Most of the time I’m quite an active person – with two small children, a house and garden to look after, a business to run and lots of hobbies, I don’t have a lot of time to not do things. I am usually quite good at getting going with things and getting things done. But there is a particular form of procrastination from which I suffer – New Project Procrastination.
Every time I have a big job to start, I always, without fail, spend a day faffing about not getting any real work done. I download files, I save them in a new folder, I make a cup of tea, I print stuff off, I find books that might be useful, I make another cup of tea, and while I’m there I might chat to my husband or make a phone call or unload the dishwasher.
Eventually, I go back upstairs. And before getting down to work, I obviously need to find some appropriate music, and check my email. And then I think of something I really, really need to look up in Wikipedia. And then this (from xkcd.com) happens….
And then I might write a post describing this issue on my blog. Ahem.
It’s always at the start – I never have problems getting down to work once I’ve started. I don’t know what causes it – maybe fear, that this is going to be the project in which I’m going to come unstuck and fail miserably? A new unfamiliar project means I don’t know where to start and so I don’t? It’s a mystery. But it’s now happened at the start of my last four projects, so we have A Phenomenon.
And now, I really must do some work.
Sow and Sew 