Few people are fast enough to keep up with their good intentions.
“What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds?”
James 2:14
Are you a procrastinator?
I am. I used to be a lot worse, so I am on a path of improvement. But procrastination still creeps in there as my default choice when doing something.
Procrastination significantly affects my desire to write thank-you notes. I love receiving handwritten thank-you notes, but they are seldom sent anymore. Usually, I receive a thank you text, which is still very nice.
But I appreciate it when someone takes the time to find a card or notepaper, handwrite a sincere thank you, and get it to a mailbox. And that’s always my intention when I am grateful for a gift or some act of kindness extended to me. I’m old school, but it feels right to me to do it that way.
So if it’s so important to me, why do I procrastinate in getting it done?
In my mind, I go to my box of cards within a day of receiving a gift, pick one that’s exactly right, handwrite my heartfelt thanks, and drop it in the mailbox. I imagine how pleased the recipient will be when they go to their mailbox and see a handwritten envelope addressed to them. They will appreciate that I am earnestly grateful for their thoughtfulness.
I think about this for days, weeks, and even months when it becomes too embarrassing to send! Why?? It’s because, in my mind, I do it all perfectly, and that’s the standard I have set for this task. And I suffer from “FOGS” (fear of getting started). I need to train my thoughts that it is just fine not to have the perfect card and words. As Nike used to tell us, “Just do it!”
Other things I procrastinate on are calling to make appointments and phone calls to customer service.
I know the reason I procrastinate on these things. It has to do with my time. I am not fond of putting appointments in my calendar. It fills up my time—appointments usually take up several hours of my day, interfering with other things I want to do. So I put off calling to make an appointment. What usually happens is I can’t get an appointment when I want, and often it’s pushed way out in the future because I waited too long to call. That’s incredibly frustrating to me, but it’s my own fault for procrastinating. Again, I need to develop the mindset of “Just do it!”
I procrastinate on calling customer service because I fear the call will take up a lot of time. I might be on hold for what seems like forever, have difficulty getting the representative to understand my problem, or the representative understands but takes a great deal of time to resolve it. I sometimes spend hours on a customer service call, ruining my plans for the day—not to mention my mood. Still, procrastinating on making these calls does not get me the results I need, so once more, developing the mindset of “Just do it!” would be beneficial.
Recently, I’ve been procrastinating on calling the tech team creating a website for my business, Jean’s Virtual Administrative Solutions.
I have been wanting to complete this website for months. My first delay in calling them was due to my being in the hospital, which is an acceptable excuse. But once I was home from the hospital and able to start my work again, I procrastinated about calling them to discuss their work on my website. Why?
Procrastination interfered with the progress I wanted to make in my business. I prayed, asking the Lord why I couldn’t just pick up the phone and call them? Then I realized I was paralyzed by fear of talking to these tech people about their work. They hadn’t built the website the way I wanted, and I feared approaching them on that. I was afraid they wouldn’t understand me, and it would take forever to get this done.
Even understanding why I was afraid to call, I still procrastinated for several more days.
Finally, I just sucked it up, said a quick prayer, and called them. And you know what? They didn’t understand me! I spent more than an hour on the call! But something else happened. Remarkably, I was patient and calm while talking with the representative. My frustration didn’t come through—just a desire to be calmly persistent in asking for what I wanted on the website. And I was blessed to have a representative who was just as patient and calm as I was, enabling us to communicate sufficiently so that he finally understood what I wanted.
I felt so relieved when I completed the call.
Why hadn’t I done that sooner? I took time to thank God for His help, for I know He gave me supernatural patience and calm. He probably gave it to the representative too! I also took time to think about my procrastination problem, which is really about perfectionism, frustration, and fears. I decided that from now on, I will acknowledge these traits, but I won’t let them control me when something needs to be done.
I will do my best to smile and “Just do it!”
