Late Shift Collaborative

Starting things is hard. Starting this blog is hard, so I have put it off for several months, which makes me think about procrastination, a topic we will talk about a lot here. We procrastinate for myriad reasons, and if you are neurodivergent, your procrastination may be related to the way your brain processes tasks and motivations.

Whether neurodiverse or not, procrastination may stem from (1) the pro-survival impulse not to expend energy until it is clear the task must be done; (2) a lack of a needed piece of information or precondition to starting the task; (3) the task does not align with the person’s values or true self; (4) a lack of resources/spoons to do the task; (5) a traffic jam – the task brings too many sub-parts and buddies to the party, and they can’t all fit in the front door together. When we dig into the reason for procrastination, we will likely see some of these, and we might find entirely new reasons and patterns.

For starting this blog, I think I am finding (1), (3), (4), and (5). (1) I wanted to finish my coaching certification from Being True to You before I dove into the website and blog. What if I got hit by a bus before I finished the cert? Then I would have done all this work fighting with WordPress and trying to get the pictures to be the same size for nothing! (3) I didn’t want to start advertising for clients until I was sure I had all of the information I was going to get from my coaching training. The training was intense, and I was already working with clients within the program, but what if I learned something amazing that would have been exactly the right thing for a client after the client had their last session with me? (4) I was overextended with graduate school, coaching training, and legal clients, and while I knew that getting this website up and running was not going to dump a huge amount more on my plate right away, the unpredictability of how much would be needed was overwhelming and caused me to self-sabotage. (5) The traffic jam! This is one of my favorite executive function metaphor, and ADHDers will probably recognize the feeling. Publishing the website, posting on the Blog, getting new professional photos taken, collaborating on graphic design with my artist friend, setting up email boxes and billing software, drafting a business plan, meeting with my own coaches. These are all steps that I need to take for launching this business, but prioritizing them is hard. Do I start with the hardest one? The most fun? The most important? And even when I get them to line up in some kind of order, as soon as they get enthusiastic, they all crowd in front of the door again.

So, what did I do? How did we get here? I had to wait. I finished my coaching training and processed some of what was on my plate. I also had to zoom out. Zooming out on the traffic jam and the front door allows you to check to see if you can sneak someone through the garage. Writing this post about procrastination and how hard it is to start things let me see another way in.

Working with a coach on things like starting, prioritizing, and procrastination can offload some of the weight of achieving your really important goals.

I turn to the poetry of Mary Oliver to guide me when I get stuck, and she has a really great one for starting on things called The Journey

The Journey by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.

I wish you the absolute best on your new beginnings and ongoing journeys! I will be posting here about the cool things I learn, things that help me in my journey, and real life examples. Eventually, I would like this blog to be a resource for my clients and for other travelers. I would love to hear from you!