do this I'm superwoman. I got it done. Then collapsed in a heap, the most exhausted I've ever felt in my life and I never wanted to type a single word again.

So uni was finished and I thought my procrastinating habit was gone for good. But sadly no, next came full time work where I became bombarded with so much to do everyday that I found I was slipping back into my old habit again. Some tasks I would put off and put off (of course the most important tasks are the ones that require the most effort!) and I found myself not being as productive as I should be. I also found that (funnily enough) the more I procrastinated the less successful I was at my job. I was stressing out and falling more and more behind until I just looked at my computer screen and hung my head in my hands. I couldn't take it anymore, I needed a solution. And that solution was mindfulness.

I had no idea what mindfulness was to begin with. I'd seen it mentioned in a few women's health mags but had never really bothered to "get" what it meant. That is until I had to write the Trade Information Sheet for our new book coming up in July called Mindfulness For Life. The TIS goes to sales reps and is what all online book stores and databases go off for their book descriptions - so I had to know what I was talking about. From the first page I was hooked, what was this magical thing called mindfulness? Everything I learned intrigued me further until I knew I had found the solution that would work for me.

Mindfulness is all about being present in the here and now. So many of us spend our lives rushing around worrying about the past and stressing over the future. We don't stop to really focus on the present and be fully aware of ourselves. Being mindful means you focus on one thing at time, finish it and move on to the next. You don't worry and stress over how much work you have to get done, you just put your attention towards what must be done now. You finish each job as they come up and don't half start five jobs at once.

By changing my behaviour I found myself getting more things done and stressing less, it was a godsend. If it's a big job, cut it up into smaller parts/sections and focus on completing one bit at a time. With a bit of practice procrastination can soon be a thing of the past, something mindfulness says we shouldn't worry about!