Procrastination (part 1 of 2)

As a practically professional procrastinator, I’ve learned some techniques for dealing with this.

One of the main reasons I procrastinate some things is because I’m not sure how to deal with them. For example, filling out an insurance form where I had a special case that wasn’t covered by the usual paperwork.

I finally decided that whoever gets the paperwork would be an expert and would know better than I did how to handle the situation. So I filled out the parts I could, included a note about my special situation, and sent it off. A few days later they called me, we discussed it, and I only needed to fax over a page of other documentation. Problem solved! (Except for finding a way to fax it… apparently faxes would be handled immediately but an emailed scan of the document would take at least a week. Didn’t make sense but whatever.)

I call this the “Other Person’s Problem” procrastination technique.The internet has a ton of stuff on procrastination; apparently it’s a common problem. Here’s one link to analysing and dealing with it: https://www.deprocrastination.co/blog/how-to-stop-procrastinating-by-using-the-fogg-behavior-model. I also used this as my 2020 New Years resolution: “Procrastinate later! What’s the rush?”