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It’s a horrible affliction that strikes so many of us. Yet, it goes undiagnosed by all, discounted as any type of serious condition that could affect your health. They are the dibble-dabbles and they can strike at any time, but most often right before you are ready to start something important. Need to write your book? Check your email first. Need to do that project? You should clean the bathroom first. Need to plan your future? Better find that remote in the couch first. Yup, it’s procrastination and boy is it a time-suck.

Well of course it is, that’s what procrastinating is, wasting time. Right? Wrong. That’s how procrastination manifests itself, but that’s not what it is. Procrastination is refusing to commit. It’s not indecisiveness, it’s not vacillation, it’s not the opposite of commitment. No, procrastination is the proactive decision to not commit. Sounds all the same, let us dig a little deeper.

You may already know but I’ve been writing a book. In fact, there’s a draft, printed out, sitting on my nightstand that I edit every night. In fact, the last time I put pen to paper, I worked through a dozen pages, great right? Well, the last time was about three weeks ago. Don’t worry though, the next time I take vacation, I’ll finish the editing and also work on the cover art and e-book formatting. Just like the last time I was on vacation. Which was also when I last edited. Except out of the 10 days I had off, I worked on my manuscript for exactly…one day.

It’s frustrating because all the times when I’m busy, all I can think about is how I can’t wait to get this project done. When I’m driving in the morning, I make grand statements of how much work I’ll get done that night. Then those dibble-dabbles hit in the evening. I need to check email and surf the web, I need to eat, I need to catch up on some TV, I need to rest before I get to work. After all that, it’s pretty late I know I won’t get any quality work done, so I’ll aim to do it tomorrow. Then, as I drive the next morning, you can imagine the grand proclamations I’m making in the car. Sigh.

None of this is necessary. When you really want to do something, to get something done, you do it. You want to grab lunch, you go eat. If you find yourself eating later than you planned, it’s because you chose to do something else. That’s how it is, you have a lot more control than you ever think about. And when you choose not to do something, you usually rationalize it, you come with reasons to not do it, you start to dibble and dabble in all the things that don’t matter.

How do you get over it? How do you get past the procrastination? Power your way through it isn’t the answer. It’ll work, but only for a little while. Sooner or later, you’ll burn yourself out, you’ll hit a wall, you’ll fall off the wagon. So what is the answer?

Acceptance. The great thing about acceptance is it goes in any direction you chose. You can accept the lack of progress and commit to changing your outlook. That’s probably the sanest way to go about it. You can accept the failure and give up. Not always a bad thing, like if you’re thinking about running a marathon without shoes. Maybe it’s good to give up on that dream. Or, you can accept that you’re destined to fail and never accomplish anything you set out to do. This mindset gets you one thing: the failure that you so desperately hope to prove true. Regardless of how you deal with it, the bottom line is that procrastination happens when you’re not able to give yourself to the task at hand, whether that be a school project, a work assignment, or a relationship. The key is to not fight the dibble-dabbles, the key is to understand why they showed up and ensuring you don’t place yourself in that situation again. Get it done folks, no excuses.

Coming up: Goodbyes suck

Don’t get me wrong, feeling important actually feels really, really good. When you have someone or some group of folks depending on you and you deliver, wow, what can be better than that? Happens all the time in sports, the winning quarterback gets the Disneyland commercial, the winning shot gets all the glory, the team triumphs to claim victory for an entire nation. It feels good, oh so good. Intoxicating. You want more as soon as the feeling begins to fade. You need more, so you should do more to entice those dependents to shower you with more praise and adulation. It all makes sense, right?

Not really. It’s like junk food, that bag of chips that you pop open when you’re starving. Oh, these taste so good, one more, ok one more, a couple more, chomp chomp chomp. Once you get finished you’re an oily, greasy mess huddled in the corner of the kitchen, plastic bag slowly unrolling itself once again to tempt you with just one more chip. Eventually you walk away, but at some point, you’re going to come back, you know it, I know it, Frito Lay knows it. You admonish your own behavior and swear to control yourself with just one chip next time, failing to connect the dots, the underlying issue of being hungry rather than needing to control your junk food urges.  If you would have just cooked a proper meal you wouldn’t need to binge on that crap, but those thoughts come rarely.

