The hidden cost of procrastination.

This week flew by. Before I knew it, it was Thursday night and I still hadn’t written the blog I planned to publish the next morning.

This made me laugh a little, because what a better topic to write about than procrastination.

We are all guilty of it weather it’s a business idea, having a difficult conversation, a workout routine.

We say over and over we will start tomorrow and tomorrow never seems to come.

I don’t necessarily think that procrastination is always laziness although it can be. I think often times it’s our minds trying to protect us from something uncomfortable.

I think we spend a lot of time chasing emotions like happiness, confidence, and success, while trying to avoid emotions like fear, uncertainty, rejection, and discomfort.

The problem is that the emotions we avoid are often the very ones we have to walk through to reach the life we want.

The emotion I think that we tend to avoid most is fear

Fear is not always obvious.

Sometimes it’s fear of failure. Sometimes its fear of succeeding and suddenly having expectations. Sometimes it’s fear of judgement or looking foolish. Or sometimes it’s simply fear of the unknown.

I think we don’t avoid tasks always because we are lazy, but rather the way the task will make us feel.

The problem that comes with avoiding fear especially for long periods of time is there is always a hidden cost.

If we spend our lives avoiding fear, we often avoid the very experiences that help us grow. Without growth we lose opportunity, increase our anxiety, lower our confidence, and most importantly break the promises we make to ourselves.

I am majorly guilty of this. I have tried many sales type jobs, and I always procrastinate them and ultimately quit because of fear. I hate the idea of rejection and “inconveniencing” or “annoying” someone. This has cost me many good jobs and opportunities for growth and success.

I always would say I’ll make that call tomorrow or I’ll try again tomorrow and this was a day on loop.

Every time we tell ourselves, “I’ll start tomorrow”, we quietly teach ourselves that our own promises don’t matter.

Not because we aren’t capable, but because we have practiced postponing instead of acting.

I even did that with this website and blog when I started. Putting it off for fear no one would read it, for fear of being judged and laughed at, waiting until I had planned everything perfectly.

Or even with posting on social media especially videos of me. I remember recording videos over and over because they weren’t perfect and never posting them. To be honest I still do this quite often, with the small change that I post some of them now.

That’s because I decided to not let fear win and that any kind of small progress was better than having it perfect. Otherwise, I would never have ended up here.

We often seem to ask for motivation to act. But I’ve found we gain motivation through action.

We have to stop telling ourselves to stop procrastinating and rather ask ourselves the right questions. What emotion am I avoiding by not doing this, what is a small next step, if I wasn’t afraid what would I do today?

The small actions build up just like with the habits I talked about. You don’t have to stop procrastinating writing a book and write the whole thing, just write one page. If your procrastinating cleaning, start with just five dishes. It all starts with one small action.

Maybe the life you’re waiting for isn’t waiting for more motivation.

Maybes it’s not waiting for the perfect time.

Maybe it’s waiting on one small decision you have been putting off.

One phone call, one page, one workout, one conversation.

Small steps don’t just move us closer to our goals; they remind us that we are capable of keeping the promises we make to ourselves.

So I want to leave you with the same question I have been asking myself this week. What have I been calling procrastination when it’s really fear?