I have a bad habit that I’m just discovering…procrastination. As a librarian, my thing is research. When I want to take on a new project or learn something new I collect information. I read books, look for articles relating to the topic and watch Youtube videos. I get completely overwhelmed.
Instead of just jumping in and “doing” and learning along the way, I feel like I need to learn everything I can about something before I start. As a result I either never start or waste vast amounts of time researching. This is not living and this does not make me happy.
When I think about why I procrastinate, the following reasons come to mind…my inability to make decisions, the extent of the information I need to learn and my desire to be perfect at everything I do. Guess what? I don’t need to be perfect and it’s okay, and likely better, to learn as I go. I’ll take happiness over perfection any day.
So what am I going to do now that I know that procrastination is keeping me from being happy?
1. I need a plan. I’m not going to spend hours researching how to make a plan. I’m simply going to create a to-do list and start knocking things off that list.
2. I need to not over research things and just “do”.
3. I need to set goals. Short term ones and long term ones.
I started this morning. Several weeks ago I bought a new copy of Lightroom 6. It has been installed but my photos were on an external hard drive and unorganized. I needed to copy the photos onto another drive and set up my Lightroom catalogue again. For some reason, until that is done I feel like I can’t do other things. The drive was copied today…the catalogue will be set up tonight.
I think that now I’m aware that I’m a procrastinator, I will be able to recognize it when it’s happening, and do something about it.