Procrastination and Stress

by Crystal Meeks
(Waco, Texa,s United States)

Procrastination was one of the main things I had to learn to fight.

I am a mother of five, and for a long time I had a bad habit of procrastination.

I found many different reasons for procrastinating, and when I look back on them now, I realize they were not valid reasons.

Focusing my attention on one particular thing was very hard for me.

I am a very easily distracted person, so a phone call or one of the kids needing something would lead me into forgetting what I was doing or just losing my place at what I was doing, which in turn made have the feeling of frustration.

When working on a very tiresome or annoying task, I at times would leave it to do something else thinking that I would get back to it later.

Guess what?

That rarely happened the way I had it planned out in my mind, so then I was aggravated, agitated, stressed and frustrated, for now I had to figure out how to get done, what I should have already had done, but usually with very little time or not enough time which meant I was putting something else off until a later time.

Do you see the vicious circle here? I had to come up with a plan to ease the frustration and lighten my load.

After talking to people, and in some cases just observing, I made a decision that I would no longer feel like time was my jail sentence but to do that I had to figure out what my main objectives were.

I made a list of what I felt were the most important things I needed to accomplish in a particular week.

I then broke that week down into days and days in two hours. Then I had to do some analyzing.

If a particular task took a maximum time of 30 minutes to complete, I would give myself an hour.

I also learned how to delegate some task to the children instead of trying to do everything myself.

Why?

Well as a mother, I found that I would be interrupted often, so by using the maximum time and allowing 30 minutes longer I was allowing myself plenty of time to finish the task and possible a little rest time before I started the next task.

Or I would start the next task and let the extra time accumulate, so that later I could just to sit down or go and do something for myself.

I literally made myself a list; I even titled the list and gave my reasons for my list.

I then broke it down, and then broke it down again if I needed to.

I started with what was the most important or critical task to complete and went on until I was at a task that didn’t matter or just something that I wanted to do.

I divided them out between the days of the week and the hours of the day.

I posted my list on a clip board so that it was handy for me to look at especially if I had been interrupted or when I was just tired of that task, my list reminded me of why I had made it in the first place.

I know it may seem like a long drawn out procedure just to get a little extra time, but in the long run it was worth every bit of time gained and the peace I gained by losing the frustration and relieving the stress level in my life.

Kell's reply

Hi Crystal

What a great post. Congratulations on overcoming procrastination and taking control. Wishing you the best in a life of less stress and quality time with your children.

Procrastination can be a hard habit to beat. Many of the steps that Crystal talks about is also discussed in these steps for overcoming procrastination.