Procrastination and Perfectionism—A Deadly Duo

In most of my life, I’m organized, time-conscious, a list maker, a tiresome keeper of commitments and schedules, I am told. I make promises and I keep them. I expect people who make promises to me, to keep them as well. But for the most part, I’m an accepting person, and if someone lets me down, I work around it.

What I’m getting to though, and what I’m admitting to now, is that when it comes to writing, all my discipline, all my good intentions fall apart. My ability to plan and execute an article goes out the window. I start a piece, then wander off to do something else, look at my phone to check for messages, go out to the lobby to pick up the mail, search Facebook for any new entries—any sort of distraction will do. I’m waiting for inspiration, I tell myself. Maybe tomorrow morning, I’ll give it another try.

But really, it’s something else…a mixture of procrastination and perfectionism—a deadly combination.

Procrastination is often a symptom of perfection, I’ve read, and reflects a fear of not being able to complete a task, or to do it well enough.

It stems from a belief that there is something wrong or unworthy inside a person. That explanation is extreme, in my view, but it turned up in my research again and again, so I need to at least consider it. When it applies to my writing, completing a blog entry at the very least, and actually writing another book, I admit it could be fear that holds me back.

I know that I’m not willing to dig deep into the depths of my soul to uncover the reason, that would take to long for my immediate purposes, and at any rate, psychoanalysis is beyond my financial means!

What I do know, truth be told, is that the solution to procrastination is to actually start. In what universe, I tell myself, can a fully completed article, fit for someone else to read, appear in a fully developed format, without the act of putting pen to paper, or in my case, fingers to keyboard?

So that’s what I’m doing today, sitting down in front of my computer, opening a document, and actually starting.

Because who knows what I would have done, what I could have done, if I hadn’t been hampered like this, if I could have just plowed ahead and finished something, and not let my perfectionism get in the way. I could have finished that article I’d intended to send to a magazine last year, I could have written a weekly story for my blog, and actually have a following by now. I could have completed the second book I’d started several times.

I could have overcome this life-long tiresome habit of starting and stopping, and never, well hardly ever, completing anything!