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Culture Duck Tales
January/February 2006 Do You Procrastinate? If you’re human, the answer to that question is yes. (And I confess: even we ducks have been known to drag our heels on occasion.) While some of us procrastinate less frequently than others, there are those of us who are so enmeshed in old habits of procrastination that we don’t even realize we’re procrastinating.
Ducking the Issue When there’s a dreaded project to be done, many of us have developed very clever ways to avoid it. Suddenly, we have a million things to do—and the dreaded project is not one of them. As long as we’re busy, we don’t have time for other things, right? Rita Emmett, author of The Procrastinator’s Handbook, identifies several groups of procrastinators who trick themselves into believing that it’s okay to procrastinate. Are you one of them?
The Biggest Excuse How many times have you heard someone say, “I work best under pressure”? Or maybe you’ve uttered that fateful statement yourself. If it’s really true that your adrenaline starts pumping, your energy soars, and you become focused and confident about your work, then good for you—you do work best under pressure. However, as the deadline nears, if you feel at all stressed, if you feel like you have 100 other things you should be doing, if you become cranky or irritable, if you generate stress for others around you, then it’s crystal clear: You do not work best under pressure. The truth is, many people who claim they work best under pressure actually fall apart, lose sleep, become critical of others, overeat, do a sloppy job, become sick, or miss the deadline. Most people can’t do good work, let alone excellent work, when they leave everything until the last minute. Suppose you have a big report to write. You decide to start the day before it’s due, because you “work best under pressure.” Murphy’s Law kicks in and something goes wrong—you get the flu, your car breaks down, your pet duck gets sick (well, you never know). If this sounds familiar, you have some options. Perhaps the most obvious is to break large projects into smaller chunks. Plan ahead. Look at the project in advance of the deadline, decide how you will break it into smaller tasks, and determine which tasks you will do each day. Give yourself deadlines along the way. You may discover your job isn’t as overwhelming as you thought. Reward Yourself Procrastinators spend a lot of time feeling guilty—guilty about not doing a project and then guilty about starting the project so late. Instead of wasting all that time and effort beating yourself up, try a different approach. First make a list of all the things you want to accomplish for the day. Include the little things and the big things you really dread. Now circle all the tasks that absolutely must be done. From these, highlight the tasks you most dread doing. These are the jobs you will reward yourself for completing. Next comes the fun part: Make a list of meaningful rewards for yourself. The rewards could be small—time for reading, extra sleep, a movie on the weekend, a refreshing walk around the duck pond—or bigger—a day spent shopping or fishing, dinner out, a massage, or a concert or play. Now assign an appropriate reward to each dreaded task. Once you complete the task, you get the reward. It’s important to get your work done, but it’s equally important to have fun along the way, to refresh your spirit and to have something to look forward to, such as your rewards. If you have nothing to look forward to at the end of the day but more work, then you have no incentive to get your work done! Chase Your Dreams We put off doing all sorts of things—big and little, important and not so important—but perhaps the saddest thing we postpone is our dreams. Tucked away in a secret part of us is a desire to go back to school, to take music lessons, to travel, to climb that mountain, to write that novel. Too often these dreams are put off until the “right time.” Many of us idealize the future, believing that the “right time” will magically arrive in five or 10 years, and that’s when we plan to pursue our dreams. Chances are, however, that the future will be very much like the present (busy!), so the “right time” is now, not five years from now. Putting off your dreams creates a deep sadness. As poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote, “For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, ‘It might have been.’” When the elderly look back on their lives, they rarely regret things they have done; it’s the things that they have not done, the dreams they never followed that they regret. As you begin your journey to conquer procrastination, put your dreams at the top of your to-do list. Dreams are far too easy to postpone and yet they are perhaps the most important thing to pursue if we are to achieve joy, balance, and harmony in our lives. Get Inspired! If you need an extra push to inspire yourself, there’s nothing like a good motivational quote. We’ve gathered an assortment of quotes, which all advocate the do-it-now approach. Read the quotations below, keeping an eye out for ones that speak directly to you. Write these quotes on pieces of colorful paper and place them strategically around your home or office. Here are a few to choose from:
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