Conquering procrastination: my journey
I don’t know about you, but I LOVE the idea of Inbox: Zero.
I cringe every time I have to check my email for something that is ACTUALLY important only to find tons of ads, random stories and basically everyone working to get my attention.
What I’m NOT too keen on…
Having to invest my time into deleting, unsubscribing (yes, I’ve tried the apps that remove me from lists only to find I end up on five more from the same source under a different name), and sifting through the muck to get to what really matters most.
So, I go in once a week, search for relevant bits, and get back out.
Simple.
Time saving.
It’s only a small example of ways I have created less distraction in my life in recent years.
How will I ever fit it ALL in?
Growing up, my mom was always focused on getting from one job to the next. Her life survived by a Day Timer where she tracked all mileage, work hours, phone numbers (back before cell phones existed) and appointments. She kept track of everything as she had very little wiggle room between jobs to goof off.
But…
When it came time to be ‘off’ work and have fun, she became super scattered.
Fun time wasn’t officially ON the schedule. It was the fit in where you can time.
She’d bounce from one room to the next, clean one thing that would take her to the next room then be distracted by cleaning one thing in that second room that would then take her to yet another room and in the end, she’d be distracted by something random that consumed her entire day.
We’d joke about the distractions but there was a HUGE lesson there for me.
Through most of my life, I’d hear her say: “must be the ADD.” She was joking, of course, as she was not one to claim any sort of diagnosis for health ‘issues.’
The reality was, she was so programmed to get things done that were ON the list that when there was not a list, she would go in circles.
It was a matter of pure survival.
As there were two versions of my mother that existed, and only one that I was most exposed to, I became a distracted person growing up by example. I didn’t get to see her in her super organized life because that was “work time.” I was either at school or the baby sitter’s.
What I saw of her was “we only have THIS much time so let’s try to do everything we can in that period of time!” She played catch up on ALL the things she didn’t have time to do while working 5 jobs.
Or at least she tried to.
Distractions would always happen.
She saw it as an adventure. I saw it as not following through on commitments.
I’d get pissy when we got in the car and she’d say “okay, I know we’re supposed to do this today but on the way I want to do this, and this and this and if we have time…also, this.”
Umm. How bout no?
Unfortunately, unless we had an appointment to keep (which we were always late for because she didn’t like to keep track of time or tasks when she was off) we would end up in a flurry of going place to place with no true present moment awareness.
She would get lost on the freeways because her mind would race in too many directions to notice which sign she just passed or which exit she’s looking for.
I would always tell her how to get back on track because BEFORE my parents got divorced, she’d taught me to be present and pay attention to everything in my surroundings.
For her, it was the best she could do to have fun AND get shit done while she had the time. Finding ways to play along the way, she did what she could to spend time with me in her spare time so I would not feel abandoned.
As a child, it all just seemed stressful and unsettling.
Which, to a child who’s been exposed to a divorce with one parent leaving to be with another family while leaving you and your remaining parent to fend for yourselves, I craved safety and security.
As an adult looking back, she kicked ass as doing what she could to give me the best life possible.
But as a kid, I needed to feel settled.
Which never really happened until I grew up and created it myself.
Growing up, I was easily distracted.
Even the slightest little sound would have me hypnotized for enough time to forget what I was working on in the first place.
I was bored. I was disconnected. I was sad.
It wasn’t her fault that I saw this distracted behavior and latched onto it. It was my perception that it was the ONLY version of her to show me how life is done.
She did her best to support me in mentally getting back into my body when it mattered most. Even took me to various types of therapists to help me figure it all out.
All to no avail.
I’d read a paragraph in school books multiple times in hopes of actually absorbing it. I gave up on homework all together because there were far too many distractions at home to help me stay focused.
As I got older, I’d hear myself say “oh, that’s just the ADD…” as an excuse to avoid being present.
What I didn’t anticipate was finding a HUGE bit of information that would change the game for me.
Multi-Tasking is women’s work…or is it the Devil?
I remember reading a piece about how women are programmed to multi-task. Our brains are wired for managing multiple things at a time. We are after all the ones who have managed households (cooking, cleaning, kids, spousal support) for many generations.
If we could not think about Johnny’s band practice, arranging Hubby’s dinner when he arrives home, the dog’s shots, and the house being cleaned, all at the same time, our house would have been in shambles.
And yet, for eons, women have held shit together like Masters!
We are indeed Orchestra Conductors in...when it comes to the family.
Unfortunately, this blanket declaration of Multi-Tasking Mastery does not apply to true productivity when mental clarity and deep thinking is involved. And especially not when it comes to just living OUR best life.
So when times got tough, I followed in my mom’s footsteps by attempting to apply multi-tasking to my work. If she could do it all, why couldn’t I?
I remember a time where I would sit with my laptop, my iPad and my phone while doing work. True, I was able to get ‘a lot’ done, but I was often not fully present with any task enough to properly understand whether it was helping or hindering my ability to succeed.
