“What is the biggest time waster?” she asked on Facebook.
Facebook, Instagram, email, marketing, cellphones… people answered.
My first, instinctive, response was – fear.
At least for me, fear is the root of procrastination.
When I know what I want to achieve, and how to get there, no distractions can stand in my way.
Loosing myself in Facebook happens when I don’t know what the next step to take is, and don’t feel secure enough to make the decision. This often happens when I start thinking about how other people will react to my actions. (I am currently rethinking the entire premise of this blog post, for example, maybe no one else will find it meaningful. Or, far more likely, I am not managing to express myself well enough for the meaning to come through.)
That being the case, what was I doing on Facebook this morning, having arrived at my clinic an hour before my first patient to make progress on my to-do list?
I looked at my to-do list and saw that the next item to cross off was responding to someone who wanted to schedule a meeting with me on Wednesday.
Why would I be afraid of answering her? Because I didn’t have any free time left on Wednesday, and saying “No” is scary. I also felt bad about not being accommodating because I was the one who had canceled our last meeting, due to coming down sick. (Yes, alternative medicine practitioner get sick too. Especially when we spend a whole week getting quality one-on-one time with patients who have managed to acquire the hot new virus of the season.)
Apparently I dealt with this discomfort by saying to myself that before I try and write a reply I will just open Facebook and check if there are any messaged I need to respond to, and next thing I knew it was 20 minutes later.
Is soon as I realized what had happened, I replied to her message, we scheduled for Sunday instead, and I moved on to the next thing on my to-do list (writing a blog post 🙂 ). But I needed that moment of awarness of myself and my feelings in order to actually understand what was going on with me.
In conclusion, I strongly suggest that next time you find yourself procrastinating, ask yourself what you don’t want to do right now, and see what you answer yourself?
(Many thanks to Kineret Aizenberg for the thought provoking question 🙂 )
Hi! I’m Havva Mahler, a practitioner of Chinese medicine: acupuncture, Chinese herbs, reflexology, tuina, sotai and a bunch of other words you’ve probably never heard of 🙂
I also spend a lot of time thinking and learning about human behavior, because so much of our health is dependent on our actions.
You can find more thoughts on health, wellness and personal growth on my blog, and you can also sign up here to get future blog posts delivered by carrier pigeon email.