In the 21st century, we find ourselves in a world of abundance. This abundance is not only about the material things around us, but also about our activities and opportunities. And we enjoy it. But there are moments when we find ourselves distracted and unable to accomplish our plans. We call them moments of procrastination. We delay taking action for hours, days, months, years. We are fully aware of this. And yet, we keep doing it.
If we look carefully at these moments of procrastination, we can notice that we are missing the necessary energy to take action. Energy is created from the amount of importance we give to that. Importance comes from the story we tell ourselves about the action, its outcomes, our world and finally, about ourselves. It seems that all this abundance of information we enjoy has reduced the quality of our personal stories. We have more flexibility and resources to use, but at the same time, whatever story we come up with, it fails to give us the energy we need.
If we understand that our procrastination stems from the lack of energy our stories generate, we can look for ways to overcome this. Maybe it is time to start exploring other parts of the world. Maybe we can become minimalists regarding the stories we consume, in order to regain our sensitivity to them. These are good solutions. But if we really want to make a significant change in our lives, we need to go deeper and question our very beliefs based on which we create these stories. We can question the abundance of our world and find scarcity and pain. We can question the insignificance of our lives and transform the entire world. Seeing such things can motivate us. Or we can explore and discover other new ways of creating energy.
Now, lets go even deeper into our enquiry and find the very root of our problem. We can realize that the act of procrastination by itself is not the real issue, but it’s the moralizing voice inside our mind that makes us feel stressed. When we see this, we will wonder if it’s possible to simply remove this voice. But trying to do that by desire will just enforce it even more. Our focus should not be on removing it, but making it work properly. When we are thinking that we should do something and we don’t, we are creating conflict inside ourselves. There is no need for that.
If we see that the problem of procrastination is due to lack of energy, low quality stories, our beliefs of the world and our inner voice, then we can finally ask: Could this be different?
That question itself is the answer. What we really need is not to know, but to be curious. We need to explore our world, our beliefs and ourselves. Only then we will be able to create better stories, more energy and an inner voice that works not against us, but with us. We shall do it.
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
— Albert Einstein
