Procrastination

I made this quilt top over the weekend. 

Fast and easy applique and a little bit of piecing... easy peasy... and now I am stalled on the quilting part.  I made the back last night, and have to cut some batting to fit, pin it and quilt it... not hard, but I am procrastinating... Maybe hoping it will go away?... or quilt itself?... I am surrounding myself with other tasks, other things to do in avoidance of the quilting... why? 


I did see this article in this morning's NYT.  It addresses exactly the issue:

Like any modern office worker, my inbox every so often becomes an unwieldy mess of unanswered emails, half-written messages that need to be sent and more “Sorry I’m so late getting back to you!” notes than I ever thought I’d write. It’s usually fine, we all manage, that’s life.

But every so often, I have that one email I need to write but that I just can’t force myself to take care of. You know the type: It’s something you have anxiety about even after leaving the office, and you know you’re making it worse the longer you put it off. Maybe it’s not even an email. Maybe it’s a memo you have to write, a phone call you have to make, a meeting you have to set up, or whatever else.

I’m taking a wild guess here, but you probably thought of one specific thing on your to-do list while reading that last paragraph, right?

Psychologists call this kind of avoidance self-sabotage: It’s when we put off or ignore a situation or task to our own detriment because doing it would force us to confront our fears or anxieties. This often manifests itself in extreme procrastination (not that I’ve ever had problems with that), and there are many reasons we fall into these patterns.

Self-sabotage is particularly dangerous to our goals because it’s self-reinforcing. By putting off tasks we don’t want to do, we experience temporary relief at the thought of not having to do them, so the cycle continues.

The problem is, there’s really no trick for breaking out of that cycle: One way or another, you’re going to have to confront the thing you’re avoiding. You can, however, ease into it by focusing on self-compassionand going easy on yourself. Don’t beat yourself up for putting it off for this long — that’s already happened and there’s nothing you can do about it. Just act now to set things right.

So today, just take care of it. For me that meant finally writing that email; the emotional burden it lifted was incredible. Start your week on the right foot by closing this article (after you finish reading it, of course) and getting started on that one thing. You’re going to feel so much better after you’ve dealt with it, I promise.

Once you’re done, tweet me the thing you accomplished at @timherrera or email it to me at tim@....

Have a great week!

—Tim

Not sure I'd actually email him (I don't tweet), but I am inspired to get to work on what is vexing me...  I'm not afraid of quilting, just need to get to it.  I'm usually hesitant about design of the quilting, but once i get started, it all comes pretty easily.