Combatting Procrastination

 

During these unprecedented times, it’s important to stay grounded, practice self-care, and consistently check in with oneself. 

However, one of the realities is that work doesn’t stop. This means figuring out a “flow”, or a conductive pattern centered around all the objectives, passions, and personal necessities one may have for themselves.

When trying to balance these responsibilities, it’s sometimes way easier to push work to the side. More commonly called; procrastination,

Why do we find ourselves procrastinating, even while we know the importance of productivity?

We look to the findings of Dr. Tim Pychyl, a researcher who avidly facilitates work procrastination management, emotions, mental strategies, and overall productivity.

Dr. Pychyl has identified specific reasons why individuals have continuously turned away from productivity.

These reasons include:

The task is ambiguous and high staked

We have goals and tasks that will propel us to the next step. With that, it’s natural to have some anxiety, thinking about their significance, or being pensive to start on a project. 

There should be tools to mitigate potentially having that anxiety. Reminiscing on previous successes is a good way to remind yourself of your capabilities! We are all risk-takers in our own right and you have made it this far! 

 Also, try to put this task in perspective. Sometimes, we often have an all or nothing mindset, this can come from society, parenting, or different paradigms that have influenced upbringing. “If I don’t go to college, I am not successful.” “If my plan doesn’t work, I will never get hired for my dream job.” A lot of these statements are rooted in fear and an overemphasis. 

Whatever we are working on, we have to aim for doing the best we can, but not over-identifying our worth to a project. Maintaining a healthy relationship with your goals and responsibilities is a huge part of performing at an optimum level.

 The task can be very challenging

Sometimes tasks can be daunting, because we may feel in over our heads. Doing research on the topic/task is a wonderful way of becoming more credible, preparing to complete the task you need too, and “hyping yourself up” or inspiring yourself - just don’t get stuck on the research phase! Reach out to peers, friends, family members, or other support groups that can assist you with the task’s completion. Feeling support is another huge key to success; when people feel heard, supported, and encourage, they respond positively (source) 

The person may be frustrated or the nature of the task can be frustrating

As soon as you sit down to be productive, it feels like you can never get into the groove! OR, the nature of the task is so drab, you roll your eyes or yawn as soon as you think about it… ugh. 

Try to spice up the mood by having something that uplifts you- background music (that won’t distract you), or you can identify specific ways to tackle this task at a new angle! Think creatively! 

If you hype yourself up, think positively, and feel good, the task will go by much faster!

 

The task (or life) is unstructured

Being organized can drastically improve the overall mission, and create ease. Implement steps to complete the task. This makes it easy to digest and you are now able to take “bites” of the project.

If your life is unstructured, have specific days and times that you work on the project. This way you subconsciously train your brain to a routine! The more structured one is, the less mysticism surrounds the nature of the task. Plus, you can always tweak what works for you and does work, It’s best to check in with your self after trying a routine for a significant time (a month or two) and chart your productivity.

Tip: a tool to use could be a journal- for example,  a Law of Attraction Journal 

The task is not intrinsically rewarding

Sometimes, our responsibilities are obligatory but don’t infuse direct reward in our lives; or seemingly have an impact on us at all. It’s still important to do those tasks because in life we have responsibility.

 Recently there is an upsurge of the “New Age” philosophy engrained in influencers, on Instagram, YouTube, and other social media channels, preaching “If you don’t love it, why do it?” This can be very toxic and also not realistic at all. There are things in life, all the time that we will have to do. Taking the idealism out of life can be grounding. 

We often get fed the message: “You should always be happy in all that you do. If not, you aren’t living life right.” but that’s not the true nature of life. Now, if you feel outwardly depressed at your job, or more empty than rewarded, it’s time to make assessments and different choices; but trying to live idealistically can cause depression too. Balance is key.

 

To close, there are many factors that can impede us and our productivity, but all are rooted in old paradigms, fear, or can be a sign we need to strengthen our mental health game. If you are experiencing these roadblocks, it’s always important to talk to a mental health professional to understand the nature of your worry, stress, or stagnation.

SINFUL- INTRO

*fictional characters, fictional plot/ real issues*

ZERO.

I hate this place.

It's ungodly.


The linoleum floors, ugly and harsh on our soles, the fluorescent lights glared down on us, more importantly me, as if I sinned, wronged. And now my fate is to burn in the spotlight; made by the nasty yellowish glow of unforgiving, old bulbs.

The water sprayed down at me, and while I was underneath the nozzle, I acted out my own personal baptism, washing out unholy thoughts. Refusing to breathe, water directly in my face, immersed in this water that would cleanse out my wandering, disobedient eyes to other stalls.


Is this a Sin?

I ask myself this question everyday.

Whilst in my bed before I closed my eyes awaiting fitful sleep.
Upon waking up to sticky sheets, tinted pink cheeks and me cursing my body, my mind.
After eating over prayed food; prayer addressed to the very Entity they swore hated me.
Whilst doodling in the corners of homework assignments or slivers of my skin.
Whilst gazing into his eyes, feeling the tingling in the deepest recesses of my stomach, the pit of my heart, asking myself am I wrong?

