Do more, use less

I'll come out and say it, I'm a lazy ass. Well, not so much lazy, but a pretty effective procrastinator. And an ass. Sometimes.

The biggest problem with being a procrastinator, is that, in my case, I'm also a fairly ambitious creative procrastinator. That is, I do not procrastinate because I'm avoiding doing the house chores, or looking for a job, or any of that stuff. Okay, so I procrastinate about doing my chores. And I'm not the most proactive job seeker in town. Mind you, I have some good reasons, like not actually needing to work for the time being, yet I get paid anyways. Which may be part of the problem.

The problem is really a mental process; procrastination is the art of finding reasons to delay the inevitable, at least as far as concrete actions are concerned. Laziness is more not doing things because you dont give a shit about it, so why bother. Procrastination is about throwing real or imagined obstacles in the way to prevent one from starting anything in the first place. Its imagining that the obstacle has some sort of cause-and-effect relationship with some objective, whether actual or completely made-up.

Where my problem lies is that I have let things pile up. While I may wake up (or go to bed) with the motivation to get things done, sitting at the desk, in front of the screen pretty much sucks that energy dry. While here, the point of view is that the whole house is a mess, that every piece of that mess is a massive boulder to push up that thorny path to accomplishment, and really, there's all those news items I haven't read yet, so I'll do that first.

But seriously, when you can manage to get your ass off of the chair and start moving around, you realize that the effort is all about beginning, not finishing. Its really harder to convince yourself that you can, and will do it than it is to just... do.

So various strategies will have to be implemented to bypass that brain drain and just get the hands and feet going. Allocating a limited time to wake-up/breakfast/read the news should get me off the screen and looking for action. Readjusting my sleep cycle will be another improvement, as staying up late does nothing to accomplish anything (as noise is an issue, and a great excuse for putting things off for later), and neither does getting up late (as you then already feel bad for not getting up earlier.) Just that will also help me readjust to the eventual return-to-work schedule, whenever that happens.

There are few changes that can effectively take place instantaneously. The most effective ones are those that are both natural and incremental, baby steps in the right direction. You can sit down once in a while and take a break, but you keep going in the right direction. That's how objectives are attained, whether its cleaning the dishes, or finishing that short story.

And I'm late starting on that.