Life Coaching ADD Coach Financial Coach

Permission to Waste Time

What are some of your most comforting methods for putting off doing what needs doing? Some of us surf the net, play solitaire, watch tv, talk on the phone, sleep, or tidy up. What does it for me is creating elaborate lists and plans. I get a rush from designing a new way to clean a closet, balance my checkbook or lose weight. I may or may not actually accomplish any of these things. My thrills come from planning, dreaming, scheming, listing and thinking about doing- not necessarily doing them!

It recently occurred to me that if I so enjoy this form of procrastination, why not give myself permission to do it daily? So, once a day I sit down and plan, scheme and list about anything that comes to mind- particularly things I know I’m supposed to do. It feels delicious constructing those plans with full awareness that I’ll probably not carry them out! Who cares? The fun is in the planning.

There have been some interesting results in my life since I started allowing this frivolity. Now that I’m free to waste time in this way, I get it out of my system in one sitting. I no longer feel the desire to procrastinate by planning. I have a folder into which I store all these plans and ideas that I’ve never actually done. I now share them with clients who are using them! I also have cut in half the amount of time I ‘waste’ in this manner, which has freed me to fill the time with something productive -or frivolous. Since it’s going to happen anyway, why not be at choice?

I offered this concept to a client who procrastinates by playing computer games. I asked him what would happen if he gave himself permission to play for 2 full hours every day. At first he thought I was crazy. Where was he going to find 2 hours to waste like that? When we analyzed the time and energy he lost each day to guilty playing, he realized he would actually have more, rather than less, time to be productive. Now there are times when this guy is so productive, he forgets to stop for his game break!

For those of us who have dieted, we know that eating a box of donuts in small bites over the course of a day, is not as fulfilling as eating half a box in one sitting, and only half the fat!

Love, Viv

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