On procrastination and being of use.

One of the hardest things to be is of use.

— Elon Musk

I’ve been lazy the last couple of weeks, and it’s probably been well needed. I’ve had loads of time to ponder, read, exercise and so on. I’ve made good use of some of the time that I’ve had to spare, and seemingly less good use of some (we’ll get to that ‘seemingly’).

I’ve been pondering how to be of use. To myself, to other people, to the world, to the things that I want to accomplish and so on. To be useful in one sense or another really. Some days it’s been hard seeing whether or not I’ve been useful. Some days I’ve felt incredibly useful.

There are two questions I think are important to ask oneself when trying to be useful:

— Who am I trying to be useful for?

— Why am I trying to be useful to them?

When those two questions are properly answered, I find it time to move on to how to be useful. I often jump the gun on this and go straight at the how. What’s often missing when doing that is a proper anchor to keep me useful over time, and focused on being useful to the right people.

Now, the feeling of being useful and actually being useful are quite different from one another. Just think of that oblivious bad colleague that you’ve probably had. They might feel useful (hence oblivious) whilst they’re actually creating more work for the rest of you.

Being useful is hard. You have to employ some top notch empathy, and have all kinds of EQ tentacles in the air in order to be truly useful.

Feeling useful might just need some conviction of yourself, or some ignorance.

Back to the pondering I’ve had, I realised that the laziness really wasn’t the problem for me. I know that I need lazy periods in order to have crazy productive ones. It’s how I’ve been running this race for the past couple of years.

What really bugged me was the behaviours I’ve had this time around, because I’ve had a hard time even being useful to myself. I’ve been scrolling endlessly and aimlessly on Instagram. I’ve been updating my email every 5 minutes to see if there’s anyone there who needs me. Those kinds of behaviours.

The time seemingly made less good use of might be a liability, or it might be a need I have right now. I might be learning things that I’ll later realise I would have never picked up if I hadn’t scrolled Instagram. If I trust the process.

I believe in rational procrastination. I have 5 books in my head waiting to be written, and I know that once they need to be written, I’ll be there to do it. The same goes with all of my work. I’ll show up when needed, but sometimes I won’t show up until then.

I trust the process.