Procrastinators! This is for You!

This morning I read a post that was on my sister's blog about discipline. This is the response I made to her blog. Discipline is never easy. I have spent a life time being very good at procrastinating and equally good at working under pressure. I began to try to change this about 15 years ago when I realized that sometimes my procrastination was really a way of letting my mind mull something over until it was ready to "go to work." I came to realize that there were two different types of procrastination. The first type is when you just don't want to do something; like exercise, cleaning out a closet, or some other activity that you don't enjoy. That is negative procrastination and nonproductive. This type of procrastination requires discipline. I am now much more aware of those things that I don't want to do and try to put a plan into place so that I get them done sooner. Sometimes, I do one of those activities first thing in the morning and then do something else afterwards that i want to do. Sometimes I tell myself that I'm just going to do a small part of it today and the rest of it later in the week. I often find that once I start on that project, it isn't as bad as I thought and I go ahead and finish the whole thing. Either way I feel good and energized and get a lot more accomplished that day.
However, procrastinating on projects that require "brain power;" such as a school assignment, solving a problem, or writing a lesson is actually beneficial if you learn how to use it. Now, whenever I have to create something or make a major decision, I have a "mental" conversation with myself. I tell myself what it is I need to do and then I forget about it. I let my mind go to work while I do something else. My mind will send me mental "alerts," which come in the form of an insight or new approach to the project. When I get one of these, I think about the project again to see if my mind is ready to go to work. Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. In that case, I wait for the next "alert." The discipline part of this is that you can't start thinking about it the day before you need it. You have to start the thinking process far enough out to give it time to incubate. This works for me because it allows me to do what I do best...work under pressure. Only this pressure is positive. This pressure is the energy that comes from the processing that has been going on in my mind; so that when it is ready to go it is like hearing the starting gun at a race, and I am in position to get going!