Last week, one of my clients told me what he used to do when it was time to get to work on a goal he’d set for himself.
“Clean the cabinets, organize the chest of drawers, go shopping, online or offline, watch the news and so on,” he said. “Everything that isn’t important gets moved up the list because you don’t want to deal with your goal. You know you’re supposed to be working on what’s supposedly important to you, but you take a detour.”
There are, however, activities that may appear to be a form of procrastination, but they aren’t. Instead, they are opportunities to engage in creative thinking time.
My favorites are walking, power naps and a 20-minute sauna.
When I walk, my mind enters a stream of ideas, quotes, book titles, stories to tell, etcetera.
Although taking naps is often frowned on in the western world, and for no good reason, if the frowners only knew what a 15-20-minute nap does for creativity, they would make it their mandatory practice.
Sometimes, believe it or don’t, sitting in a chair doing nothing is a supreme way to organize your thoughts and realize what direction to move. I never think of it as procrastination.
And then there is practicing Theatre of the Mind, wherein you take some time once a day (or more often) to visualize and imagineer what you will be accomplishing in your life. Before you begin your day, or partway through the day, and/or at the end, you sit, relax your body, breathe deeply and picture the results you want to create.
Is Theatre of the Mind a form of procrastination?
Not at all, yet the blind may mistakenly think it is.
Taking the time to visualize the result you want to create is the most powerful practice you can engage in, yet it doesn’t appear, to the unknowing, that anything is happening.
As I wrote for my followers on Instagram – @mattfureysays – “The vast majority of peoples’ problems are mental imagery problems.”
The same is true of procrastination. If your mental image of procrastination is one in which you’re putting off the doing of what you want to be doing, you have a different outlook on the matter than someone who views what he or she is doing as creative thinking time.
Theatre of the Mind is creative thinking time. So is walking. So is napping.
Oddly enough, cleaning the chests, the cabinets, closets and drawers could be as well. But it usually isn’t because the person doing these things ISN’T picturing a goal or the steps to the goal. Instead, the person is avoiding the goal by engaging in “busywork.”
If you are stumped while working on a project, you could go for a drive and turn it into creative thinking time. You could also use the time to procrastinate. The choice is based upon how you picture what you’re doing in your mind’s eye.
If procrastination is a problem, you can begin to picture it as an opportunity to expand your thinking. First, picture a goal you want to accomplish as you supposedly procrastinate. See yourself being done with it, on the other side of it.
Sooner than you think, as you’re vacuuming or dusting, you’ll be catapulted into doing what you want to do.
You heard it here first, my friend. Turn procrastination inside out and it becomes Theatre of the Mind time.
See it. Feel it. Do it.
Matt Furey
By the way, Theatre of the Mind is available – and you can also digitally download it at audible.com
Do it.
