The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play

The three major fears that block action and create procrastination are the terror of being overwhelmed, the fear of failure, and the fear of not finishing. These three blocks usually interact with each other and escalate any initial fears and stresses. Overcoming any one of the three quickens the destruction of the remaining blocks because you buil

lack the ability to distinguish between what’s the most important use of your time

Ironically, on a psychological level you are often the one who raises the board off the ground by changing a straightforward task into a test of your worth, proof that you are acceptable, or a test of whether you will be successful and happy or a failure and miserable. In most cases you are the one who confuses just doing the job with testing your

lose track of how you spend your time?

The fear of judgment is the key fear that stems from over-identifying who you are, your worth as a person, with your work. From this fear follows the counterproductive drive toward perfectionism, severe self-criticism, and the fear that you must deprive yourself of leisure time in order to satisfy some unseen judge.

If you believe that a judgment of your work is a judgment of yourself, then perfectionism, self-criticism, and procrastination are necessary forms of protection. Observing your hesitation to start or complete a project, supervisors and family members—often with good intentions—add encouragement, pressure, and threats to get you moving.

Dr. Theodore Rubin in his book Compassion and Self-Hate

(if in fact you take vacations)?

“Could it be that it’s been a long time since you felt that unconditional acceptance?”