Confessions of a Procrastinator

Is Procrastinator a word?  I think so and I think I suffer from it.  How do we move forward with a productive day?  Come try some stuff with me.

Transcript

00:01.30
Christina Scovel
Hello, hello, and welcome back to A Pinch of Honesty, a regular podcast for us today. um First and foremost is the American election and the impending President of the United States.

00:20.44
Christina Scovel
um

00:23.46
Christina Scovel
Yeah, there are large numbers of us that are kind of devastated by this entire thing. And to be honest, um the morning after the election, um my daughter came out and she asked, why does half the population ah hate me and not value my opinions?

00:48.21
Christina Scovel
Which, you know, she's 12, so how how do you answer that, right? If anybody's got any good answers, let me know. um The thing that I think we've decided around our house is that um we are going to be defenders of people's rights. So where we can help out, we are going to help out. We are not going to stand by, we I mean, we never stand by for bigotry or racism or sexism but with the new president coming in ah we as a family are going to take a much much firmer stance um and really just not allowing this bullshit to be quite frank. um So with that being said um I'm going to leave

01:34.67
Christina Scovel
um that topic alone because it's just too, it's it's too upsetting. It's too upsetting. So I wanted to touch on today um when we do something habitually or when we do something consistently and whether or not it brings us joy or whether we're just doing it because it's something that we do habitually, right?

01:59.84
Christina Scovel
And for me, that is that for the past 15 years, I have a little journal that every single overnight I write something down in for 15 years. And, you know, I like it sometimes because I can look back and I can see, oh, you know, five years ago, here's what was going on. Oh, 10 years ago, here's what was going on. But it's becoming something where I don't enjoy doing it.

02:25.13
Christina Scovel
And so I'm trying to decide how to stop doing something that I have habitually done for 15 years, which is not an easy thing to do. um And, you know, do you just stop cold turkey? Do I just decide like today's the day? I'm just not going to do it anymore. Do I wait until this book is filled up? I'm not quite sure. um But I'm I'm I'm waffling on it. I'm i'm actively trying to decide.

02:50.98
Christina Scovel
The other thing that I wanted to touch on was um how... Well, i'm I'm looking at my journal here, and I've got something that I had journaled down in the notes section, which was um something that I had listened to that was on social skills.

03:13.52
Christina Scovel
And basically the podcast was saying that you know people's social skills are kind of getting worse and worse, especially with cell phones. And when people are asked about you know happiness and what does that mean for them, most people actually can't answer what makes them happy.

03:29.91
Christina Scovel
Most people are really focused on career success. So they spend a lot of time focused on career success because that's something that's measurable, right? Like if you're in a company where there's a president or vice president or management levels or structures, you can always tell where you're at, or maybe it's based off of how much money you make, right? So career is a very easy way to see whether or not you're progressing. But what it means is that um family and communication with family in this new generation is kind of taking a back seat.

04:00.04
Christina Scovel
As most of you know, one of the things that I really have spent quite a bit of time focusing on is my communication skills. My communication skills with both my partner and with my child, which in both cases are wildly different and not necessarily easy or stagnant, right? That these things change over time.

04:20.28
Christina Scovel
um And how we use, as I used to say, right, like the stick or the apple with a kid, I think is also um a difficult thing to address and come to terms with, right? When do you reward children? When do you try to punish? I'm air quoting here, children. Not that i I punish my child, but I can definitely say that when She is in that doom scrolling on her phone. I will take her phone away to focus on doing something much more productive and much more, um and much more, I think, satisfying as a whole.

04:57.38
Christina Scovel
And so all of these things lead me to one of the key topics that we've touched on time and time again. And I'm gonna bring it up again because I think that you know with fall and with making new resolutions and with making these um or addressing and trying to approach things in a different way, I really wanna talk about confessions of a procrastinator because I am a procrastinator.

05:26.24
Christina Scovel
I make lists everything every single day. i I make lists for work. I make lists for home. I make lists for podcasts. And in general, I will go through and just try to knock my stuff out kind of as fast as possible.

