Pressing the snooze button of life

Today's topic in church was procrastination. At first I thought, "Yeah, yeah... everybody does it and we all know we shouldn't." I almost zoned out. But then I started listening and thinking about it, and really so many of the worries and sources of stress in my life (and probably anyone else's) stem directly from procrastination.

What are the things I usually beat myself up about? Homework deadlines. Being late for things. Not being prepared for an audition or performance. Not being far enough along on a project. Not sending important emails or making important phone calls. Not keeping in touch with people. Not telling people how much I care about them. If I weren't such a procrastinator, all of those problems would vanish! It's not like I'm not capable of getting all those things done in the time that I have. I just get into this mode where I lack the willpower to make myself do anything.

I have a terrible time getting up in the morning. I'm the type of person who can hit snooze for over an hour and not really notice that time is going by. Funny thing is, if I wouldn't procrastinate going to bed, I'd get enough sleep and wouldn't procrastinate getting up in the morning. But that of course would require that I not procrastinate my work and have to stay up late. Which would mean that I would have to get stuff done earlier in the day, which would probably be easier if I got up on time. Which means that I would need to go to sleep earlier... etc. Endless downward spiral...

Sometimes I wish I could stop and hit the reset button and start with a clean slate. Nothing would be behind schedule, and then I could try to stay on schedule. But how do you get back to that point once you've started down the spiral? The lesson on procrastination is always to just not even do it. But where's the lesson that tells us what to do if we've already started doing it?

How do I stop when everything's already backed up like crazy? If I don't procrastinate one thing, I've gotta procrastinate something else to keep up. It's like getting caught in a pool of quicksand.