The Truth About Procrastination, Part 2

I’m turning last week’s article inside out and offering another perspective on procrastination. Why? Because options are good. And it feels like a good time to resurrect this concept from my archives.

Have you ever wondered why sometimes you’re totally fired up and super productive – ideas flow, the right people show up, things happen – and other times you feel like you’re hiking uphill in peanut butter and can’t motivate to do anything?

I’ve thought about this often and have come up with a way of dealing with what I call the inspiration vs. procrastination game that completely eliminates the need for brute force. We are going to essentially turn your understanding of procrastination upside down.

To play this game you have to believe in synchronicity. Synchronicity is like a higher-ordered experience of coincidence – coincidence with meaning beyond what is directly observable. Synchronicity is what I would consider the engine that powers this game.

Relative to synchronicity, you now have to alter your understanding of procrastination. If synchronicity is real, in other words, if it is possible that the coincidental occurrence of events are related and cannot be explained by conventional mechanisms of causality, then procrastination is not a symptom of laziness.

I repeat: procrastination does not equal laziness.

What it means is that on some level, your being is synchronistically tuned in with who you are and what you are up to and is “motivating” you to hold back. Your being understands that in this moment you can engage but the effort will NOT be worth the return. And so you feel sluggish.

So what if this is true? If your being knows from a higher order when the right time to act is, for EVERYTHING, then the opposite of procrastination is that feeling of inspiration. Inspiration is your being recognizing that relative to who you are and what you’re up to, ahem –the intentions you’ve set, it’s time to GO, GO, GO! Act now because the right ideas are available, the influential people you need to make things happen are right around the corner, the books you’ve been looking for and didn’t know it appear, and the timing for every little thing you do is optimized. Inspiration is the knowing that it’s time.

So then, to eliminate the concept of brute force you have to honor both experiences as real. If you take on the view that procrastination is not laziness, but you telling you that now is not optimal, then you must honor inspiration and never question your drive to do something that might appear illogical. That out-of-nowhere feeling you get that you’re on fire – that wild horses couldn’t keep you from this – is you knowing that this action is MORE than worth the effort and that synchronistic events will follow to confirm.

Then what about all those things that need to get done that you’re not inspired to do yet? Here’s the challenge: don’t worry about them. Trust that your knowings and inklings will take care of them – you’ve set the intention and now it’s your job to listen. Relinquish the need to logically understand how this all works and just try on the idea that it does.

I committed myself to this perspective quite a few years ago and I’m convinced that it is how I got here enjoying my life with very little stress. If I do need to engage in brute force on the rare occasion, the difference is that now I don’t resist my experience because I understand what’s going on. Because of this, stress does not result and all works out fine.

It’s a nice perspective to have and it’s ridiculously fulfilling when synchronicity continues to show up and reaffirm the truth in this. So what say you? Are you willing to take on the inspiration vs. procrastination game? What might happen if you did? Share your thoughts and let me know!

Amy Eliza Wong is a life coach, writer, and speaker in the Sacramento, CA area committed to helping people figure out what makes them tick so they can finally live with joy and real purpose. Learn more about working with her.

Share this Article: