Is Your Preparation Turning Into Procrastination?
“The best is the enemy of the good.”
There are a few bags of laundry that have been sitting in the girls’ room for weeks because I just never got around to packing them away. Procrastination is the disease that is constantly plaguing us on a daily basis. I can name so many things that I have on the list that need to get done that haven’t been done yet. While some may associate procrastination with laziness (it may be true for some), more often, it’s the result of task aversion. We are less inclined to do something if we deem it too difficult, boring, painful, etc.
When we talk about procrastination, we all focus on tasks that have not been done but there’s another form of procrastination that I’d like to focus on today, and that is when your preparation turns into procrastination. In Atomic Habits, James Clear gives an example of Jerry Uelsmann, a professor at the University of Florida. He was conducting an experiment where he split his film photography class into two sections. The first section would be the ‘quantity’ group that would be solely graded on the number of photos they submitted - with 100 photos equaling an A. The second section would be the ‘quality’ group and they’d be graded solely on producing one perfect picture.
Surprisingly, he found that all the best photos came from the quantity group. In the process of creating hundreds of photos, they honed their skills, therefore creating quality images. James Clear refers to this as the difference between being in motion and taking action. “When you are in motion, you are planning and strategizing and learning. Those are all good things, but they don’t produce a result” (pg. 142).
If you want to start a business, you can easily get caught up in reading a lot of books about the subject, watching hundreds of videos on YouTube, etc. All this planning process can take such a long time that you end up not producing any results. This preparation is definitely better than not getting started but when it lasts for too long, it turns into procrastination itself. The key is not be perfect but to practice repetition – the more you do something, the better you’ll become at it. “When preparation becomes a form of procrastination, you need to change something. You don’t want to merely be planning. You want to be practicing” (pg. 143).
This week, if there’s something that you’ve been sitting on, just go ahead and get started without waiting for the perfect time or for your skills to be perfected.
About my outfit:
I love this black and silver Zara blazer dress with glittering silver sequins. It’s a bold statement piece that will make you stand out at any night event. I like the mid-length sleeves and the slightly padded shoulders. It’s currently sold out but you can get an exact copy from Lulu’s for half the price.
