6 Non Obvious Types of Procrastination You Didn’t Know You Were Doing
Procrastination isn’t always as obvious as choosing to watch Netflix, go shopping on Amazon, or go out with your friends instead of doing the work you know you’re supposed to do.
There are ways that we procrastinate that disguise themselves as productive, responsible, and even necessary activities.
And that’s what makes them so insidious.
We can feel like we’re doing something good for ourselves, but we’re actually getting further away from starting the project that will get us closer to the life we want.
These are my favorite ways to procrastinate.
Because when I do these things, I can (very easily) convince myself that I’m doing a good thing, the right thing, I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing.
The other tricky thing with everything on this list is that it actually is good to a degree.
Up to a certain notch on the spectrum, you are doing something good, right, productive.
But it’s about finding the sweet spot—the point where you should stop.
And then getting the heck to work!
Are you guilty of overdoing it with any of these?
Researching
When I was a child, I would pick one thing, and get obsessed with it.
And I do mean obsessed.
Like, if this sort of zeal and behavior carried over to people, I would be locked up in an insane asylum or prison.
That kind of obsessed.
But luckily my obsession was siphoned off to things…and sometimes animals.
I went through various phases.
During my dog phase…
I would constantly ask my parents (grandparents, when I wore out my requests with my parents) to take me to the library, so I could check out the max number of books on every breed of dog known to man, and how to care for them, train them, and breed them.
Why does a 9-year-old need 24 books on how to raise a show dog to win the Eukanuba National Championship?
They don’t.
Then when the books weren’t giving me my fix anymore, I needed real world exposure.
So that meant begging to be taken to the Humane Society.
Every. 👏🏾Weekend.👏🏾
To do what?
Who knows.
We never took a dog home from there.
But that didn’t stop me from begging to go every Saturday, or getting a feeling of immense joy and satisfaction when we actually did.
When I was super into video cameras (back when they were called “camcorders” and weren’t built into cell phones–gosh, cell phones might not have even been a thing then), I would beg to go to Circuit City.
For those unfamiliar, Circuit City was Best Buy, but with a different color scheme, worse lighting, and a lower customer base, since…ya know…they’re gone now.
I would do anything to go tinker with those cameras.
I just wanted to see them, touch them, press the buttons, scroll through the settings menu, read the features on the box…I know, weird stuff for a kid.
Then when AOL sent that first CD in the mail and I got privy to the internet, woooo, my research game went to the next level.
I was obsessed with gathering information.
Window shopping.
Whether my obsessions ever materialized or not, never mattered to me.
I was addicted to information. And the seeking, acquisition, and hoarding of knowledge was enough to satisfy me and distract me from the fact that I didn’t actually own the things I wanted so badly.
This same phenomenon can so easily happen when we get excited about a new goal or venture.
It’s a slippery slope–watching youtube videos, listening to podcasts recommended by those youtube videos, listening to audiobooks recommended by those podcasts, reading books recommended by those audiobooks…all to gather enough information to do just one thing…
If you think of your goal as a house, you only need enough information to learn how to lay the next brick.
So don’t get stuck in the research phase.
It’s not enough to know how to do something. At some point, you have to actually do it.
Validating
This is the obsessive search for proof of concept.
This one starts with me getting an idea.
This idea either feels a little (or a lot) bigger than I am, is beyond my current capabilities or idea of what’s feasible, is a little off the wall, or some combination of the above.
It’s different, it doesn’t look quite like anything I’ve seen before, I’ve never done anything like it before, and for whatever reason, it seems scary.
So I’m not convinced that executing it will work out.
So I look for people who have done this new thing that I want to do. And I get real granular about it too…
Can I find someone who has done it successfully?
Okay, I found someone who does it successfully. But are they my age?
Okay, I found someone who’s my age who does it successfully. But are they my gender?
Okay, I found someone who’s my gender and my age who does it successfully. But are they my race?
Okay, I found someone who’s my race and my gender and my age who does it successfully. But are they from my hometown?
It goes on forever.
I’m looking for someone with my exact situation, because subconsciously I believe that if I can find a clone of myself who has done this, it will give me the confidence to believe that I can do it too.
Representation absolutely does matter. (loaded topic for another day…)
But you also have to remember that someone else’s success is not yours.
Even if you do find someone exactly like you who has achieved exactly what you want to achieve, it doesn’t mean that you will get the same results as them.
Seeking validation through representation is not a guarantee of success for you.
On the other hand, sometimes people obsessively seek validation not through the image of the person executing, but through the thing itself that’s being executed.
I’ve been on the receiving end of this one.
A few years ago, I bought a course to start what became the first online business I ever saw real success with, posted about my experience in the facebook group and gave a testimonial, and then the questions all started flooding in:
What’s your niche?
Where did you get your products made?
How long did it take to make X amount of dollars?
How many products do you need to make a full time living?
I don’t see how that’s possible-how exactly did you do that?
I’m on the fence about buying the course, does it really work?
These were questions that came from people who would ultimately never see success because they didn’t have it in them to put something on the line for the unknown.
