Procrastination is something we all have dealt with at some point in our lives. This comes naturally to us. It’s in our blood. What I have come to realize during my time at Brock Communications is that I only procrastinated on tasks I am scared to do because I’m either not familiar with the tasks or I feel like I’m going to fail at them. After being put through a couple tasks I was uncomfortable with, I quickly realized that they’re not so bad and only take a short amount of time.
Two tasks that I procrastinated on this summer include:
1. Blog writing: As ironic as this may seem, as you are reading a blog this very moment, writing blogs is something I never enjoyed because I don’t consider myself a creative writer. One of the other interns, Paige, took on the role of writing Brock’s blogs for the majority of the summer, which gave me a huge relief. Towards the middle of this summer is when I was assigned to write blogs and at first, I dreaded it. I would wait until the very last minute to submit my blog for approval only to find out that I was doing a pretty good job. I blame myself for all of this unnecessary stress.
2. Media pitching: Another task I procrastinated on was picking up the phone and following up with reporters to see if they’re interested in running a story. I have all the confidence in the world when it comes to writing and speaking, but when you throw a phone in the mix is when I lose all confidence. Last week, Maggie assigned me my first follow up call and what do you know, it went smoothly. I built up this anxiety because of a fear that I should have never been afraid of in the first place.
I guess the message of this blog post is that we need to step out of our comfort zone more often in order to truly learn new things. The amount of stress we create by procrastinating projects we’re afraid to do probably takes more time than the task itself. If there’s one thing I learned over this summer, it’s that confidence is key. Whether you’re an expert or a newbie on any given job, do it with confidence. And if you make a mistake, that’s all right because at the end of the day we’re only human.
By: Bryan Shapiro