When I hear the word procrastination I can't help but reminisce about the time it almost cost me a huge deal, and ever since then, I've been very conscious not to allow myself to be overcome by this act again.
Being a fashion designer, one of the things we usually don't have enough of is time, 24 hours a day is usually not enough especially during seasons when demands are high, then imagine leaving a job whose delivery date is closeby for something else, normally I'm generally very disciplined with keeping to deadlines and not disappointing my clients, but at that point, I'm not sure what caused the procrastination, because I had too many reasons, from trying to finish an interesting series, also being already exhausted from a recently completed job, and the list goes on, above all, it was just me procrastinating and feeling lazy about even starting the job.
It was an easy-to-make style I thought, let me just spend these 2 days resting, I could get it completed within the next 2 days, and that was how I found myself still working on the same outfit less than 24 hours before the event, and date of delivery, the job I would have taken my time to do well resting in between, here I was rushing and getting overly frustrated, to make the matter worst, the only sewing machine I had then developed fault that I had to result to hand tacking some part of the dress,
To cut the long story short, she came for fitting, and though the dress fitted perfectly, there were some errors here and there that wouldn't have been there if I had taken my time instead of rushing, I also experienced burnout which doesn't always end well for me, making me fall sick straightaway and feeling like a zombie because of the lack of sleep.
Image is mine
One of my New Year resolutions was to take good care of my health, one of which includes limiting stress as much as possible, yes procrastination would stand in the way of that, so the number one way of dealing with procrastination is making a conscious effort to overcome it, and also learn to do things at the right time, and manage my time effectively. Instead of working for long stretches, I break my jobs and take my rest time seriously in between making me focus on one task at a time and make steady progress.
Another way is avoiding distraction, in our current world, this is a hard thing to deal with as distractions are all around us, especially when using our devices, it is easy to get carried away on social media so I my best to stay away from online distractions while I work by sometimes putting my phone on minimalistic mode as this mode limits me from seeing distracting social media apps and the likes.
In conclusion, I've learned to always try to get back on track when I slip up because the truth remains that we are humans and are bound to slack at some point, we can't be all perfect and there would always be that draw back home, but we shouldn't dwell there for too long, also knowing that everyone procrastinates at some point helps me not be too hard on myself, I make sure to do my best and leave the rest.