Long ago, I once tiptoed in my Mother's bedroom and gently roused her from her sleep. Mother, I spoke. She smiled down at me, her beautiful but tired eyes glimmering and red from sleep. I asked her quietly about love. Does it happen to anybody and everybody? She patted to the space next to her and beckoned me to lay. Honey, love is inescapable. Love has that ability to touch the darkest of hearts. Of course it could happen to everyone. I nodded intensely for a couple of moments, then spoke delicately. Can love ever be wrong? She rolled her eyes at me and poked my nose with playful taps. Love is pure, Sammy. Relief washed over me and soon, the bated breath I had forgot I was holding escaped my lungs and I was free to inhale again.

But it was a false sense of security.

Shutting off the water, I quickly hide my body with a towel; disappearing in camouflage of cotton. I fixate my gaze on the floor, and not to the unashamedly naked bodies that mill around.

And as the bile and lust bubbles in my stomach, I pray, pray, pray that my Lord doesn't hate me as much as I hate myself now.

Not a Skeleton, But Still in the Closet

I keep all the gifts you gave me in my closet now. (Isn't that ironic?)

Well, I can't bear to show them on my bookshelf anymore, because I can no longer want you, no longer see you with the same dumb, goo-ga eyes blind from glasses tinted in rose.

I folded up your kisses, the curve of your lips, the sound of your sighs in the depths of my mind and deadbolt them shut.

I keep the twinkle of your eyes in the lowlight, the feel of your hand in mine, the sound of your snort right at the surface.

I love you, want the best. Truly.


And you're so gorgeous in and out. Please don't allow these ghouls splatter their ruddy shades of grey paint on your masterpiece of a soul.

Don't allow your anger to corrupt it either.

Thank you for being there when my own thoughts were eating me inside out. Thank you for holding my hand, kissing the hurt away.

Thank you for being the cynical, crazy, lovable you.

You were and always will be my best friend.


That day, I was brave enough to laugh, cry, imagine one last time before delicately placing the memories away.

And one day, maybe you will be brave enough to drag your body bag of bones and blood out of the closet... and maybe, your life will be more radiant in the sunlight's glow then the phantom fluorescent.

Want

I huff this poison through a skinny stick and fall in love with how it circulates through my veins.

Flick the ashes like an bumbling infant, rookie to this new position my fingers are taking.

See your face through the curtain of gray, and unveil you with a wave of a hand. And now with new found clarity, my eyes devour the sight of you.

Damn.

You're beautiful.

Your eyelashes still have rain droplets trapped, making tiny diamonds on their surface. Your neck is calling me to just travel on every indentation I see. My religion became centered on every lick of your lips.

I sit back in my chair and make myself still, when I desperately want to move to you.

The stray butt found itself in it's ashtray and now we're staring down each other in the dimlit room.

You cock your head, and your lips lift into a perfect graceless smirk.

And you move closer, crawl closer to me on the bed and bridge the gap between us.

Then speak.

Your words billow out your mouth like incense smoke escaping it's stick-home. You flirt with every blink of your eye; every shape of your mouth belongs hung up as a art piece; when your hands graze my knee, they light brilliant fires across my skin.

And I have no way of communicating back to you. Your proximity has made me drunk with desire and I am at a lost. My tongue trips on itself and words fall, crash and sound like China tea cups on unforgiving hard wood floor. My heart violently thrashes in it's cage of bone and blood; stupidly, desperately trying to make your hands it's new home. My head, drawing blanks, save for one word repeating itself in lazy ink swirling loops, save for that one damned word that was finding itself on the edge of my lips threatening its way to slip carelessly out.


I swallow the word down roughly, it finding itself home in my gut like a bitter pill. Bite my lip and also bite the bullet you had offered me on a glimmering silver plate.

You inch closer and I can feel the tension rippling and ebbing through our bodies.

Like an artfully made disaster, we simultaneously fumble for each other's hand and hold on.
You grab me and tug me on your lap, carefully tear off my shame; I help you unshackle the chains of cotton and denim.

I swear, I'm sweating like a sinner in the pews, still clamping my mouth shut.

And the moon throws it's stolen light all across my body, illuminating our hooded eyes, illuminating this bed housed of silk and sin.

Damn.

We now lay side by side in basic whites in the black dark, I sputter on liquid fire from a unidentifiable cup while you ease another cigarette in the spaces of my hand and your own.

We look at each other and breathe in, the familiar toxic kicking inside our chests.

The silence will soon me eat away like a callous vulture, not even leaving a spare bone and you will probably laugh; your irises green and gold would dance and light up at my demise.

Because after all you are the devil personified.

And with this knife, I stab YOU, but I still bleed.

Listen to this to set the mood

Sometimes, I hate you.

So I try to kill you.

