Procrastination

I feel at times that I am one of the greatest procrastinators and it has only gotten worse with the advent of social media. I end every week with a list of things I must achieve over my 2 day weekend, a meticulous and achievable list of things I really need to get done. Invariably I end up staying up too late on Friday night watching movies, while at the same time playing a video game on my cell phone and thinking about the god-awful week I had. I then wake up at 8am to prepare for family devotion at 10am - I am the designated family praise and worship leader. I end up not going downstairs until 9:50am having prepared my songs and printed out copies for my attendees. Sometimes I would have also showered and dressed with the intention of heading on the road to run errands as the closing prayer ends. I spend 2 to 3 hours on the road doing this and that, by this time it's already 3pm and I have worship practice at church at 3:30pm. My Saturday is done because I return from rehearsal anywhere between 6 and 7:30pm. My day was spent completing 3 tasks and none of the 3 include the items on the list I made on Friday. I sigh and feel annoyed with myself because I recall all the reasons why this happened. It might be because,

1. I sat and scrolled through profile after profile on Whatsapp, Facebook or Instagram before I realize it, 2 hours have gone by and I have not yet printed out the songs!!!

2. I end up binge watching a TV series the night before after watching one episode and wanting to know what happens next - really! I end up going to bed at 2am and over sleeping

3. I sat on my cellphone and played a video game for 2 hours

4. I actually woke up at 7:30am but went to the bathroom to shower and ended up sitting on the toilet and steered into space thinking of all the things I need to do and how I probably should go about doing them. Can you imagine if I should literally just get up and begin doing them I would probably achieve something. That's a novel idea!

Even this blog has me wasting time now. I walk about in my house thinking of what the next topic should be and I vacillate between the absurd and the downright too personal. I spend one week doing this until I sit on the toilet seat. This time I think of how I am not actually using the toilet and begin to get annoyed at how I keep procrastinating! Yes, procrastinating, may be this should be the topic of my next blog. I have to immediately run for the laptop or I might get distracted by the BBC news report about sex trafficking in India. It drives me to wonder what is it with my brain that causes me to be so easily distracted and to be able to just sit looking into the distance and have one thought after another about nothing in particular and arriving at no real conclusion. And yet, I have managed to achieve some real tangible things in my life, but on the other hand I think that if I could stop this time wasting I could actually achieve much more.

As a child my mother always said that procrastination is the thief of time, she was absolutely right about that. I should try another approach this weekend. I will do the things I need to do, along with all the other things I normally do. I feel this will be a bitter fight to the end this weekend but I am determined to kick this procrastination in the butt and out of my life. I have a self-help book to read, I have to deliver a package, I must also read the 2 short books on the holy communion my friend's husband sent for me to read and get back to him 3 weeks ago. I also need to alphabetize some paperwork and place them in the accordion folder I bought for this purpose. I should also get to tidying my storage cupboard as it is becoming quite cluttered with a bunch of 'stuff'. It would also be great if I was more consistent in helping in the kitchen on weekends.....hmmm. All this thinking and planning now makes me feel as if I should just watch an episode of Doc Martin on Netflix. This mind shift is like mortal combat and I don't feel as if I'm winning. I am determined to change though and that makes the difference. Wish me luck!!