When Procrastination Takes Hold
Procrastination hits the best of us. We find 101 justifications for putting off what we know we must do.
However, as the stakes get higher, your shadow soul partials get more active, because this is their chance, when you are on ‘high alert’, to get their own templates of what they see as important in front of you. Because you are paying attention.
So, when you seem to be treading water, going nowhere, then this generally means your three energy states are taking this form:
State 1: The Creative Trap
Avoiding creative actions by saying they aren’t important given the current situation, and feeling trapped by the lack of ability to be creative.
This is a self-perpetuating illusion.
You find ways of making the value of long-lasting creative endeavours of less importance, because they are less immediate in their outcome. So it’s easy to prioritise more immediate, urgent actions over your creative project(s).
This is a fallacy though.
You can find 5 minutes here, 15 minutes there to do bits and pieces on your creative project, and get the momentum going. I’m writing this paragraph during the five minute timer during cooking a recipe, for example.
Breaking the Creative Block
The key is recognizing that creativity doesn’t need hours of uninterrupted time. It needs consistency and small, regular investments. Your creative partial isn’t asking for perfection – it’s asking for acknowledgment and a chance to contribute, even in tiny increments.
State 2: The Passion Project Distraction
Putting all your attention into a project you feel passionate about that, if you are honest, does nothing to progress you, but instead keeps you at the same state as you are currently in.
It feels like something different, but it is only a different version of what you already know / do.
I do this a lot. So what I try to do to combat this is to ensure that there is some crossover between those projects so if I am procrastinating on one, then it has a natural lead-in to doing something on another project.
Creating Project Synergies
I have a project to create some software to help focus on the things to be done next for someone like me, who has an awful lot they would like to do, but limited time. This gives me very long lists, and I can spend more time prioritising than actually doing something useful, which gives me the sense of doing something towards the future without actually making tangible progress.
But I also have an interest in Tarot, so I used that solution I was working on to drop a ‘card a day’ into my stream with some explanatory text, and based on that I write something to give me a sense of the day. So I keep up my Tarot practice daily.
I also have this project which I use my focusing software to help me keep on track with. So I draw three tarot cards using this software whenever I write an article, and that helps to give me some focus on what I will write.
I also have a project for authoring fiction books. I use this Soul Partials project to help inform those books (and vice versa). So sometimes I work through something here that gives me an ‘Aha’ moment as to why something connected to that needs to happen in a book I’m working on.
The Three-Tier System
What I try to do is to have my day job, my main side project, and my long term project(s). So my day job brings in the bulk of the money I need to support myself and my family, my main side project is what takes most of my attention at any one time (That’s Soul Partials right now) and other longer term side projects can helps support that main side project, and can become the main side project from time-to-time as it makes sense to do so.
State 3: The Future Investment Trap
Focusing on the long term can also cause you to ignore what is in front of you. In order to get to your long term goals, the temptation is to sacrifice the short term.
And that potentially means sacrificing those around you to the altar of a future vision.
Making long term investments isn’t intrinsically bad – keeping money in savings for unexpected problems, or for a holiday make total sense. But it is when you put 90% of your money into savings, or make it a big holiday so that you don’t to get to go on holiday for 5 years while you save up for this amazing holiday – which then puts huge expectations on some idealized future super-holiday – that there’s a problem where you are putting on hold living today for an imagined future.
The Balance of Time Investment
Balance is the key here. Make today as important as tomorrow or five years time.
My example of going over to-do lists over and over is a good example of this too. Once I accepted that this was just a way to brain dump, and I would rarely consult those lists, life became way simpler and less pressurised, so that I pretty much reboot what I am doing on a day-by-day basis.
For my side projects, they may never happen by always making them a future thing. So this is why I always have a focus side project with a definite goal – and I have a few simple things that I can do next on my background projects working towards an eventual goal.
The Dangerous Long-Term Sacrifice
Any long term project needs sustained long-term effort, not the frustrated ‘I want this to be here today’ stamping the foot of the inner toddler!
Watch out for this, because there will be at least one of your Soul Partials who embodies this ‘want it now’ attitude, which can be okay for easy-to-reach goals as a driver for action, but for longer term goals this can mean that the path is unsustainable, and that you and those around you become disillusioned.
Learning to Choose Your Battles
I was disillusioned by the length of time that bringing an awareness of Neurodiversity was taking within a company I was working for, and so I backed right off. It was a hard decision, because I had to work out where I could best focus my battles, and I realized, for the amount of friction involved, I had other battles I needed to fight that would need my sustained energy.
I realized that the ’trample on people to get to the goals I want today’ seemed to be the approach that company was taking, so I realized that this was short term thinking being applied to a long term topic that needed sustained work and consideration.
The Wake of the Trailblazer
I get that for these things, you need trailblazers to raise awareness. But trailblazers leave a wake behind them in their unidirectional goal. And I didn’t want to be part of that wake.
So you need to work out the balance between trailblazing and sustained cooperation with people who can help you get to your end vision. Because with other people involved, everyone will have a general shared vision, but each will have their own version of what that vision looks like. And it’s that diversity of visions that can make it a multi-faceted reality that’s too much for one person to hold themselves.
You can battle and get angry at why people aren’t following your lead, but that is in reality a way of saying ‘See told you – everyone is stupid – they aren’t worth my time’ and flounce off in a huff. Short angry bursts are great for getting through stuff you really don’t want to do, but they can also be a way of justifying why longer term collaboration just isn’t worth it by finding ways of demonizing others without trying to understand their resistance.
Sustained Results
Sustained results come from sustained and sustainable interactions that keep things alive.
If you keep getting nowhere on your own projects, think in terms of the three states and think how an aspect of your self – one or more of your partials – may be stopping your progression because they feel you are blocking creativity, your are not keeping things balanced, or you are not interacting enough to ensure you can progress effectively.
Check in with yourself, be honest, by kind, and work out a way that you can make sure you can keep all three states fulfilled enough to carry on through.
Next: Lesson 6: Jealous Celebrations
Previous: Lesson 4: A Family of Partials