That’s a long-winded analogy, but I’ll do you one better. Back in a life long ago, I worked at an typical office in a depressingly dated office park. If you imagine The Office without any hijinks or tomfoolery, this was my world. Sounds fun, I know.

At this office we worked on nothing worth describing. However, we did have your typical office hierarchy in place. There was the boss and he oversaw all of us, and all of us had some semblance of a pecking order largely determined by what responsibilities we had undertaken. I was in one group of folks who had taken on larger roles and as such, we were leaned on more heavily. It didn’t help that we were model employees, didn’t complain, got things done slightly faster than expected, came up with solutions that could be applied elsewhere, in general we were doing our jobs and our bosses felt they could depend on us. Good for us. Until we all got laid off. That’s a different story.

Back to the dependability. At one point, the boss decided to move to a smaller office space within the same office park. It would save money on the lease and help us in the shifting economy. Whoo hoo, moving is fun! The boss took two of us, the “dependable” ones, to tour the new space around the corner. We strolled in and it was an empty office space, but it was nice I guess, as nice as an empty office space could be.

One quick aside, our work depended on computing power. Nothing too fancy, but we were all using desktops to do data work. At the very least we needed an internal network to make sure we could all pull from the same database and coordinate our linked computers. It’s important because…

As we walked around the empty space, I asked the bosses how much still needed to be done. He said not much, just physically moving all the furniture and equipment over. I asked the logical follow-up question of how the technical stuff was being handled and I was met with a puzzled look. “That’s a good question, we hadn’t thought of that.” A grin rolled across his face and a welcoming nod, which produced a more puzzled look on my face.

“Are we hiring someone to wire the office?”

“Hmmm, I don’t know. What do you think?” Another grin, another nod.

“Boss, do you want us to try to wire the building?”

“Oh, OK, since you asked.”

To put this in several different contexts, let’s start with motives. My boss was always really nice and paternal to a fault, so this wasn’t some devious trick he laid upon us.

Second, I was slightly intrigued by the prospects of wiring the entire office. I’d never done something like that before and learning it would be interesting.

Third, let me repeat that, I’d NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE! They have trained professionals that run wires and cables all day long. I know, I see the commercials for ITT Tech and DeVry all the time. What in the world was I thinking? What in the world was my boss thinking? This probably wasn’t the best plan.

This led to the next two days, where my coworker and I ran to Home Depot multiple times. We learned it helps to have something taller than a 6-foot ladder and that when you don’t have one, well that’s all we had so we couldn’t complain. We learned that the warning label on CAT-5 wiring includes a note about carcinogenic material being handled. We learned that masks are a necessity when pushing your head into the fiberglass insulation above you. We learned it’s hard to run wire across the ceiling without actually being, you know, in the ceiling. We learned if you’re not going to be up there, tying the wire to a large, round rod and throwing it from one post to the other will do the job.

After two days of literally working in the ceiling tiles and insulation, we had everything wired. We crossed our fingers and plugged in a laptop and found…SUCCESS!! How in the world did we actually succeed, I still have no idea. But it all worked and the network was up and running once we moved over.

I vividly remember our lunch break on the second day. My coworker and I grabbed something fast and trudged our way back to the break room in the old office. We were caked in dust and dirt, face watering from every orifice due to allergies and fiberglass, just not a pretty sight. Sweating from climbing up and down ladders, pushing our heads into the ceiling, throwing wooden rods halfway across the office. It was gross. And one of our coworkers who was similar in age and background but not quite handling the same projects as we were, walked into the break room and said, “Wow, is it fun doing that?”

There was no hint of sarcasm or malice from her. Rather, genuine curiosity mixed with a sprinkle of envy.

