Procrastination. What in the fuck is it? Why do we do it? What benefit does it give us? Why do now what could have been done earlier? What's being posted on Instagram right now? Let me go check my email real quick. Okay, nothing to respond to. Let me rip through reddit for a minute. Okay, nothing huge happening in the world right now. Did I check Instagram? Maybe someone sent me a message I need to respond to. Oh, I should probably check facebook while I'm at it. Was my email already at 3,958 messages or was it at 3,957? Let me see if I got a new email. I want to make sure I do all of this right before I sit down to write so I have a clear mind and don't have to pick up my phone. Wait, did I get a text message? Let me check. Nope, nothing. Okay, cool…so now I can sit down to write. Well, I should probably fill my water and put on my boots first, that way I can REALLY focus on my writing. Did I pack my bag for jiujitsu? Yes, okay… great, no distractions now…. what's going on outside?
What. In. The. HELL is this loop that we can get locked into? Procrastination serves absolutely no one. It gets in our way to actually create. It's like another form of resistance that sneaks up on us and interrupts what we're trying to hone in on the muse and hear her wisdom. By no means was it important to check my email (again) or get wrapped up in Instagram (again) or open facebook (I never actually did this, because no one really uses facebook and it's not even fun to look through. Okay, maybe some people use it, but it's never anything appealing. I might as well open LinkedIn… at least they're not trying to bullshit anyone. Or maybe they are, I don't know. I don't use that one either).
The loop of checking the nonsense on our phones, social media, news apps, YouTube etc. really just slow us down. This entry could have been done an hour ago but I had to make sure that I did a million other unproductive things before I could sit down to write. Doing the dishes, shaving, packing my bag, and changing were all productive and alleviated the thoughts cluttering my mind, but opening my phone did me no good. I would have been better off opening the window and staring at the ocean with a cool breeze on my face for 10 minutes instead. Which would feel really nice right now…one second. Yeah, that did feel nice.
We have such little guaranteed time on this planet, in this existence. There are so many people that fade off this plane of reality every day with all the plans that they had for "tomorrow." Tomorrow doesn't exist. It's not real. We push things off for the "Tomorrow" version of ourselves, but who the hell said we were going to wake up in the morning? You know what is promised to us? Now. Now is the only moment you're guarantied. We could have a million things happen to us within the next few hours that could steal our ability to function in the future. It could be an injury, illness, life-altering event, or even ALIENS. Aliens could invade. If aliens invaded us in the next hour, how many regrets are you going to have? Personally, I'll be wishing I had gotten my LTC. All the things you wanted to do that you pushed off for tomorrow, the weekend, next week, next month, next year, and on and on it goes. Why do we do it? Does it seem easier to do it in the future? We all know it isn't. I love the excuse of "I'll have more energy tomorrow."
Why? Why are you going to have more energy tomorrow than you do currently? What is tomorrow? It's a made up time that may or may not exist. It's not actually real. Think about it… by the time that it gets "here" (wherever that may be) it'll be now. So if we're thinking ahead to a time that we want to experience and prime ourselves to be more prolific in our work, why wouldn't we just do that for ourselves … now? We all experience time a little differently, hence "time is relative," right? Okay, today might be flying by for someone that's getting a million things done, but for me I'm experiencing it a little slower than someone... but a little faster than another person. Infants won't even remember today. If I was sitting in a sauna at 200 degrees, 20 minutes is going to feel like an hour. Every minute will feel like 5 minutes. If we were doing sprints up a massive hill with a weight vest on, each second will feel like an eternity. If I was laying down watching a blockbuster film, then an hour will feel like a minute. It's rel-a-tiiiiiive.
If time is relative, then when we push our tasks out a day, we're relying on ourselves to be present in the "future" to feel a certain way and approach these tasks thinking they're easier than yesterday. They won't be easier, they're going to be more difficult because of the pressure we've now put on ourselves to get them done and all the unnecessary thinking we've done about them. But is that even us? It's like we passed the buck to another version of yourself with the, "I don't wanna do it…YOU do it," and we're assuming they're going to say "OKAY BOSS!" with a big smile on their face. They're probably going to be even more reluctant, the time in between here and now will drag on (you've now slowed it down with some good ol' fashioned mental suffering), and the task will be the classic "mountain out of a molehill."
Knowing each day is a blessing, that our time here is finite, that worry of the future pulls us from the present, that guilt of the past pulls us from the present, we owe it to ourselves to get shit done right here and right now. Without the present, there is no future and there is no past. I'm not sure if any of this made sense, but my goal was to sit down and get my writing done…and here we have it - a post.
Some day it'll be a book. Some day….
WAIT!!!…