Sadly, I was doing each task just to get it done, if at all, and not with any true intention of excellence.
When I began comparing how much time I’d spent vs how much QUALITY work I actually got done, the numbers weren’t adding up.
I was getting lost in the bouncing back and forth between tasks.
I was spending more time getting ‘reconnected’ to each of the tasks than I was actually completing them.
And as we know that our outside world reflects our internal, mental/emotional ecology, I had to start looking at WHY I was unable…aka unwilling…to be focused on ONE task until completion before feeling the need to move on to the next.
I had to look at what was going on in my life that was triggering my need for being disconnected from my overall success.
See, I was losing a grip on my ability to manifest reality with ease.
I was in a toxic work relationship. The location where I worked was like open season for sexual harassment. In response…or in defense…I’d stopped being intentional about BEING great and started looking to prove how much I could handle as though it would be like a badge of honor.
When I’m disconnected from my power, my natural habit is to return back to that scattered, ADD mind, along with putting my own needs to the side in order to make everyone else’s dream a reality.
All things I saw in my mom while I was growing up.
I’d work to fit it all in for others rather than structuring my tasks in accordance with MY purpose.
Why?
Because that’s what I saw her do when the struggle was real…when she had to suck it up and fight to keep us afloat.
It’s part of the Survival Mode I SAW in her. But not the whole picture.
And, those behaviors reminded me of the times when I was WITH my mom (her off hours) which, for me, meant love, peace, home, and security. So the distracted mind was a way of creating the illusion of comfort and protection in my own world.
Clearly, the meaning I’d placed on her beingness was not aligned with true love, peace, home OR security though.
Instead, it was the leading cause of many a crash and burn experience in life.
It created a wall between who I was and who I wanted to be that made my life path HARDER with every step.
It wasn’t until I read Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill that I truly understood WHY this behavior pattern was so toxic and WHY my mom fell into it when she was away from work.
“…time is the friend of the person who trains his mind to follow positive thought-habits and the enemy of the person who drifts into negative thought-habits.”
― Napoleon Hill, Outwitting the Devil: The Secret to Freedom and Success
I was in a constant state of “why me?”
Time would get the best of me as I would struggle to stay focused. I played the victim, by unconscious choice, to what my father had chosen for himself.
It also dawned on me that, during my times of disconnect, I lacked clear purpose and the drive to reach it. Too busy trying to survive, I had no room to see how I could thrive in living a life that FELT good and aligned.
In truth, I was indecisive about my desired outcome.
I was stressed, overwhelmed and even worried about my potential results. Didn’t believe I was worthy of it so I set out to PROVE how much of a failure I was by avoiding connection with it.
Instead of focusing all efforts into success, I was wasting away with fear and shame and guilt…that caused me to move from task to task mindlessly for the sake of proving I could handle everything and anything life threw at me.
I was saying to the universe “I cannot be trusted to make decisions for myself because I’m broken or don’t have time to be better.” As always, the universe answered back with more of what I asked for.
In reality, I was a wreck.
In my mom’s case, she used distraction and scatteredness to create a sense of balance in her life.
Her many jobs were not dream jobs. She didn’t follow her passion, IF she even knew it at all.
Distraction was her form of fun rebellion.
Yet, she was afraid of not having enough time. When she DID have it, it was ‘never enough’ so easily she became frazzled in those moments of freedom.
While she was in no case a wreck, she too was disconnected from her purpose.
Work was productive because she had no time to think about anything else. Especially not for contemplation on the things she was passionate about actually turning into a business.
That stuff was for the Land of Someday.
As a single mom with a daughter who she wanted only the best for and a house payment that now had tripled from the divorce, there was no time for fluffy dreams.
She’d cram her free time with everything that she could from hiking to biking to just cleaning the house but none of it ever was for the sake of finding purpose.
In my case…
I created an environment where I had TOO MUCH time to think about everything else. I worried so much about how I was already living out my purpose but was not good enough, in my own mind of course, to reach a level I could truly thrive in.
Disconnect from my abilities led to taking on more random projects and time consuming tasks. The overwhelm from my work load would lead to me getting sick or repelling money.
I, unlike my mom, became a person who’s work to-do list ruled my life with an iron fist…but never got completed.
Hence, I was perpetually getting beaten down by it.
Yellow lined papers with lists were scattered around my office, kitchen and backpack dividers. Losing one, I’d rewrite another with the addition of MORE crap that I thought I needed to do, and then this list would also get lost in a pile of paperwork I had to go through…later…and then into a file for later viewing.
Always later.
Always tomorrow.
Always someday.
Funny how her words about her dream life while I was growing up were always “someday I’ll do that.”
But someday never comes. Especially when your list can go to the moon and back 100x.
It was this SOMEDAY pattern that finally got my attention.
I was delaying on my purpose they way she did. Only, I was living it and she didn’t!
I had to take a HUGE step back and start reflecting on my current actions to get clear on how I was standing in my own way…
How many times did I write that same list?
How many times have I stopped and started the SAME task?