“No, this is horrible.”

“I don’t know, sounds fun to me. You guys get a break from this, you get to hang out in the new space.”

My coworker and I were too exhausted and dumbstruck to respond. We literally looked back down and started eating again in complete silence. It’s like we were two guys who had seen something horrible, like the blob or something, and all we could do is keep our heads down.

Let me be the first to say, if you want to run wires in fiberglass insulation all day long, be my guest. However, I understand the sentiment, and sometimes it’s hard to resist feeling the same way. So-and-so is lucky, they get to this-and-that. They are more important than us, but they shouldn’t be. We do the same thing as them, we should get to do this-and-that.

At the same time, worrying about what so-and-so is doing, and whether you should be doing the same thing is an exercise in frustrating futility. Feeling important, that’s an ego-stroking measure that accomplishes so little. Odds are you’ll be overinflating how important you are, and you’ll be simultaneously garnering the scorn of those around you for puffing out your chest and patting yourself on the back.

It’s human nature. To seek the approval and applause of your peers, of your bosses, or respected figures. Yet, there’s a simple thing you can do to make it a bit more in-line with successful humility. Seek to accomplish the best results in your tasks and find the importance for yourself. Don’t focus on the reactions of those around you, focus on your own reaction. Are you doing your best? Are you improving? Are you contributing in a meaningful way that will provide you with a sense of accomplishment? Because if you’re doing all those things, the praise and the attention will come naturally. And even better, the praise and attention won’t actually matter to you, in a strange twist, it’ll become unimportant.

There’s nothing wrong with striving to do a good job. It’s just a fine line in itching for that positive feedback that provides you with a higher sense of self-worth. Here’s a hint, that type of self-worth is fleeting and requires you to seek more and more feedback. Pretty soon, your whole being is devoted to getting that positive feedback and you lose sight of whatever it is you were doing. Take a look at the innovators, the people we call geniuses, they don’t spend a whole lot of time worrying about the external responses. You know this because they’ve already moved on to the next big project or idea by the time you’re giving feedback on their last performance or product.

Be important. With that, you won’t waste your time trying to feel important.

Coming up: The dibble-dabbles

Isn’t that always the case? For those of us who weren’t born under a lucky star, who don’t seem to effortlessly back into good luck and better fortune, doesn’t it seem like the universe has a sick way to get a laugh. I know you’ve thought it. I know I have, too. Sometimes, it just isn’t fair.

Just in general, things never seem to fall quite in place. I remember something as simple as high school schedules. What could I possibly be complaining about here? Well, this is pretty specific but quite illustrative as well. In high school, schedules were widely set before you even knew it. This was because certain classes were limited to one or two periods a day, and if you wanted to be in those, the rest of your day played out without much input. Example? I was on the math track to hit Calculus by senior year, and that meant you could back up to Pre-Calc in junior year, Algebra II in sophomore year, and Geometry in freshman year. At least I think, but regardless of the details, you get the point.

Now with all the other classes I was aiming to complete, like multiple years of a foreign language, hitting AP English, and finding any other “advanced” class my school had to offer, which actually didn’t extend beyond what I just listed, I was already set into a course track that had minimal variation.

However, there was that thing about one OR two periods a day. So while classes like AP English had one course by senior year, getting there in the preceding three years offered a couple options. And just my luck, literally every time there was a chance for this, I was in the class opposite of when my friends took it. So, I was in first period Chemistry and second period Pre-Calc while everyone I knew was in first period Pre-Calc and second period Chem.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand how this seems relatively inconsequential. But I think back to high school, the equivalent to social castes playing out with raging hormones, and I remember how upsetting it was to not be with my buddies. I couldn’t hang out with them, I didn’t share the same jokes, I missed out on their hijinks. And why? Why was I literally the only one on this schedule set-up while every one of my friends was on the opposite? Damn you universe! Damn you!!

