Stacey Seaside

Raise your hand if you would rather do it tomorrow

even if you could easily do it today!

My life, like yours, has lots of deadlines and to-do lists.

Stuff-personal, professional, recreational- that has to get done by a certain day on the calendar or time on the clock.

Pay the electric bill, book the airline ticket, send in the promised report, finish making the calls on the phone banking list, file the tax receipts, get lunch cooked, call Aunt Loula, finish the revision of the article.

Deadlines are no longer the exclusive property of writers; everyone is working toward getting something completed by X.

Although I am considered organized and anal by most, I am in a constant battle with myself to get things done–before I run out of breathing room .

And although I work from home, if you are working at a desk anywhere that does not require constant customer contact and service, you probably procrastinate.

I am not here to offer solutions

I just want to commiserate and complain about it.

Because procrastinating, even my whinge here, keeps me from doing what I am actually supposed to be doing!

I go to my desk rather early each morning.

I open yahoo and there in my inbox, is something that is going to throw the day I had planned completely out of whack.

I had intended to focus on project A, but now I am hit with a crisis that requires resolution before I can get my second cup of coffee. And then messenger begins to ping and right behind is WhatsApp.

Guilty: Messaging pings

I jump between tabs of emails and google searches, while concurrently responding to Messenger and WhatsApp. (Because of the nonprofits and the political organizations where I volunteer, along with my professional work, I have 9 different email accounts.) I also have a handful of colleagues and pals who send me messages on Instagram and Viber as well. I actually counted one morning–73 different emails, messages and calls came in from 9:30 to 10:45. And let’s not forget either and or both sons walking in and telling me “I need a document for the” accountant, lawyer, tax office NOW–even though they knew about it a week ago.

Now some folks would say this is NOT procrastinating; the environment is forcing you to turn your attention away from what you intended to do in order to meet the demands of the incoming: messages, calls, emails and crises.

And yet, it is procrastination to me. I divert my attention to these thefts of time and energy as opposed to shutting them down –airplane mode on my phone works–so I can get what is needed to get done, done.

Guilty: “lost in scrolling” procrastination

Many of the emails I receive include article links. If they tickle my attention, off I go opening in a new tab, reading the article and perhaps clicking on another article link within that article. Sometimes this is just curiosity; sometimes it is fruitful research, sometimes a lost hour.

Guilty: social media apps

I try not to open Face Book or Instagram until I have dealt with the morning’s emails. I can easily dive in and come up for air an hour later as I check out the latest buzz in the community or see what my pals have been up. And if I start reading a comment thread on a post the day is lost.

Guilty: Work from home

My office is a very large corner of my kitchen; centrally located in the hub of the house. I look off to the right; I see a table for 8, island, cabinets topped by reflecting black granite, while appliances are humming away, reminding me to turn off the burner on the cooktop, shut off the exhaust fan or get started on lunch because it is way too quiet.

My direct eyeline facing front goes out the window to the mountain tops of Naxos, the airstrip of JMK as incoming commercial and private Lear jets fly in and out. And in the corner is a 60-inch screen with 16 cameras, viewing some part of the property–recording all the human and vehicular as well as animal movement surrounding my home.

And all the while I am thinking how soon I will get to the beach.

I have no solutions for this, but I have read plenty of the self help stuff on how to procrastinate less.

So far I have NOT managed to apply any of this well-intentioned advice.

I am considering moving my office out of the kitchen and into a corner of the living room that has fewer distractions. I would only have the fireplace on the cold days and a whimsical view of Tinos to tempt me from completing the to-do list.

And even that is an act of procrastination. It will require a week of my time to box the stuff on shelves, rearrange furniture in the living room, test drive various desk positions for natural and overhead light and perhaps even make me want to buy a new desk!

If you want to offer advice scratch off your list:

set realistic goals, create a schedule, break tasks up into easy to manage parts, blah, blah blah.

The only thing that might work is sending me to a cave with my laptop and NO WIFI and NO PHONE.

I might finish, but if the cave is near a beach, I wouldn’t count on it.