Yeah, Nah – Tomorrow!

I purchased a book on ‘How to Stop Procrastinating’ – I’ll read it next weekend.... or when I have time. I bought it about six weeks ago (or was it seven?) and those few hours on weekends continue to elude me.

Does this sort of thing happen to you too?

It creates so much stress and anxiety that it begs the question; if it’s not important, then why is it on your ‘To Do’ list? And if it IS important, then why not just go ahead and do it?

If you ask the experts, we procrastinate for various reasons; insecurity (fear of failing), lack of time or knowledge to do it perfectly, (therefore, fear of appearing inferior), lack of interest, eg the ‘why’ this is important and lack of interest, focus or limited energy to do the work.

We all have busy work schedules and if like me, you’re in the people business; managing a team, providing services to other companies’ recruitment teams – there are plenty of distractions to throw any well-planned day into a vortex of mayhem.

In my case, I tend to put off one on one meetings with my team because, hey, they’re my team – they’ll understand. However, the actual outcome is that I lose valuable, little gems of information that helps me understand problems and/or opportunities they have encountered in their own working day. To correct this, I’ve asked them to organise the meeting with me – it puts a different spin on it and they’re in charge of the event – not me. Ok, Ok, that’s also delegation, but we’re after the result and to quote one of my favourite actors Audrey Hepburn; “Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible!”