Entry #10: Spinning Around

My propensity to procrastinate is a perennial problem, but I'm getting better at nipping passive-aggressive predilections in the bud. In response to recently feeling disheartened about friendships among other things, I've punished myself by being unproductive.

The time between me starting to act out and intervening is often much shorter nowadays. I feel like I've become more pragmatic and resilient, though thinking about it perhaps I always have been and it's just that now I'm more aware. Whenever I'm feeling particularly contented I worry that what goes up must come down; I am terrified of going really low again.

So I'm living life being self-aware while trying not to over-analyse, an ongoing built-in mental check like any other regular health checkup. I know there are certain stressors influencing my outlook on life, but instead of being distracted with the stress they're causing now I need to focus on the relief I will feel once they're removed and resolved. As a self-confessed obsessive-compulsive, I'm pestered when things are out of place.

I provoke this by making or keeping things out of place, like knowing my room is untidy and going several days without organising it, piqued that I didn't sort things out sooner. I cheered myself up last night by tidying said bedroom, and tonight submitting the next blog entry is another reason to feel good. If I never procrastinated, how much further along would I be?

It's apparently a typical trait of those born under the Aries Zodiac sign to put off til tomorrow what could be done today. Whether that's true for Aries people I know it's a dominant characteristic of my behaviour. It's not all negative though, a lot of time spent thinking without doing I've found leads to strong, well-formed output as much pondering has resulted in positive work.

I know I am good at what I do, I have the aptitude, knowledge and personal skills to make things happen. Why is it so difficult to picture progressing from where I am today to where I want to go? I want to communicate to companies how they should make and run their Web sites. I want to make them realise how much they're getting wrong by providing guidance and explanation on how to do it right.

A great inspiration for this is the Alertbox column by Jakob Nielsen, which has been exploring issues in Web usability since 1995. Those articles offer valuable insight but you'd hardly expect a business owner to feel inclined to read them. I want to convey the ethos upheld by Nielsen and other usability evangelists, I want to help people understand how Web things work.

The reason I find it so difficult to picture doing this is the vast amount of work that needs to be done is overwhelming. My confidence wanes, but knowing I can do the job and that there's a need for it should help me along. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

entry info

Entry #10, published on Tuesday, 13^th of February 2007 at 01:23 local time (Swatch Internet Time @093 .beats)

Returning in 2008 ;-)