You’re not lazy. Procrastination is a compromise.
Do you have a story about not finishing things?
I hear so many people judging themselves as lazy or not good enough when they procrastinate. Once upon a time, I had a big story about being lazy.
Towards the tail end of my corporate marketing days, I was tasked with creating a social media strategy for a well-known charity. My boss, whom I really liked and sought the approval of, deemed me worthy. I was overwhelmed with pride at being chosen, and my “yes” arrived instantaneously when asked.
But then the rot started to set in. With so many stakeholders across departments, how would I make them all happy?
My “yes” would only ever take me a few pages into crafting the strategy document before I started all over again. I must have written those first five pages at least 50 times.
And then began the requests to see what I had done. Memories of constantly “losing” my homework returned. Shame that I hadn’t made enough progress, as the pride of being chosen eroded.
My lack of energy for and commitment to going further started to torment me on every train ride. Eventually, it would keep me up at night, or wake me at 4 am. Further compounding my lack of energy.
The weight of expectations was beginning to crush me. Failing to meet deadlines, comments from my boss. I was losing my “yes” and discovering a “no” that felt increasingly threatening. Fear fantasies of being fired abounded. Relentless self-criticism filled the space my boss wasn’t taking up to tell me off. Paranoia was rife. I started waking up at 3 am.
I had one foot on the accelerator and one foot on the brake. And I would stall over and over again.
And then a realisation.
I was protecting myself: “You will never have my soul.”
The secret will of “I will never let you control me.”
I was terrified of giving myself to the task: I might lose myself in it, or lose my special place at the table. To say “yes” was like losing myself. To say “no” was like losing love. I was between a rock and a hard place - and I realised I had been there most of my life whenever anyone asked me to do anything.
I wasn’t lazy, far from it. There was an enormous internal pressure I was wrestling with - a brutal fight going on between expectations and protection, and the self-criticism only made it harder.
So I did something spontaneously that I don’t remember doing before. I put a hand on my shoulder, and said: “You’re doing great, Graham.” Somehow the words were uttered softly, and they worked their way through my tough chest plate and touched me. Time slowed down in the softness of no expectations or pressure, and for a moment I felt a genuine regard for myself. Some tears followed.
I resolved to complete the strategy quickly and without rewriting. Some people were delighted, others less so - I started to see the structure of appeasement that contributed to the difficulty. I had set myself an impossible task in an effort not to let anyone down, to protect myself from criticism and humiliation, but, more deeply, from rejection.
Later, I would come to realise that my “yes” was quite surface-level, and I would agree to lots of things out of the overwhelming joy of being asked. However, my “no” was deeper rooted, governed by a secret will that would not be controlled by the agenda of others. So I started to wait - I did this by telling people that I wasn’t sure and that I would need time to think before saying “yes.” Lo and behold, I started to say “no” a lot more, freeing up more and more of my life energy for myself and for what I really wanted to do, rather than saying “yes” to feel wanted. There is freedom in that.
Now that my yes and my no are clearer, I’m doing more of what I want, with a sense of purpose and a will to go deeper.