I wanted to write something that was meaningful for me at the moment and as I was preparing to start a new course, going through the introductory unit, I knew what I would talk about.
Procrastinating, something that we are all guilty of at one point or another in our lives; we are all procrastinators, but WHY this subject NOW? Well… because I have been procrastinating, I should have looked at this introductory unit a week ago, but I have only just done it, a day before the course is supposed to start.
So, what is procrastinating?… When you leave something, you need to do for tomorrow instead of doing it today because you decided to spend your time doing something much more fun, that is procrastinating.
I watched a TED Talk by Tim Urban (by the way, brilliant resource to learn about anything, really anything, small videos, talks about a specific subject, very clearly put and in a fun way, by auditors that are experts on the subject) on procrastinating and he describes it like this:
We all have three characters, first one the “Rational Thinker”, the character in our head saying “You have a week to look at all this information introducing the course, you can do a bit at a time, so next week, when your course starts you will be ready and relaxed”.
The second one is the “Instant Procrastinating Monkey” who came along and whispered in my rational thinker’s ear “listen, you’ve got this,… you have done another course which covered this subject, … so you know what it is about, and you have used that learning platform before, … so you don’t have to waste time looking at it when you could be on Instagram and face book, posting fun posts and chatting with others. Oh dear… that monkey was very convincing!!!
And the third one is the “Panic Monster” which jumped out of nowhere and made the instant procrastinating monkey so afraid that it run away and hid. However, the rational thinker got very scared too but thought, “the panic monster is giving me a last chance to put this right. I can do this, I can still be ready for tomorrow if I cover the unit today.
And this is what happened to me, I listened to the Instant Procrastinating Monkey which made the Panic Monster turn up before my deadline. But there is a problem here, sometimes we procrastinate on actions that have no deadline, for instance if you are starting your own business, there is no panic monster, no one to tell you when you need to have it up and running by, it’s all up to you. And this is when your Growth Mindset needs to kick in.
I read a book called “Mindsets,” by Carol Dwerck. She explains there are two mindsets which we all have, and we use according to the situation in hand. You could identify yourself more on one than another, but it is quite certain we all possess both.
“The Fixed Mindset”, this is when we believe that our intelligence and abilities are fixed traits. You need to look smart all the time otherwise people will think you are dumb.
“The Growth Mindset”, when you believe your talents and abilities can be developed through effort, persistence, and good teaching. In the growth mindset you believe that anyone can develop and grow if they work at it.
So if you are in your growth mindset, you don’t need a panic monster because you won’t listen to the instant procrastinating monkey, your rational thinker will be driving you forward because YOU HAVE an objective that YOU WANT to achieve.
Be aware of the Instant Procrastinating Monkey, and approach your goal with your Growth Mindset, and SUCCESS will be yours.
