Many people struggle with procrastination. I’d like to present you with an image of what’s possibly happening when you have this struggle. Our whole world runs on energy, from the cellular level of our bodies to flights around the world. So think of procrastination as having no gas in the plane. You can’t get off the runway to where you want to go, or can’t complete the flight, because there’s no energy to get you there.
So a question we can pose to ourselves is what’s robbed or robbing me of energy? Some people start tasks but never finish them, they get off the runway but have to land before their destination. Others never get into the air.
It’s all about energy loss or supply. So what’s draining you of energy? It is being overwhelmed? For example, you might look at the overall picture of everything necessary to complete a task and you get so overwhelmed you stop dead in your tracks. This is like looking at an elephant and being told we need to eat it. Impossible. We can only eat that much mass when we do it one bite at a time, over time, and imagining eating the entire mass is enough to stop us right there. Some people lose energy because they’re thinking only of the big picture not the single bite at a time, whatever that ‘bite’ means in what’s before you.
Another way to think about this is that we lose energy because of our narratives, fueled either by others or our personal tapes running in our heads.. We may start out excited but then there’s all kinds of tapes or narratives that slowly (or quickly) drain the positive energy from our being. This is another way of talking about the elephant above, the narrative being, ‘this is impossible, I can never eat this much in one sitting.’ These narratives are always going to be of an oppressive, destructive nature, with the end message that we don’t have what it takes for whatever reason.
We need positive energy, positive narratives to restore our power to fly. Sometimes people are broken loose from being stalled out because a friend or loved ones speaks words that help them believe in what they can do. This is a person pouring energy into their tank and fueling their adventure. So ask yourself, what in your life causes energy to flow into instead of out of you, and if any of those sources are active now. If they’re not, how can you find and activate them?
If you procrastinate, look around at your narratives, explore what in life is draining you of energy, ask yourself if there are any sources of positive energy flowing into you… perhaps you’ll be able to find a way forward, receive fuel for your tank, and complete whatever it is you’ve been unable to find the resources to complete. It’s all about the energy.