99% of these people would never make it past those questions, because they wanted to know for sure that it would work before making a move.
Whether it’s obsessively seeking validation through representation or execution, they both boil down to the same thing–our natural desire for certainty.
People don’t want risk. They want guarantees.
But the good stuff doesn’t come from guarantees.
It comes on the other side of having taken risks.
Inspiring
This is one of my favorite ways to procrastinate.
(And I’m guessing I’m not alone here.)
It only manifests itself in one way—social media.
It starts off innocently enough.
You open your laptop with the intention to work.
Then you remember you had a notification you wanted to respond to (real quick 👀).
Or you think you’ll just peruse around the interwebs for a few minutes while you finish your coffee (or maybe two 👀).
Or you decide to take a quick break (before you even start to work 👀).
And so it begins…
Scrolling through instagram. Watching youtube videos. Peering through the digital lens of whatever medium the kids are using these days to share their greatest moments online. Looking at other people live their best lives.
You get yourself all hyped up, in a good mood, hopeful, and optimistic.
The future is bright.
At least it is for the people you’re watching.
Because you’re watching them actually do things—make moves, create, produce.
But you’re doing nothing. While watching them do things. See the problem here?
After hours of this, you then have the nerve to exhale a sigh with a smile, and gently close your laptop with the mental and emotional satisfaction of having done a day’s work.
Except you haven’t done any work.
Like, literally none.
You’re no closer to your goals than you were when you started, but your brain has tricked you into experiencing the joy of achievement.
Crazy how tricky the brain can be like that–it can’t tell the real thing from a simulation.
While it may feel good to see what incredible things are possible through others, it will never feel as good as doing incredible things yourself.
The temporary high from scrolling through social media and seeing what others are doing will never outweigh the long term high from taking a dream yourself from idea to reality–your own reality.
Planning
A planner, when put into my hands, can be a weapon of mass destruction…of my own destruction.
And don’t even get me started on digital planning.
As if a to-do list wasn’t fun enough on paper, the world of digital planning unlocked a whole new level of child-like joy for me.
I could gleefully spend ALL day buried in spreadsheets and project management software, formatting and “playing with” tasks instead of doing them.
And then there’s the equally exciting cousin to planning: organizing.
This is the part where I have to–no, get to–find and gather the perfect resources I need to pretend to work.
Looking for the right software (that’s a big one), getting things in order, creating file organization systems on my computer, preparing to get shit done.
This is the equivalent of stacking papers instead of writing on them.
But it’s all just putting off what’s actually necessary, but usually more difficult and less fun.
You do not need a perfect plan.
You do not need to feel 100% about your plan.
If you were a farmer, you can’t just write lists of what crops you want to grow, draw plans of where you’ll plant things on your land, make schedules of when you’ll fertilize the soil…
You can’t just organize all your seeds into a beautiful array of baskets.
It doesn’t matter how well you alphabetize and color code those baskets, you’re not getting a harvest until you actually do the work to plant and grow those crops.
You have to actually put the seeds in the ground in order to have a harvest.
Editing
This is procrastination done under the guise of improvement—improvement that we convince ourselves is necessary in order to successfully complete the task at hand.
Of course, you shouldn’t just put out your very first draft without reviewing it.
But you don’t need 1,462 drafts either to put out your first iteration of a project.
That’s the key term here: iteration.
Think of things in iterations.
Everything is not written in blood or etched in stone.
Things will evolve over time, but you will never allow that chance if you edit everything to death and never put anything out.
There comes a point where you have to stop working on a project.
Not because it’s perfect (not a thing, btw), but because you have to move forward and get on with your life. And you’re going to end up in a psych ward if you don’t stop obsessing over the same little things.
The thing about improvement is that it could never stop.
A stopping point is completely arbitrary, so the process of editing can go on forever.
And if you’re on the wrong end of the perfectionistic spectrum (like me😬), the process of editing will go on forever.
Which doesn’t even make sense because the ideal stopping point would be different depending on which person you ask.
You have to learn how to let good enough be good enough.
What if it doesn’t need to be any better?
What if it just needs to be done?
Needing
We so easily fall into the trap of thinking we need more of something in order to accomplish our goals.
I need a special software, I need a connection, I need a referral, I need an office, I need a studio, I need a top-of-the-line this, I need the latest that…
Thinking we need more than we have to get started is just a way of procrastination.
It’s just a way of succumbing to fear.
It’s a way of letting ourselves off the hook.
It’s a way of staying small to avoid the pressures of growing into something big.
You don’t need money. You need resourcefulness.
You don’t need knowledge. You need action.
You don’t need inspiration. You need execution.
You don’t need time. You need time management.
You don’t need tools. You need creativity.
You don’t need confidence. You need courage.
You don’t need anything else.
The only thing you need is to learn how to work with what you already have.
Start with what you have right now.
Don’t let the lack or absence of something stop you from taking your first step.
All the tools, resources, and teachers that you need to accomplish your goal are ready, and waiting for you to get started now so they can show up along your journey at just the right time.
