In listing my key character traits, procrastination would have to feature in the top five. There are so many things that I procrastinate about, in particular if a phone call is required, and so to counter this I tend to function by having periods of mega-productivity when I rip through everything on my to-do list. (I do love writing lists!)
Procrastination affects most areas of my life and, unfortunately, can also impact on my travel planning. I can spend days, weeks, even months, researching things, looking at places to stay, flights, trains, you name it. But I don’t book anything.
The flight tends to come first. I have possible dates in mind and I look at all available flights comparing times and airlines. And then I look again. And again. Then often I end up just impulsively booking something on the spur of the moment.
Once the flight is booked, it’s back to the other decisions and, once I start, things happen quickly. I booked my entire 5-week itinerary round Australia in two evenings because once I’d got the big things in place, I’d done enough research to be able to slot everything else in round them without much effort.
Procrastinating has meant that I have missed out on things that I particularly wanted to do so now I try to prioritize booking key activities and building a trip round them. And if I do miss doing anything then it just gives me a reason to go back.
This mixture of impulsiveness and procrastination seemed to work when I only had a few trips a year to organize. Now that I have the freedom to go wherever, whenever, I seem to have decision fatigue. Which is why I have nothing booked after the end of March. So here’s my mission: work out what I’m doing with the rest of my year, book the important things and write a blog post to tell you all about it. Watch this space…
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