one easy task

two easy tasks

oh no….

more tasks

woah….. ten more tasks

dang…

i don’t want to go to work

let’s disappear

oh crap, i’m screwed…

life sucks….

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Experience this before? Aka the mother of procrastination. One simple thing delayed that transgressed into a cycle of misery and self-hate.

For the whole two weeks, I’ve been submerged into a pit of self-sabotage. The funny story is it starts with just a simple task that I just have to do. I postponed it. It was not a fun thing. The next thing I knew, my boss, coworkers, and the HR director were ringing me up, wondering where the heck I was. I’ve gone silento. Late email reply, etc.

I hid under my bed sheets, writhing in agony and pushing myself to do something.

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What I did that absolutely didn’t work:

• I tried to find inspirations on Youtube and comparing myself to the Instagram people – made me feel worse about myself

• Wrote down a whole list of priorities and a complicated matrix
• Attempted a room makeover
• Started a Pinterest inspiration board

• tried to move to a new apartment
• googling up why I want to disappear
• made a youtube video to get myself to love my job

But at the end of the day, works went undone.

Basically, it boils down to this cycle. Pumping up my motivation looks sorta nice but at the end of the day, I still couldn’t take any action.

It got so bad that I started to get a panic attack from just opening up my gmail browser. I was hyperventilating. I decided to call my coach. I hesitated to call him because I couldn’t finish the work he gave to me last month!

Well, I’m grateful that he picked up my call. He pointed out three things that cleared all these heavy mental fog and fatigue away.

1. You procrastinated because you think that the task is no fun.
2. You avoided facing the issue because you think that it is a failure.
3. Use this space as a greenhouse for you to grow.

You procrastinated because you think that the task is no fun.

Replying emails are not exciting. You know you can and want to do so much more but now you have to finish this menial task. The meaning you gave it stripped the fun away from completing the task. So how can you add back the fun element into replying email?

The answer lies in not giving it any meaning!

When you give meaning to it, you trap yourself to seeing it as a single possibility. You think that you not replying the email equals to you failing.

You avoided facing the issue because you think that it is a failure.

Reply the email as it is. What does the title say? Reply it as it is. Send the email as it is. No need to give it any regards, whether it would diminish your value.

Well, what did I know! I just opened and replied emails as they are. I jotted down notes of what’s info I should be aware of in the future. I apologized for the late replies and move forwarded in crafting the next action. I made a list of action I did and what I need to follow up on. Done by 5.30pm, I cleared 60 unread emails. The feelings are absolutely amazing.

Use this space as a greenhouse for you to grow.

Don’t quit now. Hang in there and use the surrounding materials to experiment and try on new things.