How I Overcame Procrastination for a Day

One of my weaknesses? Procrastination. I suspect it is for a lot of people. The self help isles of bookstores are filled with books on conquering your fears and conquering procrastination. More than a few success gurus reveal the "secrets" of how they use procrastination to their advantage and increase their efficiency. I only know this: when I put off something that I know I should be doing, I feel lousy. Every negative feeling that I have ever had about myself because I put off doing something that I have labeled as important rears it's ugly head. Before Christmas, I had an experience overcoming procrastination that has left me wondering number 1 why a simple home improvement project had me paralyzed for almost five years and number 2 can I use what I've learned to shorten the procrastination cycle?

First some background. Five years ago we bought a farm house. The home had been used as a rental property and the owner had added an additional room. The main house had a traditional foundation complete with crawl space. The added room was on a concrete slab. The owner solved the problem of heating the add on by installing baseboard heating. When we got the house, a contractor was in the process of adding forced hot air to the house. It was easy to run the necessary ducts through the crawl space in the main house. The add-on? Not so much. The contractor chose to bring a duct through the floor of the main house and through the wall of the add on to get heat to that room. The result was two unsightly defects requiring a cosmetic cover up.

One of the defects was in our living room next to our fireplace, a black, ugly tube coming up through the floor and going out through the wall in a room in which we and our company spend a lot of time. My job was to cover the defect in a decorative way. I knew what I had to do, but I didn't...do it. The task was simple enough: construct, or frame out a box, cover the box with rigid material, cover the material with something decorative. I am actually a fairly skilled carpenter, but there was one thing that I needed to do that was outside my skill set. I had to work with concrete backer board.

The fear of imperfection kept me paralyzed for a number of years. The board was purchased and taking up room in the house. I had the tools that I needed and I read instructions about how to work with backer board. Things had truly gotten ridiculous. I'd come home, look at the unused board and the defects in our floor and wall and think, loser. Then something shifted. I realized that I wasn't trying to construct the Eiffel Tower, I was just trying to construct a box. The box wasn't part of the foundation of my house, it just had to be decorative and support about 100 pounds. Then I gave myself permission to be imperfect. If I made a mistake? so what? The city building inspector wasn't going to raid and condemn my home. That particular litany, that it is okay to make a mistake, was one I had to repeat to myself throughout my project. I developed a formula for overcoming procrastination:

1) Identify the project
2) Assess the importance of the project. I figured that if I truly needed a perfect outcome, I might need to hire the project out.
3) Do my best to determine the steps of the project
4) Make time for the project and defend that time to the point of being rude.
5) Just do something. What I found was even the smallest effort toward the completion of my project lead to greater activity and an improved sense of satisfaction.

Gosh, it was so simple once I got started. It was amazing. I didn't set artificial deadlines. Deadlines are too easy to blow through any way and I find that they can hurt as much as help. My project didn't turn out perfectly. It is a quarter inch out of square, something I notice every time I look at it, but it is finished. The victory is in finishing.

Since December I finished a manuscript, my taxes are done, I have a new door on my home. Once I decided that I needed to pay to have that done, a handy man just magically appeared. Funny how that works. We even have a new wood stove and I was able to take maximum advantage of a tax credit I did not even know existed. I spend less time worrying about not completing projects and more time getting things done which has strangely translated into feeling as though I have more time.


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Ouida Vincent is a physician, active real estate investor and entrepreneur who has made more than her fair share of mistakes on life's challenging road. Ouida has made all of the mistakes she writes about and has come out on the other side wealthier, healthier and smarter than before. To find more interesting how-to articles, business tips and key success and life philosophies go to http://www.ouidavincent.com