By Lisabet Sarai
I started this article, on the topic of
procrastination, nine days before its post date.
Lest you think that I am showing off,
let me assure you that if I hadn't written it today, it might not
have been written at all. On the day this post is supposed to go live
(April 1st), I'll be on a plane to France, headed for a nearly three
week vacation, with uncertain access to the Internet. During the
weekend prior to my departure, the 30th and 31st
of March, I have to finish a novella that is due before I return –
not to mention dealing with all the last minute tasks that crop up
before a long trip and the always harrowing ordeal of packing. Friday
the 29th I have appointments with my lawyer, my banker and
my hair dresser. (I am definitely not going to Paris with gray
roots!) From Monday the 25th through Thursday the 28th
I have a full day of teaching responsibilities every day. So you see,
today (Sunday the 24th) was pretty much the only time I
had available to work on blog posts.
Actually I have to produce another Grip post
for the 15th of April before I leave as well. But that's
not my current task. Right now it's time for me to discuss the
all-too-common propensity for people to resist or delay undertaking
tasks they know they should be doing.
I will admit that I'm less susceptible
to procrastination than many people. I never did an all-nighter in
college. I was one of those annoying people who started researching
term papers the week they were assigned. During grad school, I was
the first student in a decade to complete her dissertation within the
nominally standard four years of study. In my writing life, although
I have sometimes asked editors in advance to extend submission
deadlines, I have yet to miss one to which I've committed. I
occasionally fail to show up for guest blog appointments, but that's
due to spacing out, not procrastination.
God, how absolutely obnoxious!
you are most likely thinking. Before you close your browser in
disgust, however, let me assure you that my focus on accomplishing
assignments and meeting deadlines has nothing to do with virtue or
capability. It's simply a reflection of how anxious and neurotic I am
– and how averse I am to stress.
I absolutely hate pressure. I don't do
well at all when I have tight time constraints. I tend to get
panicky, which seriously interferes with creative thought or
productivity. The more stress I'm under, the more poorly I perform. I
like to feel that I'm in control of my world (except of course, when
I'm the bottom in some kinky scene) and I am ridiculously eager to
please (to be expected, I guess, from a sub). Hence I flounder
miserably when external circumstances almost guarantee that I'll fail
due to insufficient time.
My coping mechanism, my method for
avoiding the extremely negative experience of time pressure, is
advance planning. I break up my week, or my day, into time segments
and schedule the various activities that are on my list into various
time slots. Then, during each time period, I try to focus only on the
activities I've planned to work on. By keeping my mind off all the
other commitments I have to fulfill, this reduces my stress level. If
thoughts of another task, allocated to another time, creep into my
consciousness, I actively squelch them.
Please understand, I'm not obsessive
about this. Mostly, my schedule isn't even written down, though I
usually have an active to-do list that gets revised on a daily basis.
And if a situation arises such that I can't follow my plan, I try to
stay cool. Today, for instance, I'd planned to finish that novella (I
only have 2500 words to go), but my first priority was reviewing the
edits for my upcoming novel Rajasthani Moon. I
expected to finish that by around two PM, but it ended up taking
nearly all day. So I took a deep breath, forced down the
panic, and decided I could slip in this blog post instead.
I do understand procrastination,
though. There are certain things – things without definite
deadlines – that I can put off forever. Making phone calls,
especially business calls to people I don't know. Going to the
dentist or having my annual physical. Straightening out the mess in
my desk drawers. Cleaning the refrigerator. Exercising. Exploring new
promo sites.
One downside of my time management
approach is that there's always something more urgent than these
recurring or background tasks. I can all too easily justify avoiding
them, because hey, that's not what I've allocated to this time slot –
and the task I should be doing is clearly more critical than
something without a deadline!
I actually never realized this until
this moment. If I were to give myself a deadline for these tasks, I'd
probably have no difficulty fitting them into my schedule.
Okay, let's see if that works. It's
about seven in the evening now. I have to format and schedule this
post, and then send out announcements for my Sunday Snog excerpt, and
then, let's say from seven thirty to eight fifteen, I'll commit to
going down to the gym.
I'll let you know how it goes!
