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When we are thinking, we are dividing our life into chunks called time. There is the time of our future, which approaches, then arrives, and instantly becomes the time of our past. The present moment seems minuscule and ungraspable. When we are not thinking and are simply aware, we are aligned with the flowing nature of changing existence. The present moment is all there is; time becomes irrelevant. When we live more in awareness than in thinking, time seems to adjust so that there is exactly enough time for each thing to be accomplished fully, and then to disappear.

Final Words: In the present moment there is always plenty of time.

42

Procrastination

The Exercise: Become aware of procrastination, the act of putting off something that needs to be done. Be aware both of the desire to procrastinate and of what you do about it—that is, your method of delaying. Look more clearly at what leads to procrastination, and see what strategies work to modify or overcome it.

REMINDING YOURSELF

Place the word “Procrastination” in key locations where you know you are likely to put off chores, such as the bedroom (near a pile of dirty clothes), the kitchen (near a stack of unwashed dishes), or the bathroom (on the messy medicine cabinet). You can also put notes in places or on things you tend to go to in order to procrastinate. You might put a sign on the TV, your video games, or even on your computer.

DISCOVERIES

When we discussed this exercise, most people were able to identify some activity—a phone call, a report, a letter, an application, an important conversation—that they had been putting off. One woman announced that she was just beginning to write her annual end-of-the-year letter to friends and family in February. She felt obliged to write a little personal note on each copy of the letter, which she anticipated would take another month. While examining procrastination she realized that she was delaying because once the letters were mailed, she might find that they were not perfect. This is an example of how the Inner Critic gets us coming and going. If she does mail the letters and they are not perfect, the Inner Critic will beat her up. If she delays in an attempt to make them perfect, and thus mails the letters late, or never, the Inner Critic will still be upset. There is no winning in the land of the Inner Critic. Its only job is to criticize, and it does this job well.

One person was putting off writing application letters, and found his mind making up excuses such as, “If it weren’t for this or that, I’d have time to do this,” when in reality, he was wasting the time he did have available. Another person discovered that she procrastinated at every step, sitting down to type a letter, editing the letter, printing the letter, finding envelopes and then the proper address. She said, “I think I have an idea in my head that each step will be much harder or take longer than it ever does.”

We discovered many opportunities in the day to procrastinate or be lazy: leaving one dirty dish in the sink for later or for someone else to wash, dropping clothing on the floor at night, leaving the bed unmade in the morning, not picking up a piece of trash that missed the garbage can, leaving the last two squares of toilet paper on the roll to avoid having to change it.

This practice involves adopting a new motto: “Do it now.”

One man realized that he procrastinated all day long, beginning with delaying getting out of bed in the morning. Someone else said he was able to overcome that problem when he realized that procrastination just made things worse. The more he put off getting out of bed, the harder it became to get up, so he now gets up as soon as the alarm rings. He found that if he delayed getting on his bike to ride to the meditation center, he would end up delaying so long that he would then decide not to go at all for fear he’d be late.

His conclusion was, “The mind with all its considerations just gets in the way of being wholehearted.”

DEEPER LESSONS

The antidote to procrastination is to take full responsibility.