You might think that procrastination is caused by laziness. I was thinking about that as I rotated the desk in my home office by another 90°, claiming to myself that I was sorting out my thoughts.
Procrastination is fueled by weakness in the face of impulse and a failure to think about thinking.We think that we'll be better, smarter, more focused sometime. As a result, our queue of library books, Netflix movies, and smart-folk magazines grows steadily, but we'll just check Fail Blog one more time before getting to something serious. I have nearly 800 delicious bookmarks tagged for blogging. I suppose I could dump the lot of them into a post like some kind of giant gummy worm. It won't change anything.
I worked for a manager who said that the bottom third of any stack of papers was out-of-date and could be safely discarded. The pile o' stuff gets smaller, for a time, but never goes away and grows again soon.
No, procrastination is resistant to all manner of schemes because it isn't about getting organized. It's about understand that we won't be much different in the future than we are now.
The trick is to accept the now you will not be the person facing those choices, it will be the future you – a person who can’t be trusted.I've mentioned this before, but it's worth repeating. Some years ago, my mother was in her early 70s. She was sitting on her bed. Letters and folders and notebooks and books were stacked on the bed, floor, and night table. "I've really got to get organized one of these days."
I saw my future self and understood in an instant what I was up against. At that moment, I knew that there was no hope for me.
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