Procrastination or Carpe Diem?

Like many people, I constantly feel guilty about procrastinating. I make long lists of things to do, and feel extremely virtuous if I cross any off.

When I started writing this article I was focusing on reducing the guilt, while improving the flow of work and personal projects, as well as still managing to have genuine chill time.

Then, I remembered a Robert Benchley article which I had read years and years ago, at school, (so really a long time ago). It was called How to Get Things done, so I googled it (I do love Google, I feel I am achieving things when I do research) and reread it. Just delightful. It had to be shared, and so I did that on LinkedIn.

Back to my article on procrastination, realized it had turned into an article about decision making, and so I published it.

The following day, I returned to my article on procrastination and, what a surprise, noted that I was a living case study for procrastination, as well as how to get things done the Robert Benchley way, because I published the Decisions article and had completed a whole lot of other pressing items, without completing my original task.

I don’t want to make excuses for the way I handle administration, although it is a strongly held belief that work should be enjoyable. Life is about compromise, so I have developed my own Time Management model and it includes a reward system.

If I do something necessary that I really don’t enjoy, I give myself a “pick me up” by immediately handling something creative and interesting. I also make sure that my Things to Do list has a few quick wins in it, because task completion energises me.

I think it was Ellen de Generis who said procrastination should be fun. We do spend a lot of our lives trying to be worthy citizens and chill guilt has insidiously crept in.

We seem to have turned leisure into work, too, even a Sunday afternoon stroll has to have a purpose!

So I am going to make a list of Things Not To Do and tick it off daily. This will allow me to enjoy all the things I am doing instead of the things I should not be doing.

And if that doesn’t make sense, maybe it shouldn’t…..

Links, References and Notes

Business Connexion:Accsys
email: tschroenn@accsys.co.za
twitter: @TerylSchroenn
Note

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