Thank you for reading this blog post/email/social media post. (I’m not sure how you got here!) Especially if you are reading it the first time you opened the email or came across the post.
You didn’t procrastinate!
Life is busy. And for most of us, it’s hard to read everything we’ve signed up to read.
Hey, it’s hard for most us to read the email we need to read.
And most people have very good intentions when putting something aside to do or read ‘later’. But later seems to be filled with more things than anyone will ever have time for.
September 6th is Fight Procrastination Day. A day designated to encourage people to take charge of their battle with procrastination. Procrastination is the act of putting things off until another day or time. Or doing less urgent tasks in place of urgent tasks. Or doing more pleasurable things before the stressful or harder tasks on our list.
“I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do — the day after.”
― Oscar Wilde
Procrastination in and of itself isn’t a fatal disease. We can’t always do everything at the moment. But the habit of procrastination can create stress and anxiety – and those can lead to disease.
Are You a Procrastinator?
Freud tells us the pleasure principle is the cause of procrastination. Humans avoid negative emotions and delay stressful tasks. Procrastinators are chasers of bright shiny objects. Oh… let me read/see/play with _____ (fill in the blank).
Procrastinators take the most important thing that must be done that day (like writing this piece) and put it off until there is not another minute left to get it to the editor. 😊
Procrastinators really do want to get the job done, but just seem to wait until the last minute to do so.
For home-based mystery shopping businesses, procrastination can also lead to decreased income and fewer shops. Which leads to stress and anxiety, which leads to… well, you get it.
And once you are sick – you won’t be able to work, will you?
In his book, The Procrastination Cure: 21 Proven Tactics For Conquering Your Inner Procrastinator, Mastering Your Time, And Boosting Your Productivity!, Damon Zahariades defines procrastination as ‘the act of deferring action on something when taking earlier action would arguably have been the better decision.”
Breaking the Procrastination Habit
So how does a procrastinating mystery shopper break the habit and make the better decisions in order to find work, complete it, and get paid for it?
- Commit. To yourself. To your family. To the mystery shopping companies you signed up with. Remember your why. Vacation money? Paying off a college loan? The desire to eat 3 meals a month on someone else’s dime? Remember why you wanted to mystery shop. Don’t disappoint anyone – especially yourself.
- Keep it in perspective. We tend to inflate the enormity of the issue or the amount of work that needs to be done. Most times, what we need to do takes less time than the time we spend avoiding it. Take looking for assignments. Open the emails from the mystery shopping companies, see if they have shops in your area. Yes – click and complete the process. No – delete the email and move on. It really is as simple as that.
- Put it on your calendar. All of it. Schedule it. Which days you will look for shops. Which days you perform shops. What hours you write up reports. Then develop a system to use every single day. The work will get done if it’s all planned and in front of you!
If you are reading this after September 6, don’t wait another minute. Any day can be Fight Procrastination Day! Commit, get your job on the calendar, and get it done!
And we’ll ignore the fact that September 6 is also National Read a Book Day….an excuse any good procrastinator would use to avoid doing what has to be done!
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Do you know someone who would be a good mystery shopper? Please forward this post to them! You’ll be sharing the wealth and spreading happiness! And, after all, isn’t that what we all want?