As I sat under moon and fairy lights late last night, editing my post, I considered how often I'd been in this very same place. Posting to Words and other adventures near or on the other side of midnight, working late to finish a project. And this one doesn't have much of a deadline.
I have lived most of my life convinced that I lack proactive qualities that would make life a little simpler and less stressful, called myself a procrastinator, a slacker, lazy or inept. Harsh, right? To decide a character flaw is so ingrained that it's my nature hides the truth: my tendency to often leave a task to be completed last minute is nothing more than a habit I've repeated year after year, one opportunity to reinforce it after another. Now, I procrastinate because it feels comfortable, a well worn rut my feet find in the path, as water follows the path of least resistance.
Rivers are living things, not static and unchanging. When I landscaped in the Snake River valley last summer, I found river rocks buried in dirt as smooth and collected as if the river had just receded the year before, instead of a thousand. The Snake has wandered across the valley numerous times, since even for this creature of habit, the default can be redefined. Does a human consciousness help or hinder making the changes I wish to see in my life? That's a question I cannot resolve, but I know that my own particular stubborn self is capable of shifting its habits.
Planning a wedding is, of all surprising events, what's helping me become more proactive. Even though my fiance and me aim for simple - more a party for family and friends to share our union than the elaborate ritual that my older cousins celebrated in the Catholic tradition - a wedding takes on a life of its own, just like the river. Gathering email and snail mail addresses struck me as easy as herding sheep, one of those simple tasks that requires persistence and small steps. Maybe herding sheep is easy if you have experience doing it, but my few attempts were hardly that. However, I kept at it and after several weeks of queries, data entry and discovering the beauty of Paperless Post, I succeeded. Well, almost entirely . . . I apologize if I missed you.
Single steps, one after another, persistent to go the distance. This is how I'm creating a new habit, how I'm checking off items on my punch list, how I'm going to find my way to post on this blog at some time other than the last minute. That and scrap paper filled with lists I revise over and over, writing in bold the sneaky to dos that consistently escape completion.
I read The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg this spring in the hopes I'd figure out how to subvert my tendencies and find a new rut to roll through, one that shortcuts the delay and frustrations of the procrastinator's reality. What I learned is that our daily activities are primarily controlled by habit in a loop. A habit initiates by a cue, which then implements the routine, leading to a reward or outcome.
When I have projects to complete that involve writing, I have two primary routines: an older one in which I wait and wait and wait a little longer to get started because I always try to do tasks in big chunks and I always underestimate the time required to see it start to finish. The second, in my morning pages routine, gets me out of bed and writing first thing. It is a sure path to success: I sit and write and I get my 3+ pages done every day. This is the loop I've decided to adopt and follow.
Right now, it's 7:59 a.m. and I'm finishing the first draft of this post. I need to figure out the next piece, the edit and upload, but I'm well on my way to a new and positive habit. Step aside, procrastination and bad attitude about it, here comes every day consistent choices deferred to the easiest route forward. Except it's 12:17 the next day and here's to getting it right, another time.
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