If you can’t beat procrastination, join it

How I used procrastination to learn a new hobby

I am and always will be a serial procrastinator. I procrastinate even when I am already procrastinating. After reading some books and trying several techniques without success, I gave up and learned to accept it.

Once I accepted that I will always procrastinate, I started focusing on how to mitigate it. Tracking what do I do when I procrastinate, and trying to do less of the useless things and more of the not so useless.

Then I realized I could take it a step further and use procrastination for my own good, I only needed to find something that I wanted to accomplish and that could fit in the procrastinable pattern, something accessible that could be done in shorts spans of time. So I bought some juggling balls.

I’ve always wanted to start juggling. It’s one of those hobbies where you can see the feedback loop in real-time. It’s also something that you can practice in periods of any length. So, I left the juggling balls near my desk and now every time I feel like procrastinating I start juggling (I stood up and juggled two times since I’ve started this post).

When I started juggling a month ago I was awful, but now after several accumulated hours of procrastination I’m close to juggle four balls. Apparently, I procrastinate a lot, but that’s a good thing.

My advice to not cure procrastination: stop fighting it, accept it, mitigate it, exploit it.

PS: if you want to start juggling the library of juggling is a good place to start.