Another timely one from Raptitude.

Tumbled onto this one from David Cain’s Raptitude.com, one of my favorite blogs. Very timely. This, by the way, is taken verbatim from there.

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See the value in shitty work.

The biggest reason many people procrastinate is that they’re afraid of being evaluated. Many procrastinators confuse the evaluation of their work as the evaluation of their worth as a person, and so they view finishing things as scary. To finish something is to create the risk that you will be found out as a hack and a wannabe.

Image from somethingsouthern.net

Bad work, if it’s finished, is an excellent result compared to stalled or abandoned work, because it means you’re confronting this fear. And you can’t help but get better every time you complete anything, no matter how it compares to your standards or the standards of others. You get better at the specific task, and also better at the skills of finishing and delivering.

This improvement happens automatically. Each finished work, good or bad, moves all the rewards of doing great work closer to you. Delaying pushes them further into your future. Push often enough, and they fall off the far end and never arrive.

I’m not there yet myself, but I’m convinced that we can learn to be attracted to failing as if it’s just another form of success, and anyone who does that will be unstoppable. For a long-suffering procrastinator, finishing something is always an accomplishment and always leaves you more capable.