I was recently reminded of the fable about the tortoise and the hare. I think the point of that story was lost even on it’s author. Slow and steady does not always win the race. Truthfully it almost never does.

Slow and steady, in fact, never beats fast and steady. It also never beats somewhat fast and steady or incredibly fast and focused just long enough to complete the race.

The problem with the race between the tortoise and the hare had nothing to do with speed. It was arrogance and carelessness and lack of focus that cost the hare the race.

The moral should have been, “Don’t be a giant tool: Take a nap after the race.”

That means that you must approach your work with humility, and passion, and appreciation. It means that you must do the hard work up front. It means that you must endeavor to display excellence and mastery in the work you do.

Slow and steady is fine. Being consistent is incredibly important. But we need you to do consistently great work, and to care. It’s not enough to just show up or to turn in every assignment. You have to want to be better than the status quo…and then prove it.

I know you can.

I put things off to avoid discomfort. I’m racking my brain to find another reason…but I just can’t.

That discomfort comes in two flavors: The discomfort of doing something I don’t want to do, and the discomfort of deciding what the hell I need to do.

Now, actually solving this takes a reservoir of discipline that I only sometimes have access to, but it’s helpful for me to at least understand the root cause of my inability to move projects forward.

When I find that a particular endeavor is stalled, and I am brave enough to ask myself why, I find that I either don’t want to do the project or, most often, I don’t know what to do next, which frustrates me and makes me want to avoid that discomfort.

The kind of procrastination that is born out of not wanting to do the work is easy to solve: Do the work.

The other kind is trickier though because I’m not procrastinating what I think I’m procrastinating.

I think I’m procrastinating an action like writing an article or installing a vanity cabinet…but I’m really procrastinating making some hard decisions about those activities because I don’t really know what to do next.

And that’s the most frustrating thing for me. When I don’t know what to do next, but feel like I should, I tend to go into avoidance mode.

Hmmm… It feels icky to not know what I should be doing about this project. Asking for help might injure my pride because I should know what to do. I better stop thinking about this because it makes me feel icky.

Except, when I am really brave enough to ask myself questions about why I’m stalled I find that solving one difficult, but small, problem is all that stands between me and actually finishing the whole project. That moment of release where I become unstuck is simultaneously wonderful and horrible. It’s great to have solved a problem and get going again but, oh, the horror of realizing how such a small thing unnecessarily clogged up the works.

The solution to most of my issues with procrastination isn’t doing more stuff, it’s being brave enough to confront the uncomfortable decisions that stand in the way of the doing.

But what about you? Do you most often put off doing or deciding?