Fear or Procrastination?

Fear or Procrastination?

Just hit the button. That’s what my brain has been telling me for the past 30 minutes. How hard could it be? Well, let me take a second and read the news. Oh, I wonder what the score is for the game. 

 

I haven’t talked to my mom for a few days. Let me see what she’s up to. Another hour goes by.

 

Look at the time. I should probably do one more read-through of my blog post before I publish it. It’s getting late, let me read it again in the morning. 

 

I went through different variations of the above scenario many times. Each time it was time to publish my blog post. What I thought was procrastination was really something else…

 

Fear.

 

I was afraid of publishing. I was afraid to put it out in the world. The perfect idea of my blog post was already tarnished by me putting it to words. How did I get here?

 

How it started?

 

It started with an idea. A thought. Something I recognized in the world.  Maybe others would agree. Or even disagree. It would create a dialogue.

 

So I wrote it down. Just the title. I let the thought sit in my head. 

 

It was going to be great. I added a few thoughts to the idea here and there. It was perfect. Soon I’d make it real. Let me just add a little to it.

 

Some more words. Some more thoughts, observations. More of everything. 

 

This is where the first part of my fear started. I was scared to put something that was perfect in my mind on pen and paper. Or Microsoft Word. 

 

But I did. Eventually. And I was right. It wasn’t as good as it was in my head. It never is. In my head, it’s just a blob of thought. I’m able to shape it freely.

 

The real world is not that easy. It felt tainted. Putting words to a feeling, you can never quite explain it right. 

 

But I had to try. Words were the best way to let others know how I felt. Or the observation that I made. Maybe it would help someone else. 

BOX BREATHING TECHNIQUE

How I got over that fear

 

There was a small trickle in the back of my mind. Quietly. Maybe this would help someone. 

 

Maybe this would help someone else. I know I’ve resonated with stories. Blog posts, podcasts. Were they perfect? Probably not. I can’t remember any faults though. 

 

It didn’t matter if it wasn’t. The story made an effect on me. I still remember many of them to this day. Only the good parts.

 

Someone may resonate with one of my stories. It could help them out of a rut. Or show people that everyone gets into ruts. Or faces fear. 

 

It helped to think about someone else. I was being selfish by not publishing. Thinking about only my needs and not other people’s needs. It helped. 

 

Not only that I was able to make my story more personal. Now that I had a person I was speaking to. Here’s what I did. Here’s what you can do. 

 

Some introspection

 

I’m a chronic procrastinator. Many of us are. I remember the days back in medical school, biochem would always be last on my study list. I hated it. 

 

Was that really procrastination? Maybe it was that fear again. Or frustration of having to study something I wasn’t good at. 

 

It was so much more satisfying to study something that I was good at. It’s pretty defeating getting scores of 30% and 40% when doing questions. 

 

Now it’s the same with publishing. There’s a fear. Fear that it won’t be as good as what it’s in my head. Fear no one will read it. 

 

And I might be right. No one might read it. Or people may. The only way I’ll know if by publishing it. So I get past my fear. Put it out in the world and hope to help someone. 

The World Needs Two of You

The World Needs Two of You

Unfortunately, that’s not possible. The next best thing we can do is to help you get more done in the time you have. That starts off by asking yourself, “Do you need to be the one that completes everything on your to-do list?” 

 

Let’s come back to that question. First, if we all looked at our lives there are some common tasks that are the same. We need to eat. That means getting groceries, cleaning, and cooking. We need to clean. That means getting cleaning supplies and finding the time to clean. 

 

You need to outsource

 

Now we all need to eat. The problem is how to get food worth eating. It’s easy to get fast food or food that you can microwave. A lot of times it’s actually delicious. That makes sense because food scientists, yes that is a thing, spend an inordinate time trying to convince your palate that the fast food or junk food you are eating is delicious. 

 

Not so delicious that you don’t want to eat more. Just delicious enough for you to eat it and probably a bit too much of it. Diabolical, I know.

 

No, I’m talking about good-for-you food that tastes delicious. That takes time. Time I don’t like to spend. 

 

There’s a few options:

1. Find ways to minimize time

2. Have it done for you

 

How to save time and still eat good food

 

Let’s break down number 1. Eating good food requires going to the right grocery stores and getting the right high-quality ingredients. That takes time. Not just time spent at the grocery store, but time to get ready, drive, park, pick up the stuff, and wait in line. 

 

Fortunately, there’s an app for that. A few actually. You can have Whole Foods delivered to you from Amazon for free within 1 hour. There’s also the app Instacart. You end up paying a little more for Instacart, but it even goes to Costco for you without you needing to be a member.

 

Now you can focus on the more fun part, actually cooking. That starts with getting the ingredients ready. Maybe, you don’t like to do that either. I know I don’t. 

 

There are services that will do all the shopping for you and send you the perfect quantity of materials. It even sends you the recipe and you can pick what you want to eat. Services like Blue Apron will let you shop recipes and then send you everything you need to make it. 

 

My brother loves to do this. He’s an ER resident and enjoys cooking, but just doesn’t have the time to research what he wants to eat and buy all the ingredients. He buys the basics and let’s Blue Apron send him the rest of what he needs.

 

Lastly, if you are like my wife and I you don’t like any part of cooking, but love to eat. There are services for you as well. Meal delivery services like Trifecta will send you ready to cook meals. They are as healthy as can be and you can choose between different types of food. We choose paleo, but there are others as well. You just put it in the microwave, warm it up, and it’s ready to eat. 

 

The food is pretty good and most importantly healthy. It even has calories and nutrients on there, so I can plan out the rest of the food I can eat in that day. 

 

Learning from Books

Cleanliness without a time sink

We all like to have a clean place to live. It’s personally hard for me to free up my mind for creative activities if I see a ton of stuff everywhere. Or a bunch of dust mites. 

There’re two steps that I’ve done to try and keep my apartment from becoming a den of filth:

1. Spot cleaning

2. One deep clean a month

 

Have you ever been into a room that you haven’t used in a while? What did you notice? Dust everywhere. How does it even get in there? It’s hard to say. One thing is for sure: dust will find a way. 

This typically shows up on the floor. Dust everywhere. Even more so for us with pets. Dust and dog hair. There was no way I could wait till the end of the month to do a deep clean. The dust would take over my small apartment. 

I’ve enlisted help. I got a Roomba You can get simple ones that do most of the work. It’ll vacuum around the house/apartment and even come back to charging station when it’s done. 

 

You can even get fancy ones that you can control with Wi-Fi. They work best when there is your place is all one level. 

 

This will only keep your place clean for so long, which is why I invest in one deep clean a month. The key word is invest. It’s either an investment of time or money. There’s only so many hours in a day, and I’d prefer not to clean.

 

I can recognize the mental health benefits of having a clean place though. And I always thought that hiring someone to clean my place was a needless expense and one that I couldn’t afford. Something for just the uber wealthy. 

 

I even did a quick google search one day when I was really busy and the dust was winning. $100 an hour for a maid? Would have been nice at the time, but I was a resident and that was way more than I could afford.

 

One day someone told me about Taskrabbit. You can use it to find people who will do common tasks such as helping you move or clean your house. I was able to find someone for $35/hr. My whole place could be cleaned for about $100. Now that was well worth it. 

 

So now, take all that time you saved and do more of what only you can do.