Almost everyone would agree that procrastination is their nemesis. Procrastination disrupts one’s plans for the day, week or even years depending on the level of it. The swimming lessons that you always wanted to take but never took them. The schedule that you never failed to prepare before the start of your academic year but unfortunately failed consistently to actually implement it. They were all victims of your procrastination!
To begin with, procrastination isn’t one homogenous entity. It comprises an amalgamation of fear, anxiety, boredom and laziness. Contrary to the popular belief that procrastination is only a result of a person’s laziness, anxiety and fear or fear-induced anxiety play a major role as well. Remember planning your week around ‘the most important thing’ and then doing everything but that thing? Probably also those activities which you normally wouldn’t do if you hadn’t planned anything! These are all clear indications of you being overwhelmed by ‘the most important thing’
Similarly, getting out of bed for physical training isn’t overwhelming because it is tough, rather it’s easier to stay in bed than leave comfort a.k.a Laziness. The underlying reason could be that either it’s not challenging or rewarding enough. Anyways the point is that your bum refuses to leave the neighbourhoods of comfort, mentally as well (paralysed overthinking) as physically!
Now then, what does this have to with one-eyed vision? And how can adopting this approach help overcoming procrastination?
In case you were wondering why we have two eyes, to begin with, they offer us the ability of depth perception. In simple words, to understand how far an object is from another. If you have been reading this blog, you would already see where we are heading; making analogies and deriving logic, cogently!
All the causes of procrastination; less rewarding, less challenging, overwhelming or anxiety-provoking are all a result of our tendency to look a step ahead. Honestly, it wouldn’t have been a problem with only one step ahead, but we probably go a million steps ahead, sadly only in mind. And how could we not? Evolution made it inevitable to look really carefully before taking a leap! Fair enough. However, the very same circuit has its side effect, it stops you from taking action.
It is here where we can switch off our natural circuit and enter the hot waters with one eye closed. That is, to start without knowing how long it will take, how rewarding it would be or how challenging the task would be. Just start. How many times we have experienced that, when inside the gym, in midst of a workout, everything seems alright and streamlined. Often it’s getting to the gym that is more overwhelming than the actual workout. The same goes for learning a new skill or cleaning your room. The start to start an activity is the key.
I can already hear voices; “How is it good to have less vision? We can’t set priorities without vision!”
And that’s one hundred per cent true. But honestly, most of us are already smart enough to ‘know what works’ but not many of us can ‘do what works’. In any case, you would be in an advantageous situation, as we discover the real problems only when we actually start doing something rather than paralysing ourselves with the hypothetical problems and simulation, which get you nowhere!
And there are real demons out there. The time spent facing real problems is a definitive step ahead of time spent fighting the hypothetically created demons in the head; irrespective of the visible outcome.
So, the next time onwards, when you set your schedule (which you surely will), maybe you could enter the fray and beat procrastination with a one-eyed patch!