Try to stab you with scissors to cut your face. 

Leave you and your body with superficial cuts yet unbleeding wounds. 

Leave your remains scattered on my floor.

Trying so desperately to etch out your damned face and carve out your presence.

Other times, I find myself gluing you back together. 

Because the space you leave is to scarring to me.

That emptiness just resonates, and it hits too close to home.

Most times I want to capture you. 

Cementing you, so paper and plastic could hold your smile forever.

There are so many of you; smiling, looking down on me, laughing or looking at me with happiness in your eyes.

Other times, your smile is just as fake as the plastic I put you in.

Don't get me wrong; the smiles are full and radiant. But eyes are vacant and dull, melancholy and quite hollow. The windows of your soul show the cannibalistic ghosts that are inside you, feeding on the corpse of your joy.

And anyone can see with great clarity that we are so separated, we are miles away from one another, set apart by our malice and misery, even though throughout every still-frame we still remain side by side.

And there are so many of you.

You are my mother, father, sister. Sometimes, you, my love, sometimes grow cold and spiteful.

I've even been left to cut and battle with MYSELF, trying so desperately to separate the YOU from ME. But sometimes they all blend into one.

So I am forced to etch out my own existence.

Still try so hard to disconnect myself from the you that lies within.

And I'm left encased, captured, locked in this room with thousands of yous on paper staring down with your many eyes.

Left to attempt to live vicariously off of these stale memories of yesterday.

My fingers tremble on your photograph.

I scream.

Cry.

Scream.

Is anyone listening?

So I fall to my knees.

My own body buried and drowning in the snips and broken paper pieces of your hearts

Forced to continue.

Continue making these cuts on your body, decapitating your heads, and ripping your hearts, limbs and more.

Doing this dirty work with my clean hands.

Forced to continue.

Continue to feed my hungry heart off of rotting smiles or phantom touches that I can still feel. 

As if you were still next to me.

All the while, letting it happen.

Letting myself become more haunted.

by the lingering you.

still present on the broken photograph.

and hanging in the memories in my mind.

ABC, You're confusing me- (What Love Is)

Listen to this to set the mood.

v

v

v

Ada was on her back, staring at the stars, the muggy heat attacking her body, making her skin weep with sweat.

Bright light filtered through the night as she heard a car's tires crunch on pebbles nearby, finally her friend had arrived.

Climbing to her feet, she ran to the car.

"Dude, finally you came, I've been waiting out here forever." she stopped to catch her breath, smiling at her friend.

Ev unlocked the car and beckoned her to get in the passenger side.

Finally fumbling inside, Ada closed the door and buckled her seat beat, settling for the long drive.

Gliding out of the pavement, they peeled out of the park/nature trail parking lot.

Heading for? Nowhere, it seems. They were wanderers. Full tank of gas for the empty road ahead.

Indigo and bubble gum pink hues were stretched out in the dim-lit sky and Ev rolled down the window to accept the night chill with open arms.

Jets of wind tousled their clothes and hair. Racing down the road, they belted out their whoops and hollers, tearing out their city souls and let their wolves climb out their skin in the young night.

Kids, they were.

"Love." They spoke at the same time.

Mindlessly grabbing hold of each others hand, looking in each other's eyes, even though they were still hurling into the sunset and moonrise all the same.

Nothing would stop them, timeless (screw the clock, they would have their infinity), they couldn't stop looking, couldn't stop the tug of their own hearts, just thirsting for hearing the other's melodic laughter, seeing the other's warm smile, they couldn't stop their brimming love or envisioning this moment they had right now.

Only, they never said 'love', never.

Peaking sideways was the only way to look at the other's hand, never thinking that they would have that luxury to feel it's grip firsthand.

Questioning time and time again, why do I feel this way about her? In both their minds.

Raised eyebrows and tentative smiles, they did exchange, until the voices broke into the night: "Evelyn?" she whispered into the darkness and the "Ada"  when she answered back

Strong emotions passed to and from both of them, and finally Ada made her move, "Where are we going?" she spoke softly, and Ev didn't know what to say; to what is she referring: their growing love for one another or the current road they were on?

"Towards the Now." she spoke finally, giving Ada an ambiguous answer.

Underneath the streetlights, they paused in the road, caught by a red light, blocking movement.

Very carefully, Ada spoke again, voice cutting silence like a blade.

"Where are we going? Seriously. I mean, who are we anyway? What are we doing?"

X.

"Yahoos, unknown and crazy ones at that. Dreamers. People. Crazy enough to believe in love." Evelyn spoke softly in the glow.  

(in truth) Zion is the destination that lie ahead.

What Are We Really Made Of?

You break me apart, trying to see who I am
You could look with your microscopes and prod me until I bleed, but you still won't understand.
You smash and tear, breaking all of these (atomical) bonds 
But the answers quite clear, hasn't it donned upon you? 
That: I am not an question that needs an answer. I am that I am. I am stars. Unquantifiable.