How many times did I start a task then get sucked into the abyss of mindless scrolling?
How many things can I say that I ACTUALLY finished?
How many things am I waiting for SOMEDAY to start?
The answers were not pleasing.
In fact, they revealed to me something I had not noticed before:
I not only created an energetic tie to every task I wrote down on the list, I created an additional one for EVERY time I picked up or made contact WITH that task.
Some tasks I ‘touched’ multiple times with no completion, setting off a slew of toxic beliefs like “see, you never finish anything!” or, “if you would just get another certification, this would be easier!” or “if you make another list of all the things you need to do to accomplish this other thing, maybe it will actually happen THIS time.”
At the root, I was choosing this chaos to protect myself from succeeding in my life purpose.
Energetically, I must have looked like the Supreme Leader from Captain EO with all the chords attached to me: bitter and feeling defensive toward anyone who saw beauty in me.
Before that, no matter how many new productivity tools I tried, no matter how many new online classes I took, no matter how many certifications I had, nothing would take the place of facing the reasons WHY I was unwilling to finish a task.
The way I knew this unwillingness was the issue?
My results.
My unconscious commitment was to overwhelm, not to completion. To failure, not to success.
Failure was easy. I know it well.
Success at that time? Not so much.
Based solely on results, I would structure my day around serving everyone else and ‘finding time’ later for my own things.
I created all the proper circumstances to avoid completion by taking on more than I could accomplish, saying yes when I wanted to say no, committing to doing things for people that were not in alignment with my purpose, and…making more lists that I KNEW I would not ever look at.
Procrastination, ADD, and even life circumstances validated my beliefs of being unworthy. They were made up constructs of my mind that come out in attempt to control my thoughts (the same way ALL human programs do when we are disconnected).
But it was up to ME also to choose a different mindset about what I felt worthy of and how I would show up to prove IT instead.
I read an article about the science behind mental focus and how multi-tasking was actually the death of productivity.
It made sense.
I once locked myself up in the house for two days to write my first book after 8 years of saying I’d do it. It was life-changing to say the least.
I started making lists based on a Hell Yes/Hell No mentality:
Does it support my purpose? If yes, then HELL YES I will do it. If not, then HELL NO I won’t do it.
And I stopped making endless lists that mean nothing and started making lists of the most valuable tasks possible so that my time would be spent where it counts the most.
The lesson for me: when I’m clear I can accomplish the impossible with ease and grace. When I’m unclear, I forget how amazing I am and begin searching for ways to prove the opposite.
As a coach, it’s a pattern I see and address with clients quite often.
When we are disconnected from our purpose or an on-purpose life, we end up powerlessly procrastinating on what really matters.
In order to keep that amazing self as my driving force…
I now use productivity as a form of analysis rather than punishment.
The more I multi-task, the further away from success I’m getting and the more indecision is driving my life.
On the other hand, the more I’m focused on one task through to completion, the closer I get to what I really want and the more motivated I am to create bigger and better the next time around.
I’ve seen extensive work done on time analysis, time blocking, work bursts, and various productivity tools. But there’s only ONE that works the best for me and that’s absolute, gut wrenching, real talk self awareness.
At the end of the day, I evaluate how I showed up.
Simple.
Then, I work to create a better version of myself the following day.
Did I use my time effectively?
If not, why not?
Who am I choosing to be when I show up for work/personal life?
What needs to shift tomorrow to BE a better version of me?
What gets done vs what keeps getting moved to the next task list and why?
Does this item help or hinder me?
If hinder, it gets deleted. If helps, put it at the top of the list for tomorrow and make it non-negotiable.
The motto: don’t start unless you’re willing to finish. Don’t stop until the task is complete or you’ll end up with twice as much work in the end and 10x the time spent in correcting your errors.
If my mom taught me anything it’s pure grit. To never give up just because it gets hard. Find a way out and make the best of the journey along the way.
No matter how tired she was, she never missed a workout at the end of an 18+ hour day during those tough years. No matter how late she got home, she would wake up early to have breakfast with me and take me to school. And no matter how scarce things got, she was always willing to find a solution.
My intention in sharing this story with you is to help demonstrate that many of our programs are attained by seeing only a small fraction of the big picture. It’s these limited perceptions that cause us to feel trapped in a loop of powerlessness.
Once we can get clear on how we have misinterpreted reality by ONLY seeing what we were exposed to, we have room to correct the error in our own life.
And in doing so, we become better at BEING the change we wish to see in the world rather than wasting life away blaming our past for our future failures.
Why not start today?
Do you procrastinate on things because you are attached to the past? Tell me in the comment section below ❤
About the author:
Alida is an Intuitive Life Strategist and student of comparative religions. Her coaching company, Ambassador for Goodness, hosts various workshops on mindfulness, spiritual entrepreneurship, intuitive eating, art therapy, and relationship success. This blog is also a podcast called Wisdom Nuggets and can be found on iTunes, Anchor, Google Play Music, Overcast, Pocketcasts and almost anywhere podcasts are found!
