Escape Procrastination — Sometimes, the secret lies in getting started

It’s been a few days since I started trying to get myself out of the procrastination trap I get into often. So far, I’ve created (still in progress) a to-do list with task estimates, completed some of the tiny tasks, and am now working on a long but fairly easy task. And of course I’ve been particularly mindful to not drown in self-doubt, fear and darkness.

Being mindful isn’t always adequate to stay sane. Earlier today, I had to pick one of the longer tasks from my to-do list. And I was not going to let any negative feelings get in the way. At least that was the plan. But as soon as I knew that my daily chores were done and the time to start my major task had come, I started wanting to avoid it. I decided which task to work on, but actually working on it was way easier said than done.

I went to the kitchen looking for food (and found and ate it), read the news, read daily horoscopes on the Internet, did some workout — basically whatever I could do except my chosen task. After all, I am I and I am so good at procrastinating.

But this time, I either do the work or get into a much much darker and deeper hole. I can’t afford the latter, so after delaying it as much as I could, I finally started THE WORK!

I was supposed to go through 5–6 different emails pertaining to a certain issue. The emails had been sitting for about 3 weeks now. After reading the emails, I was supposed to figure out what to do about them. And a miracle happened. On reading the emails, which took may be 10 minutes, I realized that only one of them had any substance. Which means that if I had spent 10 minutes reading those emails 3 weeks back, the anxiety about processing those emails would have vanished 3 weeks back. For 3 long weeks, I carried the burden of those emails, thinking that it was going to be so much work to read through and understand them. And today, in 10 minutes, I had at least shed that burden. Now, my job was going to be more focussed — take that one email that really has some meaningful content, and determine how to address it. That’s already making this task look so much more doable to me.

I still need to do it. But, it’s no more a task with 10 hands 20 legs and 50 tails that I have to tame. It’s one task, and even though it looks like a several hours long task, it’s still a lot more contained and hence a lot more manageable.

Let’s see how actually working on this one task is going to turn out. It’ll turn out just fine!