Procrastination

Sometimes “you really should do X” but you don’t. Here’s some excellent advice from AmbivaBlog for all of us procrastinators:

According to “archetypal psychologist” James Hillman, who at some point dissolved my own suicidal feelings of frustration and failure into laughter, procrastination is a “disease” only from the point of view of the heroic ego, which believes it can and should control everything — first discipline the self, then save the world. (“Enormous inner strength and will!” “The fight of your life, for the rest of your life!”) Procrastination is one of the signs of the soul at work, undermining and sabotaging the grandiose aspirations of the hero-ego, perhaps so that something real can happen, or not happen, as it, not I, wish. In Hillman’s work procrastination means uncountably many things to the soul. It’s an intrinsic part of the work process, resisting the pen the way the knots in wood resist and redirect the chisel; it’s like the dance of avoidance all animals do on the way to their most primal gratifications, building up the intensity of mating or fighting by postponing it. It’s much like the way we turn red-faced and flee from the very person we’ve fantasized confessing our love to, or the way we eagerly look forward to going “home” and then sink into a ghastly regressive lethargy, binge-eating on our parents’ couch, because what the soul wants is something less literal than we think we want. And one of the things it wants, and loves, is its problems, which Hillman says are like heraldic emblems.

Read the entire excellent post here.

I often berate myself for not just getting the stuff done I need to do… but I also find that I can force myself to do it, and it turns out to be difficult, or I can wait until he right moment (whatever that is) and suddenly it’s so easy, it feels as if the work does itself. On the other hand, sometimes I DO force myself to do it and it also turns out to be easy :o)