So what ended up happening? Did I know anyone in these classes at all? Yes, my childhood neighbor was in these classes. He was a year ahead of me so we never shared any classes together even though we literally grew up going to the same schools together for 12 years. We were best buds, rode our bikes to the comic shop and 7-11 every afternoon, carpooled until we could drive ourselves, and hung out all the time. He’s the one that I found myself driving down Lombard Street with, and he’s the one that ran hills together as we trained for football tryouts. So after a decade of schooling in close proximity, we finally shared a couple of classes together.

Being a year older, he had his own set of friends in these classes. And being the epitome of a cool friend, he brought me into the fold. I got to sit next to his two cheerleader friends and we all joked around quite a bit. Those were some fun times, seeing the world from a senior’s perspective even though I was junior. They helped me get prepped for senior year, from the stupid stuff like pranks and hooky to the serious stuff like college and graduating. By the end of the year I was sad to see them graduate, but so happy to be cheering them on, if that makes sense.

Back to stupid schedules. There was also the semester after I returned from my broken leg. Second period was the worst because I was in Physiology and Anatomy, again one of those random courses that not everyone took but all my friends did. Except they had it for first period and I was in second period, thank you again universe! It was also in the last classroom of the building, and this building was the farthest away from the quad, and second period let out into our 15 minute break. Seriously? I’m on crutches and I have to hobble my way across the entire school to get to break? Luckily I had friends in second period to keep me company…oh, wait, no I didn’t!

Down the hall, my football teammate did have General Science class for second period. After I came back, he realized I was down the hall and he’d wait for me after class to walk out to break. He was a great guy, funny dude, really good family. In fact, his father stayed with me at the hospital after I broke my leg until my family got there. So his son waiting around for me, cracking jokes on the walk wasn’t unexpected but welcome.

In that General Science class, one of his friends also sat next to him. She was part of the social group we all hung out with, so we knew each other in passing. Quick aside, I actually went to a middle school that was outside of my geographic district. My mom fought to get me into this school, so I had to make new friends there. Then as high school arrived, I fought to go to the school that they were all going to. Just so happened that this high school was also outside of the geographic boundaries, so when we arrived there as freshman, there was a healthy mix of several middle schools feeding new students into this class. Thus, the social circle that I grew into was a mix of my middle school and the other main middle school, a mix of old friends and new strangers.

Back to my football buddy and his friend. He was from the other middle school, but she was actually from the same middle school as me, and yet, we had never really talked before. There were a couple reasons for this. First, I wasn’t really big on talking to the females back in middle school. Don’t get me wrong, I was definitely a ladies’ man…OK, I wasn’t, as evidenced by me using that term. So I was shy, first point. Second point, we never shared any classes in middle school, again, damn you universe! Third point…I absolutely had a crush on this young woman. Goodness, even if we were in every class together, I probably would have never spoken to her.

Back again to the daily walks to break. Soon after I returned to school, my football buddy changed his schedule. Transferred to a different class to get a different something or other. That meant for the rest of the year, I walked with my middle school crush every day to break. How sweet those five minutes became…sigh. It’s like a bad teen romantic comedy, right? It actually kind of sucked as I got healthier and the crutches went away, after all that meant the walk to the quad was quicker. Sigh.

Schedules, back to schedules. By the time senior year rolled around, the majority of the classes I wanted to take were offered only once a day. Things like Calculus or AP English only had one period, and all of us who were on that track had dwindled to a single period anyways. So finally, I had a schedule with all my friends, right? Nope, because my best friends were the ones that dwindled away. Luckily though, after three years of being in the opposite classes, I had made some other friends. We were all in these senior classes together and we all continued to joke around and laugh it up.

In fact, by the end of junior year, I was closing out the English class where none of my friends were and had developed a new friendship with someone who sat on the side of the room. You know in high school, they always like to seat you in alphabetical order to help squeeze the life out of you and drill conformity into your psyche. So, she was early in the alphabet and that meant she always sat in the first row and that meant I was craning my neck back towards her quite a bit by the end of the year.

