Why do YOU procrastinate?

By Carl Woolston • July 7th, 2009 • Email This Post • Print This Post

Hey, I wasn’t talking to all of you! I was asking myself that question.

Why do I sometimes put off the big jobs and focus on the little ones? Why do I at times slide the hardest projects to the side and work on the simple ones, or even pass over the tough emails and answer the simple ones?

Generally, I do pretty well at not procrastinating but I certainly see room for improvement.

I know I’m not alone in my habits. I’ve been thinking about procrastination lately and how much it hurts us. Wouldn’t it just be easier to get the tough things done and then do the easy?

Of course! But human nature is to put things off. There are examples all around us in government, families, and business where procrastination has undermined our potential.

Government is famous for only thinking an election cycle ahead. In the Salt Lake area and our freeway system, the west side of the valley is a commuter’s nightmare. Why?

Did we know the population was going to expand west? Yes. So why did we never put in a great freeway system? Why did we put in Bangerter Highway with stoplights and no overpasses? Procrastination. The tough decisions were put off and now tens of thousands of people deal with the nightmare every day.

I had a client who did work for the State of Colorado putting in an additional lane on the freeway. he said if they would have added 3-4 more feet of concrete (there was room) they would have been able to add two lanes instead of one. What? Practice Prevention…

A couple of people have got me thinking about this.

One is Steve D’Annunzio over at Soul Purpose Institute (He has an incredible entrepreneur coaching program that I highly recommend).

Steve teaches a concept called hard/easy. He teaches that most people focus on the easy and never get to the hard and thus live mediocre lives. Truly successful, happy, and prosperous people deal with the hard first and then do the easy. They accomplish much more and are much more productive.

Another is Brian Tracy. He teaches that a concept called “Eat that Frog,” which says that if you eat the frog first thing in the morning, it’s the worst thing you’ll eat each day. The rest is cake in comparison.

Here’s a video that Simple Truths just released about eating frogs every morning:

I’m going to work on my breakfast diet. Some days it won’t taste good but it will sure be better for me. Would anyone like to join me?

If you are not seeing the video in RSS or email just click on the header to go to the blog to view it.

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