05:43.43
Christina Scovel
But in the end, I'll find myself wanting to procrastinate on pretty much everything. And where I'm seeing it the most right now um is definitely with regards to crafting and creativeness, right?

06:01.82
Christina Scovel
I've been working on a deck of cards that I wanted to have printed as Christmas gifts, and I realized that I had started this last year for Christmas. Never got it done. And so I really wanted to get it done for this Christmas, which meant that I couldn't procrastinate any longer. And so I forced myself to kind of finishing it, finish it up, right?

06:24.09
Christina Scovel
which is good, but it made me come back to myself and really start thinking about where I spend my time and what I want to spend my time on. I have been slipping into the doom scrolling as well.

06:40.37
Christina Scovel
um Where especially if it's late in the afternoon and I'm just turning off my mind is turning off I just want to sit on my phone and scroll which does nobody any good and as a matter of fact I feel way worse after I've doom scrolled then before doom scrolling right.

06:58.04
Christina Scovel
The ways that we procrastinate, I think, are ingenious. right We are masters of getting out of doing things. right I will invent something else to do versus doing things I don't want to do. I will, of course, scroll. right I will just sit and scroll. I will lay on the floor and stretch my hamstrings.

07:19.80
Christina Scovel
versus doing something I know I need to do. Currently, on the to-do list that's just not happening is watering the plants. I don't know why, right? But I'm procrastinating on it. I could do it, knock it out, be done with it, but I haven't. And I don't know why, right?

07:37.95
Christina Scovel
The other thing that this procrastination leads to is last minute scrambling, which I absolutely hate. I hate with a passion. And so you would think that knowing I don't enjoy the scramble, I would be better at planning. And yet, and yet here we are. Here we are.

07:57.31
Christina Scovel
So last year, I implemented the really focus on only getting two or three things done at work every single day. And I'll be honest, I've let that slip. I have gone back to making just massive lists. And these massive lists, of course, I'll go through and I'll um pick and choose. I'll do the ones that I really want to do and I'll ignore the ones I don't. It's kind of the same thing at home. And um it's It's coming to bite me, right? ah it's It's definitely hurting me ah with getting stuff done and procrastination. So something I've implemented at work that is helping is that

08:36.56
Christina Scovel
On Monday morning, first thing on Monday morning, I go through and I block the entire rest of my week. So whatever meetings are on my calendar stay and all of the gaps in between meetings are now blocked off so that nobody else can take them. And this is actually giving me swaths of time to get real work done, which is fantastic and it's actually making me feel much more productive. However, having a list of 30 things, 40 things is not helping, right?

09:01.34
Christina Scovel
So starting this week, I'm going to go in. I'm going to pick three things tomorrow morning that I'm really going to focus on. And they're probably going to be three things I've been procrastinating on because that's just how I roll. And I'm going to bite-size chew my way through those massive things in those slots of time in my week. I am also going to budget out time for my exercise and for creativeness My creativeness is really suffering and I think it's again because I've used my time poorly.

09:37.53
Christina Scovel
And again, knowing how little time any of us have, using it to do something like doom scrolling, I feel guilty and bad about it at the end, right? I feel like, why did I just waste all this time when I could have been reading or drawing or painting, or even playing a game with my kiddo, right? Just something, sitting and and having a conversation with my spouse, um all much better than doom scrolling or randomly laying on the floor and stretching my hamstrings. Because that is that is a Christina way of avoiding things, procrastinating.

10:13.49
Christina Scovel
So my challenge for all of you out there for this next week, right? It's the week before Thanksgiving, thanksgiving the holiday rush is gonna be in full swing. What I'd like each of you to do is to think about if there's one thing you can take out or add in to remove procrastination, what would it be for you? right Because this is very individualized. And when you find that thing, test it out for a week, give it a go, and see whether or not it helps you, brings you any joy.

10:41.93
Christina Scovel
or whether it's kind of a hindrance. So with that, I'll catch you on the flip side.