Come senior year, we danced around the subject for a bit. However, after a summer full of nightly phone calls, we finally sealed the deal at the beginning of the school year, we were finally…going steady! Haha, that sounds so funny and dated. But yes, we were funny little kids “dating” in high school.

Still, when I look back, I know the universe has a target on my back. You see it from the examples above. How could you make high school the most excruciating experience in the world? Screw with my schedule and my schedule alone, so that I would never be able to hang out with my friends. Best friend, years-long crush, and first girlfriend aside, the universe definitely got the better of me on that one didn’t it?

Coming up: The unimportance of feeling important

Top shelf has several meanings. High quality liquor. High quality books or magazines. Elevated hockey shot on goal. I guess the actual words are an accurate description of the meaning, things you would find on the top shelf usually denote higher quality or desirability. Why? Because shop owners make it harder to steal things, so they put it on the top shelf. I guess it could also be placed up high to garner the most attention. That would make sense, too. I guess it depends on your perspective, figuratively…and literally.

I came to understand the literal meaning much later in life than you would expect. For example, just the other day, I was walking down the sidewalk and THWACK! What the? Tree branch taking off the top of my skull. No matter the amount of cursing I directed at that damn tree ent I knew it didn’t magically move at the last minute to swipe my head. I just wasn’t looking up. More accurately, I was watching the ground in front of me.

That’s how it’s always been. I tend to gaze downward. Walking, running, biking, sleeping, all of it down. No one really cares, no one really notices. At least if they do, no one says much of anything about it. So I’m guessing either it’s not a big deal, or it’s so weird that no one has the heart to tell me.

So what’s the big deal? Well, I noticed this a while ago, like years ago. And I even did an experiment that was literally – Look up, you idiot. Yes, I reminded myself to maintain a zero-degree head tilt at all times. What did I find?

I tripped over more stuff. If you can’t see that stupid crack in the sidewalk, you’re doomed. What else? I did notice more things at the book store. Books that I’d never noticed were now more prominent. Same with random stuff at Target. I even noticed the actual “top shelf” items at markets and liquor stores. It’s fun to realize there’s a $100 bottle of whiskey right above the pork rinds and tater skins.

That’s it, really? No life altering epiphanies? Not really. Like I said, I wasn’t exactly staring at my shoe laces all the time. I just wanted to avoid stepping in dog crap rather than exchange awkward head nods and half-smiles with strangers.

So with my natural inclination to watch the ground I walked on, I thought a little about why that may be. And it may be from growing up in the household that grew up in. Which was simple, don’t look at your elders square in the eye. It’s disrespectful. It’s equivalent to eye-f’ing your parents. You know what you get when you mad-dog your mom or dad? Don’t do that, it’s bad for your health.

Ah, but there is a message here, as convoluted as it took to get here. Eye contact. Always look someone in the eyes when you’re talking to them. More importantly, when they’re talking to you. Especially if it’s your boss. Looking down is weakness, it’s not good form, makes you untrustworthy, bad bad bad.

How do you rectify this? In the workplace, you’re a shady, untrustworthy peon if you can’t maintain eye contact. At home, you best get ready for an ass whooping if you’re busy staring at someone. And the answer is…rectify if best as you can. I don’t stare at my parents when I talk to them, and I try to increase my eye dancing at work. Fact is, I will always defer to respect, I will bow my head and avert my gaze unconsciously, and if that makes me untrustworthy then those I work with will think what they think. I can say I pride myself in being the exact opposite, trustworthy to a fault, and if folks don’t pick up on it, so be it.

Back to the top shelf. It doesn’t hurt to change it up and inhale more of the world around you. If you’re always staring at the ground, maybe you should take a look up top. If you’re always busy sniffing the air up there, maybe you can take some time to look out below. Metaphor, yes. Truth, yes. In the end, I smacked my head from looking down. I also stepped in crap looking up. Sometimes, the universe doesn’t care where you’re looking, it’s still gonna pull its prank on you. Best thing to do no matter what, laugh along.

