Procrastination or Stress Management?

In my book, there are two kinds of people in the world, those that do things right away and those that procrastinate.

I am a self-proclaimed procrastinator.

My sister Lisa is one of those "other" people. The kind of people that does things right away. For instance bill-paying and handling mail. Lisa is one of those people that checks her mail daily, shreds what needs to be shredded, pays what needs to be paid and files away what needs to be filed. If a phone call needs to be made to a creditor and/or bank, she makes it and gets her answer.

I again am a self-proclaimed procrastinator. I believe this...

I get my mail and thumb through it and place it in a pile on my nightstand. I don't open any of it, unless it's a greeting card or looks like a check. So it all goes in a pile where it sits until the 15th of each month. On the 15th of each month I bring that pile of mail to the office and on my lunch hour I open it and make four piles. Pay, File, Shred, Question.

I pay what needs to be paid, attach the confirmation of payment to each bill and put that on the file pile. I shred what needs to be shredded and I call the creditor/bank on anything I have a question about and then I put that in the file pile. There...easy peasy! No stress, no mess!

Every once in a while I will open a letter that I should have taken care of right away, but those are few and far between. For instance I recently opened a letter from my homeowners insurance with big red letters stating CANCELLATION NOTICE, and just for a moment I panicked, then I noticed that I still had time to make the payment so I called my agent and found out that I had forgotten to call them with my new ATM card number and they had tried to take the money out of my account using the old card number. They quickly took my payment over the phone, set my auto pay back up using my checking account and that was that!

My sister stays up nights worrying about my bill paying method and meanwhile I am sleeping like a baby! She has told me many a time "You should just take care of each piece of mail that comes in right away so that then you don't have to worry about it". Ummm, hello? I don't worry. I was born without the worry gene, in fact dear sister, I think I gave that gene to you and you got a double batch!

I always tell her, "Why worry? You worry every day the minute you open that letter and now you have to pay it or call someone or look up something to see if it was paid or taken care of. If you had just set that aside and gone to read a book or watch TV or write a blog post you would be more like me and not spend every day stressing!" My method of bill paying is Stress Management, not Procrastination!

But the world would be a boring place if we were all the same, so I will let my sister continue to lose sleep over bills and mail and whether her sister is procrastinating and in the mean time I will enjoy posting and sleeping and reading a good book.

Which type of person are you? Maybe there's a third kind of person I don't now about. Let me know! Inquiring minds and all that you know! And yes, I procrastinated during my lunch hour to write this post and didn't pay my bills, but I'll do it after work, no one is standing over me "whip in hand".