So, I have a dream. Yes, I always wanted to write that Martin Luther King quote. That wasn’t my dream though. I’ve been developing a course called Introduction to Happiness Skills. My dream is to live from selling this course (and maybe others I’ll develop) and these are my reflections on procrastination. Dreams and procrastination seem to go together.
In this dream, everything comes together for me. I love talking about happiness and I believe it’s important. Also, I like working for someone. Eventually, however, I get annoyed by the limitations that it puts on me. I want to be able to determine the use of my time. Since I tend to work more than less, I want to be able to take breaks when I need them without the need for justification. I also want to spend time with my kids without the need to save up leave days or issues of picking them up early from school.
Apart from the need for flexible work time, I want to be able to work from anywhere. And I want to have all the intellectual property of my work. I’m sick of developing more efficient work structures (at least that’s what I think) without anyone acknowledging it. It should be between me and the people buying my courses. If they don’t like what I have developed, they give me feedback immediately – by not buying or complaining.
So, I want to be an entrepreneur to be able to live according to my needs and desires. Nice dream, hey?
Procrastination?
So, I have a lot of reasons to pursue my dream. However, I find myself not doing it. Does that sound familiar? Yeah, I’m preaching to my friends about how they should pursue their passions. Then I find myself having always something more important to do than sitting down to edit my script. I wrote that script a couple of months ago by just letting the juices flow. It requires serious editing to give it structure and organise the content more coherently. After I wrote the script, it was marking time and I was shut down for two weeks to mark uni assignments.
After marking, I tried to film that script and discovered the need to edit it. Instead of sitting down and doing it, I found other things that required my urgent attention. Reminding myself, that without this course, it would be hard to pursue my dream, I got myself to edit. But it was a slow process full of resistance. Fighting that procrastination urge is hard.
Why is it so hard?
Well, I guess the pressure of being the next step towards my dreams doesn’t make editing easier. I want to do it very well. This course shouldn’t be something I do on the run. It’s the cumulation of reflections, research and many more reflections. So, it needs to sit in the back of my head for a bit while I do things that don’t require that much effort.
But then, I need to remember that it’s not going to do much in my head. I want to share it with the world and it has to get onto “paper” (actually film). However, when I’m editing the script it often isn’t as great as it was in my head. So, I need to let it sit again and then edit it into shape. It’s frustrating and I rather do something else that earns me money now – like developing a website (I love working with websites).
Also, my dream is, well, a dream. I want to live from teaching people about happiness – sounds a bit out there, right? I mean there are quite a lot of people who are doing that and quite a lot of them are successful. So, it’s doable. But will I be able to do it? Good old imposter syndrome is kicking in. It’s already hard work to get that self-confidence going. That leaves little energy to actually do the deeds.
The way out
There is a way out. It’s called ‘just do it’. I find that enjoying the process helps. Every time, I sit myself down to edit, I savour the feeling that I’ve taken another step towards my dream – if it comes true or not doesn’t matter. I’ve done something about it.
Sometimes, it’s ok to do other things but sometimes, I lie awake at night (I do that a lot due to menopause) and ask myself how I will achieve my dream. Then I know that I need to take a look at my calendar and free up space to work on my script. At first, I usually believe that there’s no time and that everything else is important. Then I remind myself that my dream is important and suddenly slots appear. Interestingly, everything else that is important gets done as well. It’s like magic although it always makes sense when I look back.
Do you have a dream? Do you take steps to pursue that dream? Is it super hard like for me?