Don’t Procrastinate – Do the Work

Whatever you’ve been putting off, don’t procrastinate. Do the work. You won’t regret it and you’ll get the weight of it off your shoulders and under your feet as a stepping stone of progress to your next thing.

What we delay, weakens us. When we don’t procrastinate and we do the things we know we should do promptly with alacrity, we grow stronger, more confident and capable.

Promptitude will vanquish procrastination with alacrity.
~LeAura Alderson, iCreateDaily.com®

RELATED: Procrastination Quotes

When You Face Your Fears They Disappear

A couple weeks ago our dining room chandelier was being cleaned and it just fell from the ceiling. It dangled there, suspended by just the electrical wire, threatening to crash onto the table at any moment.

My son and I struggled to hold it up to keep it from breaking the wire or pulling it from the ceiling. My husband, Coleman was working, in his office in another room with door was closed. He was in the middle of a coaching call with an investment education student. Nikolai rushed to his office, asking him to come quickly… it was an emergency. So Coleman put the call on hold and came running out to see what the ruckus was about.

Nikolai and I strained to hold up the fixture, while Coleman tried to get it put back up, but it wasn’t going to happen without some additional work. He had to get back to his client, so he just took some scissors and cut the wire. It would have to be mended and rehung another day.

The Longer We Waited the Harder It Seemed

We sat the fixture on a towel on the floor by the wall where it stayed for a couple weeks. There wasn’t time to get to it, plus it was easier not to.

It was going to require some careful planning and finagling to get it back together and in safe working order. It would take careful construction of ladders, boards as props, plus tools and two assistants to hold it up and steady while the wires were being spliced together and the chandelier reattached.

The more you procrastinate, the bigger the task looms in your mind. Action leads to success.
~LeAura Alderson, iCreateDaily.com®

Procrastination Saps Energy and Worse

Procrastination drains energy by occupying attention units. That program of what needs to get done is running in the back of your mind, even if you’re not directly thinking of it, it’s draining your mental and emotional resources.

A good analogy is your computer desktop and taskbars. The more you have open and running, the slower your computer because each thing open requires energy, even running in the background and not in use. Same with all the dangling undone tasks.

All of us at some point or other have spent more time bemoaning what needs to be done than it would’ve taken to just get up and get the thing done. So don’t procrastinate and you will save time and energy and feel a whole lot better about yourself and your life.

Procrastination saps your energy, weakens your confidence and can even lead to anxiety.
~LeAura Alderson, iCreateDaily.com®

Discipline or Deadlines

With family visitors coming in a few days for Thanksgiving, it needed to get done. 4 am Monday morning prior, I lay awake with “train brain” of all the things to do this week.

The chandelier wasn’t up and my husband’s schedule was also full. Could he fix it in time or could we get an electrician out soon enough? But that’s another expense and we’ve had a handful of major repair expenses lately.

I was even thinking about asking the family if we could change our Thanksgiving meal venue from our house to my mom’s next door. Either that or have wires dangling where the chandelier should be, and that wasn’t a pretty option.

Instead, we realized it was time to stop procrastinating and get it done. Today. So we did. And while it wasn’t easy, it wasn’t as hard as we imagined it was going to be. 

With a little careful forethought and planning and the three of us working together it got done within an hour from start to finish. That includes setup and breakdown of all the various tools, ladders and other props needed.

It wasn’t as big a deal as we’d imagined. If we’d just done it sooner, it wouldn’t have loomed, taxed our attention with concern, nor escalated into stress. Lesson learned.

Deadlines force you to get things done. Discipline is choosing to do what needs to be done before it becomes a crisis.
~LeAura Alderson, iCreateDaily.com®

The Lesson

Don’t make things a big deal… just a big priority. Just do the work.

Do the thing that’s been bothering you, that keeps coming to mind as needing doing… that makes you cringe or sigh or feel bad when you think about it.

Just get it done, and it will empower you.

The only difference between success and failure is the ability to take action.”
~Alexander Graham Bell, inventor, scientist, engineer, 1847-1922

Don’t Procrastinate… Accelerate!

Whether it’s knee replacement surgery, writing your book, losing weight and getting fitter, getting that website built or updated, organizing your art or writing your artist bio, don’t procrastinate. It’s probable that at least 95% of the time the task is not as challenging as you’ve blown it up to be in your mind.

The fear, dread and anticipation of the thing makes it bigger and more ominous than it is. Thus to face the fear, get it done and out of the way frees up tremendous life energy. Energy that can definitely be put to better use elsewhere.

A Creative Prompt — Do the Work

PROMPT: Think On It

1. Think of something you used to not know how to do, but now that you do, it’s easy.
2. Next, think of something you’ve been putting off because it seems too hard… too ominous a task.
3. Face that fear in the face, embrace it, dance with it and get it done.

You know you can do it, because you’ve done it many times before. You’ve taken on the challenge of learning something new and doing hard things. So you can do it again, now.

This is especially important to keep doing as we age. Taking on new challenges is a free anti-aging serum that truly helps to keep us younger and our brain and body more agile. 

If we take it on, we will have gained muscle from lifting the weight of that perceived burden, and subsequently become stronger and more capable.

Often procrastination is due to fear, but the beautiful thing is that when you face the fear it disappears. The more you procrastinate the larger it looms. Fear cannot withstand positive action, it will turn on its heels and run.

Don’t procrastinate. If we don’t do it today because it’s hard, it won’t be easier tomorrow… or next year, and we won’t be stronger… unless we do the work we need to do now.
~LeAura Alderson, iCreateDaily.com®

Top Feature ImagePhoto by Fabrizio Verrecchia on Unsplash