I realized that the practice of procrastination was spilling over into my business endeavors. I had to stop and ask myself what all the hesitation was about. Was it fear? Was it laziness? Was it fear masquerading as laziness?

Then I realized that it didn’t matter. The only answer to the problem was action regardless of the core issue. Although I believe it’s important to unwrap our issues to the root level, there comes a time when that itself becomes the block. The unanswered question becomes the new problem, the new barrier, the new excuse to hesitate.

I was telling myself that once I fully understood the problem, I could then move on unimpeded. Complete BS of a professional procrastinator.

Sometimes, the insistence of understanding is another stalling tactic…at least, it was for me.  I realized that I didn’t need all the answers in order to move forward. As I told a friend this week,

“Stop trying to figure it out. [Right now] there is no cognitive shift that’s going to break you out of the pattern. The only way to break the pattern is to break the pattern. You don’t get to be mentally comfortable while you’re doing it. You just don’t. Stop looking for the missing piece. It doesn’t exist. There’s no step 1 or step 2 for jumping off a diving board. [Just do it]”

I was accused of being a Nike commercial…which was OK. The friend thought they had evoked the response but the truth was I’d already had this conversation with myself weeks earlier. It wasn’t meant to be a platitude. It’s just simple truth. The only way forward is action. Period.

No analyzing. No hesitation. No excuses.

Have you been guilty of stalling and calling it analyzing?