Personal Assessment And Procrastination, Part 1.
I was talking, a few days ago, about periodically looking at yourself, and your personal or career progress, as a way of assessing how your ambitions are lining up with your results.
I mentioned a number of things that turn into obstacles that you didn’t cause, but now have to adjust for, then alluded to the fact that sometimes your falling behind really is your fault. Yes, accepting responsibility for our inaction is hard, and we all like to look elsewhere for reasons we aren’t where we want to be. But where has that ever got anyone?
Procrastination manifests itself in many ways, and for many reasons. Each “version” of the condition presents its own problems, and its own solutions. The one commonality is that we, personally, have to decide to implement the solution before anything will change for us. So, let’s start taking a look at some of the reasons people get stuck in this habit, and how each can be most effectively addressed. No, don’t worry…they won’t all be in this post.
The first, and it’s big, is fear of failure. A person has no idea how well a given ”thing” will work out, or if it will work out at all, and is put off by the possibility of failure to the point of refusing to move.
The problem this presents is that few of us will EVER know how something is going to work out, until we do it. The reality is, any of us could spend weeks or months or years working at something we care about, only to have it come to nothing but a “learning experience”. If this fear continues to be a block, we’ll never do anything new, never LEARN anything new, and never know what might have happened if we had.
The solution to this one’s going to be complicated and very “individual”, because our fears are too. It may well end up at “get help”, but it starts with figuring out why you’re afraid to fail, and then addressing your personal reason for that fear. Ahem…simple, right? To use a few examples…
Is it that you don’t want to disappoint someone? I mean someone specific. In this case, you might have to look at why you’re allowing the possibility of that person’s disapproval to paralyze you, and how you’re going to get to the point where it no longer does.
Maybe you’re afraid of being ridiculed if the guys at work find out you can’t do…whatever. In which case, you’re going to have to learn how to embrace your inner “who f**king cares!?!”, because these people shouldn’t be so important! Learn how to do (whatever), then come back and shut ‘em up.
Are you afraid that you’ll feel like you wasted your time and effort if you don’t get the results you wanted? Well, depending on how you look at “success and failure”, that might be the case. Just remember that every time you try to do something, you’ll get at least a bit better at it and eventually, you’ll actually know what you’re doing!
So…figure out why you’re afraid to fail, then how you can overcome the specific cause of your fear. With that, you’ll hopefully remove one block to your ability to get things done.
