Time Management Blog

No one really knows what the future holds yet we all have concocted fantasies of the future that we convince ourselves will come true. Unfortunately, many of these scenarios are tragedies. Procrastination is the way you avoid that negative future.

What are you afraid will happen if you finish painting the bedroom, writing a report, sending thank you notes, or getting the car repaired? The immediate reply is usually, “Nothing. I will feel wonderful.” You realize that the thing you are putting off or not finishing is so simple or easy to do that you are stumped about why you are procrastinating.

You may be surprised to discover that it is not the present project that is the problem. This problem is simply a smoke screen that hides the real problem… what comes next. Consider these examples.

In one of my workshops a woman declared that her goal was to clean out her desk by the end of the month. Nothing could be easier. Once she uncovered her fears of the future she announced, “If I clean out my desk I will have to clean up my life. And I might have to divorce my husband!” No wonder she wasn’t able to get her desk in order. What was waiting for her after that was too scary to contemplate. What does a desk have to do with a marriage?

Another participant, a young man who had graduated college a year before, kept putting off taking the exam for graduate school. He was at a loss to motivate himself even though he knew that he needed and wanted a graduate degree to get ahead in his career. He got in touch with the fear that if he went to graduate school he would be around others who shared his interests and might find someone more exciting than his wife. Once he named his fear he was able to challenge his twisted thinking and realized that he could be around interesting people and still choose to come home to his loving spouse.

A young mother in my class was frantic because she was moving to a new home in two weeks and couldn’t make herself pack up all the things in her garage. She was paralyzed and puzzled. What came to light was that she and her husband had been discussing having more children. She wanted another baby but her husband did not. In the garage were boxes with her son’s baby clothes, ready for the next infant. She told herself that if she gave away his clothes it meant that she would never have another child. She unconsciously stopped herself from clearing the garage so that bleak future would not happen. After confronting her fear she realized that she could still have a baby in the future, even if she no longer had the baby clothes.

You have no crystal ball that can predict the future! Your dreaded fears may not materialize. Therefore, acting as if you were 100% sure of disaster and creating stress by trying to avoid your fantasy of unhappiness will surely lead to pain and misery. What are you afraid will happen in the future if you tackle the project you have been putting off? Write down your worst fear and face it now.