This is not how I want to face every day.
I know some people who don’t get started on a task or deal with a problem until it becomes a crisis. They wait and procrastinate and put off until further inaction will result in disaster. Then, most of the time, they scramble everything together and get done what needs doing.
They say, “I thrive under pressure.”
Maybe this is true for them. For me, the pressure, the anxiety and the fear, can become overwhelming. I get paralyzed. I drop the ball.
That doesn’t stop me from procrastinating. It just means my threshold for crisis is much lower. A deadline a week or a month away produces as much urgency in me as a tomorrow morning deadline provides for them. I know (from sad experience) that if I put it off any longer, I’ll freeze up and utterly fail.
This gives me the reputation as someone who is responsible, who plans ahead, who is organized. If only.
I’m just as crisis-driven as anybody else. The only difference is my tolerance for anxiety. I hate the stuff. And it’s taken a while for me to learn how to get moving before the pressure crushes me.
Currently, my goal is to head off anxiety at the pass. Deal with life before it reaches the crisis stage. This means real planning, and real organization. But that’s stuff I’ve known all my life. There are lots of books, and I’ve read a bunch of them.
None of that does any good, though, if I don’t take responsibility for my own actions.
After all, that’s really the root of my procrastination: I don’t want to move myself, I want something else to move me. My great temptation is passivity. I don’t want to be responsible.
If I’m not really responsible, then maybe I can’t be blamed if something goes sideways.
So I’ve started making some changes. I don’t know if they’re perfect changes, or the best decisions in the world. But they’re mine. I am making these choices, and if something goes wrong it’s my fault. There’s no one else to blame.
The big surprise, to me anyway, is that I’m not feeling all that anxious about it. Or rather, my anxiety is all on the surface, and it’s in proportion to the actual risks or dangers. I’m thinking about how much lasagna I need to make to feed my guests; I’m not worried about whether I’ll be alone forever and hated by all if I disappoint my guests. My fears have become realistic and, therefore, manageable.
And the bonus is, I’m actually getting more done than I planned, in less time. It doesn’t take three hours to clean my kitchen, as my imagination fears. It takes about half an hour, or forty-five minutes if I have some scrubbing to do. Likewise, it doesn’t take all my time and resources to pound out a thousand words on my novel; it takes about an hour of putting my butt in the seat and my fingers on the keyboard.
In philosophical terms: good does not require evil to be good. I don’t need a crisis to drive my life. I can find a real good, and drive myself toward it.
The end of your post reminds me of the saying: “All it requires for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing.” Or words to that effect.
In other words, good actions do stand alone. They don’t need to be an opposite or a reaction. Evil or just plain every day naughtiness
is really the lack of good – a vacuum that gets filled with something else.
Anyway, I totally agree with you on crisis management. I’m at my worst when I’m stressed. I’ll never understand how people are at their “best” then, other than liking an adrenaline rush. I’ve pulled through at last minute deadlines, but I’ve always hated it.
Also, I liked your analogy with lasagna dinner. If I’m focused on the little stuff, my life goes so much smoother and it’s happier. Part of why I try to stay away from the Internet other than at predefined times is so I’m not thinking about the big stuff (problems with countries I barely knew existed, etc) when I need to be focused on the little stuff. The kids getting a late or slapped together dinner will do nothing to improve the situation in Afghanistan.
Great article, Robert!