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South China Morning Post, October 14, 2006

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Time of your life

by Susie Li

Last Saturday afternoon, I found myself faced with three tasks. Standing in front of my sink to wash dishes, I realised that the floor was wet. An investigation revealed a leaky pipe at the back of my washing machine that required me to switch it off mid-cycle. Not only did I have to wash the dishes, I now had to clean up the flooded cupboard and take the soggy clothes to the launderette.

It was all too much for one day. Immediately, I called to arrange for someone to come to repair the washing machine and was told I’d have to wait until Monday. Next, I rested for a while before mustering the courage to deal with the flooded cupboard. I ate out for dinner and cleaned up the dishes from lunch afterwards.

I delayed dealing with the clothes in my washing machine until the next day, mainly because I had to wring dry all the items before taking them to the launderette.

These days, I procrastinate much less, but even this cost me time and prolonged feelings of powerlessness and guilt. It was an opportunity lost for me to do other things on a Sunday morning.

We all procrastinate to some extent. We tell ourselves we should be doing the tasks at hand. However, we may be anxious or uncomfortable at the thought of tackling them. So, we distract ourselves with other things.

But if we focus on how we will feel once the task is completed, we’re more likely to be motivated to do it soon.

Procrastination is a form of self-sabotage and is habit-forming. There’s always a reason and it’s always worth knowing. Often, certain fears can cause procrastination, such as the fear of failure, not being good enough or fear of being rejected. To me, fear stands for “false expectation appearing real”.

Perfectionism is often based on fear. In fact, the work of a perfectionist is often less than perfect because they procrastinate and become paralysed by overly high standards. They may rush to finish work at the last minute, compared with someone who does the work at a leisurely pace, allowing time to modify as needed.

It’s important for a perfectionist to become self-aware, set realistic steps to attain a goal and start the work. Aim for excellence rather than perfection. Celebrate incremental achievements with favourite treats.

Another way of looking at procrastination is that everything we do, we do out of a need to avoid pain and/or our desire to gain pleasure. We may want to lose weight, but we let the pain of depriving ourselves of food and of exercising overshadow the pleasure of feeling better in more choices of clothes, getting compliments, having better health and feeling more confident.

It’s important to assign much greater pleasure to the benefit of losing weight. Replace the “have to” mentality with “want to”. Be creative in ensuring that the weight-loss process is fun in terms of the choice of exercises, activities and food.

With habitual procrastination, we may not be attracting opportunity. Even if opportunity comes knocking on the door, we may not be able to hold on to it. People would rather do business with someone who responds and adds value to them immediately.

Life becomes more fun when we take full responsibility and pride in what we do. Who wants to waste time anyway?

Susie Li is a career coach and member of the Hong Kong International Coaching Community. She can be reached at li.susie@gmail.com