The dishes from tonights dinner. The basket of reds that aren’t quite a full load. The last few boxes sitting in the basement waiting to be unpacked from our move. The homeschooling files waiting to be written to disc. What do all of these and several other things have in common? They are all things I commonly procrastinate on. I often live by Mark Twains advice “Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.” Though I really shouldn’t live by that and am trying to change my ways one step at a time, it’s easier said than done though, and every once in a while me time or extra child time is a little bit more important.
Procrastination can be a bad thing for single parents, especially if it happens more and more often. Just like with everything in life everything in moderation. Procrastinating one thing a couple of nights a week isn’t bad. As long as you choose what you are procrastinating on wisely and you have a plan to make up for it, you should come out ok. Dishes in the sink overnight? Get up ten minutes earlier the next morning and be sure to get them done. The boxes still in my basement waiting to be unpacked? Fifteen minutes once a week will have those done in no time. My house work is usually the only thing that suffers from procrastination. As I am the only one who does it, as is the case with most homes of single parents with younger children, too much procrastination can lead to trouble.
Too much procrastination, just like too much of anything is a bad thing. I know I’ve done it before, as can often happen with single parents. Either I put it off till tomorrow, then tomorrow comes and goes and so does the next day, and the day after that. This usually happens when I don’t actually schedule whatever it is into the day. If I don’t actually say when I’m going to do it, then it can always be tomorrow. When we do this, we begin to feel guilty and beat ourselves up for not doing it, and that guilt just makes us put it off even longer. The other thing that happens is we put of that one thing, and put it off again as above, but then something else happens and we end up putting off another thing and another thing. This is what I call the procrastinators black hole. Everything starts sliding and getting stuck in this thing called tomorrow, but seeing as tomorrow never comes, neither does the item we’ve been putting off. The problem with this as single parents is, our days are so booked solid to begin with, when we put off more than one or two things a day, there is no way we can fit it all in “tomorrow,” and we are spending the rest of the week playing catch up.
So, the next time you find yourself saying “I’ll do it tomorrow,” stop and rethink that statement. Rephrase it to name the day you are going to do it, and assign a time to it. “I’ll do that Thursday at 7:00 AM” write a note and stick it somewhere you will see it often if you need to. Don’t put off more than one or two things at a time. If it’s a big thing that you are trying to put off, instead of completely putting it off, get a start on it at least. If you are putting off scrubbing the kitchen floor, get in there and do a quarter of it, then schedule more in the next day. Are there any suggestions you can add to these to help another single parent deal with their procrastination?
Procrastinators Are Always Successful