Coming up: The universe conspires against us

I didn’t travel much as a kid. We had a couple of family trips, but these were road trips to Tahoe or Disneyland. Throughout school, there really weren’t a bunch of class trips anywhere. One year some kids went to DC to meet some politicians, but I had no interest or money to participate. Hard for me to imagine now, but I actually didn’t get on a real plane until college. Weird to think, especially when I look at my nephews and realize they’ve been on more cross-country plane rides in the last couple of years than I had been in a couple of decades.

Still, that first trip was simple enough. I was flying down to Los Angeles for a recruiting event. I honestly wasn’t worried about the plane or the flight or anything about sitting in a flying tin can. I was worried about one thing though: packing. I was going to be gone for two days so I naturally needed…a week’s worth of clothes. That’s right, I needed a couple of pants, plus a couple of dress pants. I needed shirts, undershirts for two days and two extra. I needed a couple of sweaters, a couple of button-down shirts, to leave me with options on dressing. Socks, underwear, extra pair of shoes, again for the style options. All told, I strolled into the airport with a duffle that could fit two small gymnasts, and that bag was packed tight.

So mock me all you want, I was prepared. Since that trip I’ve traveled a bit more. I’ve made it to Asia and Europe, I’ve made it to the East Coast, to the South, and even the Land Down Under. It took a while, but I can now fight the urge and I pack less and less. Even for longer trips, I’m trying my best to fit all my things into a carry-on. Which may be another point of complaint, not by me, but by those traveling with me as I’m wearing stanky-ass threads by mid-week.

I digress, I still haven’t gotten to my perfect trip. I’ve gotten close a couple of times, but those were literally day-trips where I didn’t need to pack anything. Yet, for anything else, I’m not even in the realm of plausibility. Why is that? The goal of no luggage doesn’t seem that difficult.

Ah, you may think I’m exaggerating in the terminology. Well, I’m not. I literally want to step on a plane without a possession in hand. OK, maybe a phone…or a tablet, but literally no type of baggage. And then I want to exit after the plane lands and continue walking through the moving walkway and right out the Arrival gates. No carry-on in tow. No waiting at baggage claim. Nothing.

Again, you may think I want to be free of material possession, to be living the truly minimalist life. Maybe a little bit, but that’s not the goal. The goal, long-winded 500 word explanation later, the goal is to be so successful that I actually own residences in the places I will travel to, and that flying from here to there is simple because I will simply go to my local residence to pick up clothes and other necessities. And that’s completely antithetical to the simple, unburdened life and pursuit of inner joy. Weird huh?

Well, yes and no. There’s the old saying that money doesn’t buy happiness. Then there’s the counter argument that rich people came up with right after that phrase was uttered, that money buys the means to happiness. And then you have all those studies that support either side. In the end, it all depends on who you are and what you value. How much do you want “stuff”? And how much does that “stuff” define who you are as an individual?

Back to the traveling. How sweet would it be, to walk into an airport without a thing in hand for a trans-oceanic flight, only to leave the airplane afterwards knowing you had a full-on local presence waiting for you. Truth be told, I actually don’t care one bit about owning a house or apartment or beachfront hut wherever I’m going. I don’t care about having a driver pick me up. I don’t. But I guess I have thought about it a little bit, hehehe. No, what I care about is having the freedom to not worry, and for me, that’s what unimaginable wealth would provide. Here’s the scary part of the scenario: I could embody that worry-free attitude today, I could walk on a plane without a possession in hand, I could land and find myself without the burdens of baggage. All it would take is some confidence and belief that I could figure it out on the other end of the flight. It doesn’t actually require wealth, just the strength to do it. I’m not there yet. Maybe it’ll take some more years, but the carry-on might grow smaller and smaller and I’ll pull the trigger. Or maybe I’ll win the lottery. Either way, luggage-free travel, what a way to fly.

Coming up: Top shelf isn’t out of sight