Procrastination - The One True Enemy!
Procrastination
Not to "toot my own horn" but I excel at many things. Math, IT skills, sailing, SCUBA diving, etc. but there's one thing I've become a pro at and that's Procrastinating. It's a skill I picked up early in life when it came to studying, homework, doing my chores and the like.
Over the years, I've relied upon it to let me do what I want to do now (most of the time which is nothing) and put the work off until later. Sounds great and makes sense right?
Well it's all fun and games until other events come into play.
Take my last week as a perfect example. Yes, I fell back on my master procrastinating skills last week. I just didn't have the oomph to write my four articles as I had scheduled them. For me, writing, although I don't enjoy it, comes rather easily. Once I have my titles and headers figured out, it's just filler at that point. As such, I figured I can jam 2 articles per day at the end of the week and still meet my weekly goals.
Then life came in... I won't go into detail but family, legal and other issues popped up. This added stress and, although I handled it all and everything is OK, left me with no energy or will to do anything more last week.
Now, I'm sitting here in a really busy week with eight articles to write to catch up. Yes, I could just write off last week's 4 articles, and it would lower my stress, but that's not really me and I try to keep to my goals, even if they end up being late.
Will I actually make it? Probably not. We have a wedding rehearsal Thursday night, the actual wedding on Thursday, a court hearing (part of that legal stuff from last week, and really has been ongoing for a year now) on Thursday, I'm trying to figure out when I can make a day available to go buy a DJI Phantom 4 Pro v2.0 drone from someone three hours away (i.e. a 6-7 hour round trip) and I still work a full-time job.
I suspect I can get five to six articles done and carry the extras over to next week.
Goals and Accountability
So, now you've heard about last week... I met all of my goals except for the four articles. Not bad, but since our bread and butter is our sites, probably the last thing I should have pushed off.
This week's goals:
- Help 5 people each day in WA (answer unanswered questions/Live Chat) - In Progress
- Write 1 post on WA (hint, it's this one) - Done once I publish
- Share 1 WA post on Facebook - Done
- Leave 6 site comments each day - In Progress, yesterday complete, today 2 down 4 to go
- Write 4 articles per site (total of 8) - Not started
- Work my regular job
That's really it. Yes there's other daily chores like laundry, cooking food, doing dishes, etc. but those don't actually make it to my weekly list.
So, who's going to slap my wrist for procrastinating last week? Who's going to hold me accountable?
What about you? Will you list your goals this week? Do you want me to follow up with you and see how you fared?
List them in the comments below and I'll try to follow up with you next week to see how you did.
Thanks for taking the time to listen,
Scott
Recent Comments
31
Yes, procrastination can be a killer, especially when one hour turns into two. Before you know it the day is gone. Nothing accomplished. I've had a few of those.
Great article, Scott.
Marion
Hi Scott. It seems like this problem is shared by many here including myself. I try to stay in touch with the blogs, they help. But with my limited time I find It hard to publish post regularly on my site. I guess I will need to limit my time reading blogs but they always encourage me.
Thanks for sharing.
Ray
I'm pretty crap at writing goals although I am improving as I get older, so there's hope yet 😉 but Procrastination now that I've got down to a fine art...let me share with you a little of my world, its gets pretty scary sometimes - trying to escape!!! Great post btw
Certainly, you have achieved a new high, worthy of commendation. Keep up the good work of procrastination.
Where can I get a copy of that image? Says it all. I think I've been in every one of those places.
Wayne
Well, my goals for the remainder of the week are:
1. Write two more articles for my SAC site
2. Knock out the Quora, Answers, and Google SAC items
3. Come up with 12 more keywords
4. Create outlines for the 12 keywords
5. Minor update to my SAC Site menu
6. Help 2 people each day and hop into chat for 15 min a day.
7. Leave at least 4 comments each day.
8. Write 1 WA post.
That should keep me busy. I'll check with you on Sunday and we can see how we did.
Cheers,
Michael
Sounds great!
I forgot to add my keyword research to my list this week. Glad I read yours.
Scott
I put the "Pro" into procrastination. Why do today what you can go better tomorrow works for me. Just get 'er done. I was gonna put off reading this today but you mentioned scuba diving and I was all in.
Thanks for sharing Scott.
Mark
Hi my many Brothers/Sisters in procrastination. This is the latest counseling on how to give up our treasured pastime? Scott has added a new twist to solving our never-ending problem. I think we should try it. Everything to gain, right?
Yes, we are at the stage in life when Mom or Dad can’t tell us what to do. Even fear or respect can’t persuade us to get off the couch and do what we must do, end making excuses, and finding reasons not to do or postponing to an ‘uncertain’ later.
Who is missing out here? We must end procrastination.
Wow! Did we grow up together? Procrastination is my middle name! I have been procrastinating for the pass two weeks. I called myself taking it easy at first ( knowing my predisposition to procrastinate ) I committed myself to only writing one article per week and even still I am having trouble keep that commitment!
Thanks for the post it was very timely and just knowing their are others who suffer from this disease, has inspired me to recommit and use more discipline and self control and to "Just get It Done!"
Scott, at least you know where you run into trouble. You know what your main problem is. That's a start toward being able to take care of it. Sounds like you have "encouraged" yourself to make great progress.
Okay, within the next week, I plan to write two posts for my WA site and at least one for my cat site. I will work away at the list on SAC and try to click off a couple more boxes. I'll do some site comments and answer emails, now that they are turned back on after the Big Vacation.
My main difficulty in getting back in the groove is in finding topics to write about. However, started working on our Quora/Answer.com/Google project for SAC and lo and behold, found a couple of story ideas. That's great! Will be working on one of them today.
Hello there,
Did you get your three posts written last week?
How did you do on the SAC checklist?
I'm curious how the site comments and email answering went
too.
Scott
I did get my 3 posts written. The one big thing I still have to do with the SAC list are my negative and positive hot buttons. Got quite a few site comments on; answering emails as I have time. So, think I'm doing pretty well. Thanks for checking.
I just put everything on both websites into site rank. Not getting too much in Google, though there are a few. However, in Bing and Yahoo,especially on the cat site, I've had a good number of rankings, a few in #1. The interesting thing is that a couple of my early posts on the cat site are still ranking rather well. Not sure how to interpret...at least Bing and Yahoo seem to like me pretty well.
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I could have written this. Well, the part about being a pro at procrastination.
I'm so good at it, I don't even have a list of goals for the week let alone the day.
Not something I'm proud of. I just wanted to let you know you're not alone.
Actually, I guess I do have one goal each day and that's to write/offer 4 comments a day in "Site Comments".
Small steps,
Wayne
P.S. I relate to TonyJS as well. Uugh!
You should have said "I could have written this but I put it off for later in the week", LOL.
I know I'm not alone. I'm just hoping that publicly shaming myself helps me to get back on track.
Hey man,
Were you able to meet your Site Comment goal?
So far so good. I like the weekends especially because the number of credits for certification don't go backwards if you can't do as many as you would like.
Sometimes there aren't as many available.
Thanks for asking. :) I appreciate it.
Nice!