Do You Procrastinate?
- Do You Procrastinate?
- Why You Procrastinate
- How to Stop Procrastinating
Does this sound like you?
You have an unstructured or flexible work schedule
You might be:
- an individual contributor in tech
- a solopreneur, or
- a writer
You have big dreams about how to spend your time
If you could get your work done efficiently, you would:
- learn how to do it even better and move up in the world
- spend more quality time with your family and friends
- take better care of your body
- finally get your side project off the ground,
- make incredible art, and/or
- spend more time volunteering to make this world less of a dumpster fire
But you can’t seem to stay on task
Even though you have all the freedom you need to fit it all in, you just can’t seem to do it. Whenever you get to a task
- that you’re not sure you’ll be successful at,
- that might bring you into the limelight, or
- that you feel guilty about putting off this long,
you bounce off of it. Sometimes you hardly even notice it’s happening. You might:
- suddenly feel the need for a nap
- start looking for a snack when you’re not even hungry
- realize that cleaning your place suddenly seems more appealing than usual
- realize you’re wasting time on your phone and you don’t even remember picking it up
- scour your To Do list for something — anything — else that you could do right now
What you do notice, is the guilt and the stress over your procrastination. Looking at the clock to see another hour has slipped away. Crossing something important off your schedule again. Feeling hopelessly behind.
It’s starting to feel like you have to choose between your freedom and your dreams
The only thing that seems to really help is when a hard deadline or a person watching over your shoulder makes you get it done. But you love your freedom and flexibility, and you don’t want to spend every workday feeling self-conscious and constrained just in order to get stuff done.
And yet, the consequences are starting to catch up to you. Maybe your procrastination is starting to hurt your career, or maybe you’re working late to compensate, and:
- your loved ones are feeling neglected
- you’re eating fast food, skipping your workouts, and skimping on sleep, or
- your passion project is gathering dust and you feel neglected.
I’ve been there.
I know how scary that choice is, and I want to show you another possibility. I want you to get to experience the pride of ending a workday with a sense of accomplishment, not because someone scared you into an adrenaline rush, but because you trusted yourself enough to face your challenges. I want you to feel the relaxation of leaving work behind and being fully present for your loved ones.
But before we go further, check if my approach is built for you.
Who I can help
My work will be most helpful to you if:
- You would have enough time if only you could use your time effectively. If you’re being asked to do an inhuman amount of work, you don’t need a coach; you need a labor union. But if you procrastinate, spend too much time on unimportant things, get stuck doomscrolling, or otherwise waste time, I can help you.
- You can still do your favorite things. If you’re so unmotivated or fatigued that you can’t even do things that you feel totally unconflicted about, then I recommend consulting a doctor or mental health professional instead.
- You may be ADHD, but if you are, you’ve learned enough about how you work and gotten enough support that you’re ready to focus on the fear- and shame-based reasons for your procrastination. I am neurodiversity-affirming, work successfully with ADHD clients, and have ADHD traits myself, but I am not an ADHD specialist.
- You’re open to exploring your emotions. I never push people to go further or faster than feels comfortable, and a lot of my skill is in creating the safety to explore emotions. But you should know that this isn’t a website about superficial changes to your planner and intellectual analysis of your patterns. My work is powerful precisely because I go deeper than that, and it’s okay if that’s not what you’re looking for.
Next Steps
Find the root cause of your particular flavor of procrastination with my quiz, What’s Your Procrastination Type?
It pairs well with the next post in this series, Why You Procrastinate.