Procrastination

Not that word!

It's time we talked about this. Procrastination is taking our best efforts and turning them upside down.

I should speak for myself. Yet knowing many of you and having had honest conversations with you has led me to this post.

It is difficult to believe that we are already in mid-October. As a non-profit fundraiser, this means that I am at the start of my year-end fundraising plan. Fortunately I did not procrastinate about this, nor did my team. We were up and running ahead of time and all systems are go for everything we want to do between now and the last day of the calendar year.

It doesn't always work out this way, especially on a more personal level. Day to day actions I wanted to take that I put off. By mid-week I am under water and by Friday I can't believe it's already the end of the week as I look at all of those tasks that have not been completed.

Typically they are simple tasks, ones that wouldn't take more than a few minutes: a quick report, a touch-base with a vendor or donor, re-reading emails, doing a quick budget or doing a quick social media post. These action items add up during the week, especially if I put them off one moment for another time.

My personal worst is with email. Read an email, take action, delete it or file it. Pretty simple. This morning I have way too many emails in my box that I have read but are still somehow just hanging out. The more they add up the more I want to put them off. To be clear, not to put them off in regards to reading them, as I have read them all, but to take action on them and delete or file. I see that some I have even taken action on!

I wish procrastination only affected my email but that's not the case. It truly lives everywhere, as long as I allow it. And as long as it is present, I am not being as successful as I can be and not having as much impact as I want to have.

As simple as the solution is, here you go: Just do it. Yes, Nike has it correct. Based on personal experience, you will feel so much better about everything if you just start knocking out projects and taking action. I guarantee it. I can do that because I have experienced this and my best days are days when nothing could stop me and I simply went from one task to the next. It's possible to not let procrastination win!

I hope this helps!

Thank you for reading!