Enlightened Success: three reasons to procrastinate

Have you seen that social media meme that says:

If you ever feel bad about procrastinating, just remember that Mozart wrote the overture to Don Giovanni the morning it premiered…?

It does make me feel better, actually. I am reminded that sometimes, just sometimes, we do our best work when under incredible pressure.

My late father used to have an idiosyncratic method for boarding planes. He would tell us:

I sit in the lounge until there is an announcement saying, ‘would the last remaining passenger for flight XYZ, Mr KS Stack, please make his way to the gate immediately as the plane is ready to leave.’ Then they send one of those golf carts to collect me and I get through the boarding process at top speed.

My father was a very frequent flyer and this approach worked for him but I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone. The way he operated, however, was to be either totally relaxed or charged with adrenaline, so this strategy suited him.

These examples go to show that procastination, or leaving things to the absolute last minute, doesn’t always have to spell disaster. Don Giovanni was performed and I don’t remember my father ever missing a flight.

I would go further and say that, in some circumstances, procrastination can be a route to success. If success is, for example, ‘doing what you said you would do, with ease,’ or to quote Sandy Newbigging, ‘a successful life is one that is loved by the person living it,’ then a feeling of contented ease is a vital ingredient.

You won’t be successful through procratination alone, of course, but you can increase your chances of being productive with equanimity in these three ways:

1. Prune your ‘to do’ list. If you feel overwhelmed, or if you are missing out on sleep or family time because you are trying to do so much, consider the possibility that you are, in fact, trying to do too much. You are not SuperPerson. Look at that list headed ‘today’ and move some of the items to tomorrow. Did the sky fall in? Probably not. But if you used the extra time to sleep, go for a swim or read to your child, you will probably be more successful, both in material terms and in a wider sense, in the long run as a result.

2. If you feel like putting something off, trust that this may be your intuition guiding you. A few months ago, I needed to speak to someone and I thought I was putting off the phone call. When I eventually rang, I said, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve been meaning to call you all morning.’ He replied, ‘that’s OK, I’ve been out and only just came in and sat down.’ This may seem trivial but if enough of these incidents occur you begin to feel your life is running on oiled wheels. If you are putting off something that’s not mega-urgent and you don’t understand why you can’t get round to it, trust that it may be your inner guidance helping to smooth things along. NB: This won’t be the case if the task is going through your receipts, filling in a form or clearing out your filing cabinet!

3. Procrastinate worry, listening to your inner critic and harbouring resentment. Add to this list any number of other compulsive but negative thinking patterns. If you feel compelled to go round that circuit one more time, to berate yourselft for something you got wrong, to try and solve an impossible problem in your head or dwell on someone’s failings, just put it off. Tell yourself you can do it…tomorrow. Most of us think too much and the majority of our unnecessary thinking is negative. If you tell yourself this is wrong, you are still stuck in the pattern. Be kind to yourself, don’t judge, just put it off.

Of course a post encouraging people to procrastinate needs to include a warning: do not procrastinate too much! It’s always been a good thing to take action and this hasn’t changed. But if you are overwhelmed, over-tired or feel so busy that you end up just looking at your list and doing nothing, some careful procrastination could be just the tonic you need.

If you enjoyed looking at procrastination in a different way with me, do join me on the Enlightened Success journey. And check out my Mind Calm Meditation workshops, where you can learn why you have a busy mind and what you cn do about it.