by Mike O’Mary

Like a lot of people, I tend to procrastinate:

• It took me five years to complete a two-year graduate program.
• When I first started working, the stock market was at 800. (Yes, I know…that was a long time ago.) I finally got in at around 8,000 — right before the dot.com crash earlier this decade. (Hmmm…maybe I rushed things there.)
• I’ve put off buying a new life insurance policy for over a year now because I know I’ll get a better rate as soon as I lose a little weight — which should happen pretty fast once I start exercising.
• And I’m on track to die with more unwritten novels than any other writer in history.

It’s easy to say, “I’ve got too much to do,” but there’s usually more to it than that. For some, it’s fear of failure. For others, fear of success. Sometimes it’s a control thing. Sometimes, we procrastinate because we’ve never really made up our minds on the big issues…things like “What I want to do with my life.”

Oprah Winfrey once interviewed the late Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled and other books. She noted that he was a prolific writer, traveled all over the country giving lectures, maintained a psychotherapy practice, and still managed to spend time with his family.

“How do you find the time to do all of this?” Oprah asked.

“I spend two hours a day thinking about what is important in my life and what is not,” said Peck. “I tell people I am praying so they will not interrupt. I do not spend any time on activities that are not important to my life. And, I don’t watch your show.”

I like that answer so much, I think I’ll give it a try. But it will have to wait til tomorrow. I’ve got too much to do today.

Mike O’Mary is founding dreamer of Dream of Things, an independent book publisher currently accepting creative nonfiction stories for anthologies on 15 topics, including an anthology titled “Advice You’d Like to Pass on to Others.”