Procrastination

A few years ago, my sister told me about the OHIO principle--Only Handle It Once. Whether it’s opening mail, paying bills, cleaning, or making an appointment, deal with it right away. In theory this sounds like a great plan.

I’m pretty good about replying to email and returning phone calls within 24 hours. (Unless, of course, I don’t like that person!) I usually don’t put off regular house cleaning, paying bills, exercising, writing blog posts, or doing taxes either.

I procrastinate about washing pots and pans after a meal, going to the dentist, dusting ceiling fans, shampooing carpets, purchasing big-ticket items and starting long-term projects. These are the things I really don’t want to do. Subconsciously, I’m hoping that if I stall long enough, someone else will take care of it, or I’ll just forget to do it, and it won’t really bother anyone.

Procrastination is just a delay tactic to avoid things we really dislike. The longer we wait, the more monumental the task feels. What starts off as a small unpleasant project that might take 30 minutes to do, turns into an all- day undertaking later. And obviously, if you didn’t want to take 30 minutes to do it a month ago, you sure don’t want to spend a whole day dealing with it now!

When I was a kid, I always ate my least favorite thing first and saved the best for last. I’ve tried to do that with chores, but the yucky chores seem to take forever, and I’m too exhausted and cranky to do anything after that. When we have several left-over dishes in the fridge, our family reluctantly sits down to a “left-over smorgasbord” meal. Maybe I could make a procrastination list--things that have been left over from my to-do list for several days. I could allot a few hours a week doing something on this list. Yes! I like that. I think I’ll wait till next week to start though…this week’s kinda busy ;-)