Turn Insight Into Action: ProactiveChange.com/motivation

Procrastination, priorities & risks

A client, Craig, had a challenging task. After he completed it, he wrote: “I really worked hard to pull all this together and was happy with the results. I started work on this without delay; new for me. In the end I still ran out of time for the final edit, luckily nothing terrible ended up in there. Almost all of the heavy lifting was done days in advance. It was hard for me to give myself permission to work on this days before it was due despite the obvious importance, but I did it; kept pushing away other urgent projects.”

I asked him for permission to share with others, because I believe others can benefit from the way he described what he did. I want to highlight the following in what he wrote:
- "I started work on this without delay"
- "Almost all of the heavy lifting was done days in advance"
- "It was hard for me to give myself permission to work on this days before it was due despite the obvious importance, but I did it; kept pushing away other urgent projects."

The first two points are about avoiding procrastination, and giving yourself time. Doing something difficult is not the same as mindlessly filling a form. It is a process, and it’s important to build enough time for “doing the heavy lifting” over time, as opposed to waiting till the last minute.

Even more powerful is the last point, the one about priorities. This statement beautifully describes the fact that prioritizing is not just paying lip service to the idea of having priorities. There's a sacrifice involved (not dealing with other urgent projects, hearing the nagging voice of the internal critic reminding you that other things are important too). But one cannot have 57 priorities, any more than one can have 750 close friends. Making priorities can mean “pushing away other urgent projects”. Sometimes, that’s the only way you can get the most important things done.

I would like to be able to say that it all worked out beautifully for Craig. I am sorry to say it didn’t (he just sent me an email letting me know about the results). It is a fact of life that, sometimes, we do the best we can, we sacrifice other priorities… and it doesn’t always pan out. At such times, we can feel very discouraged, asking ourselves what was the point.

The point is that there was a risk for Craig in making this task a priority.

In a Hollywood movie, when you take a risk, you get rewarded by winning. In real life, you don’t always get rewarded. And this is precisely what makes it difficult to take risks in real life: they’re real risks, not Hollywood risks. When you make something a priority, you’re taking a risk. You may be making a mistake; you may be calling the wrong shot; all of your efforts may not be enough…
And the point is, it is still worth it to take some risks. If we only do what we’re absolutely sure to succeed at, the one thing we can be sure of is that we’ll have a much more limited life.

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