I’m a procrastinator. YES for real! For example, right now is my writing time and on the outside looking in you may say – Well, Stassi you ARE writing, so that’s not procrastination. My response to you would be Yes, but the tasks that I have for today’s writing time did not involve writing this post at this moment. I can spot when I am actively procrastinating — I am unusually productive in multiple areas…except the one thing that I am supposed to be doing.

For me, procrastination isn’t me being lazy and sitting around doing nothing – well there are instances of that but I’ll talk about that later. It’s usually me being very busy and get “stuff” done to avoiding doing the “stuff” that I need to be doing. This can be good and bad for me. Good: if I get a few small, quick things checked off of my list it can encourage me to move to the bigger tasks that I’m avoiding because I know it’ll take more time and/or brain involvement. Bad: once I do a few other things then perhaps I’m too tired to get to the thing that I really need to do from my list (this has been more often the case as I move into different phases of pregnancy).

I was reading THIS post by some accountability coaches describing four types of procrastinators.

1. The Performer who is really a perfectionist, but delays until the last minute to do things because they say they work better under pressure.
2. The Self-deprecator who is really just a tired person who NEEDS to take a short break to recharge; however, will call themselves lazy to deflect the real situation.
3. The Overbooker who is really just doing everything to avoid doing the things that they need to be doing, and will blame it all on being too busy.
4. The Novelty seeker who reminds me of Dory (the fish from the movie Finding Nemo) because they are always following after the shiny new idea rather than following current ones through to completion.

Personally, I’ve floated around a lot of these personalities… throughout school I was a cross between the Performer and Overbooker. I did a LOT of various extracurricular activities – clubs and sports and jobs – to keep myself busy and would wait until the last hour to get school work done. When I transitioned into my career I kept a lot of the same behaviors and was never really taught how to do this whole work-life balance thing as a real life working adult. I am still struggling with how to focus on specific tasks at hand and pace myself so as not to stress out over deadlines.

I HAVE to get these behaviors under control…especially with a baby coming…

Are you a procrastinator? What kind are you & how to do overcome those moments?

Stassi