How bad is it to do nothing?

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I need to take a shower so I can finish up my laundry. I need to get to reading about five chapters for my lit class. I have email I want to respond to. I still have not eaten today. My brakes are still dead, so I need to be getting with Adam to figure out when Brad can get here to check them out. My stupid, broken stove is still sitting in my kitchen after...oh.... maybe four months now... I really need to do something about that thing. I have a hell of a time getting pots and pans out of my one cabinet because of that stove sitting, lifeless, in the middle of my kitchen... But what am I doing? I am thinking that I should drink another cup of coffee and maybe stay here a little longer and read, post... maybe go to gamedesign.jp and play a game or two... maybe work on that white puzzle and see if there is an end to it.

Normally this would stress me out... my apparent inability to accomplish anything. I wonder some days if I have some flavor of executive dysfunction or if I am just a really lazy person. I doubt I am lazy as a whole, as when I get to doing things, I plow through them with such drive and focus that nothing can stop me. I just never know how to start, where to start, or what to start on. I get a bit overwhelmed. I think I need someone to stand over my shoulder who will continually remind me that time is a reality and there are things I need to do with my time.

I have tried lists, but I forget to write the lists and then I lose the ones I remember to make. When I am idle, it is not usually a huge problem as I rarely have important things to tend to, it becomes a problem though when I realize my whole day is gone and now I just have more to do tomorrow. But I have no motivation right now. Going back to school has really taken it out of me and I am spending up most of my energy trying to maintain and do well academically. All I want right now is hours of mindless, time wasting, nothing.

I wonder, is this really such a problem? Surely the world will not end if I do not do a load of whites in the laundry. Surely the world will not end if I get to reading my lit book tonight instead of now. Surely I can live with the stove for another day as I have lived with it for months. Surely the brakes situation is no crisis as I really do not leave the house much anyhow. People often act as though if you are nonproductive, you are somehow not being a great person. Why is that? I mean, nothing I have to do is of great importance. So what if I stall and do it later. Why do I feel the need to care about these things when it seems that I do not care at all. I confuse myself some times. I wish I could be consistent on where I stand with this issue of inactivity.

So I ask, is it wrong of me to do nothing sometimes? When exactly does my inactivity become a problem? I have no way of knowing what a good balance is in this. How much nothing is a problem? Should I be concerned about this? I do not feel depressed or anything... a bit overwhelmed, yes... but I doubt my lack of motivation is something depression related. I do wonder if I have some kind of executive dysfunction. I know relatively little of this disorder and do not know if I should bother mentioning it to my new therapist or if what I am doing is typical of people who just need a break. The thing is, I seem to need a lot of breaks in comparison to most people I know. Also, I wonder if anyone else does this sort of thing... are you okay with it, not okay with it? In a way I want to justify it by saying I am doing it as a form of self preservation... like I am doing nothing to help keep me sane due to the influx of activity I have pushed myself into with my schoolwork.

I am sorry... I am rambling... I feel a bit disjointed at the moment and do not know quite how to pull my thoughts together in a way that is short, sweet, and understandable. Anyone follow this? Can anyone relate?

I feel that I let myself down, when I do nothing.

cats do it all the time

I do tend to feel bad for doing nothing if I had things that I need to do for the benefit of others... or if I had planned to accomplish things and then fail to do so. There are just days when I do not have anything too pressing and I wonder why it is that I seem to care if I do nothing and waste my time. It is like it is drilled into my head that I am supposed to be productive even when there is no real need to. It is weird to me. I do not like to feel like I let myself down though, I tend to beat myself up the worst when I get to feeling that way. It is not fun.

Heh. Indeed... cats do behave that way. Perhaps the next time I decide it might just be okay for me to be idle, I shall inform people that I am on cat mode and embrace my inner kitty.

For me, it depends on the situation.

Story of my life (except for the stove, I don't have a stove). I'll happily watch other people break their backs doing meaningfull, productive things without realising that I can get in there and help.
I've made hundreds of lists, placed them in plain sight and yet I always forget about them. At one point I had an entire bedroom wall covered with lists but still I didn't notice them (at most I had a passing thought wondering if my mom changed the wallpaper).

Lately I've come to accept it, but I realise I won't be able to keep going like this. Still, until that day comes I'm just going to sit back and relax.

sounds like classic depression, even if you dont feel depressed, it sure sounds like it. Some people while depressed cry and get really emotional, other people when depressed sleep all day and dont do anything, just remaining numb to the world. It is sucking the motivation to do anything right out of you, and it is hard to do something you have no motivation to do.
I would say, try to figure out what is making you depressed, and try to fix that (if that is what your problem it). If you solve the depression, the motivation to do those other things will probably come back

Executive functioning is somewhat different (although it could also be causing you problems), when you have problems with EF, you HAVE the motivation to do things, but problems with planing for them and executing the task.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_functions

Thank you all for your responses. I am trying to get this figured out. It is a thing I go back and forth on and I do want to come to some kind of stable understanding on it. Part of what gets me the most is my consistently being inconsistent. Go figure, right...

I really do just want to accept this and be okay with it. I am not saying that I do not want to do anything and be fine with it. What I mean is that I want to be okay with the fact that I just cannot do things the way most people do them and that I should just be okay with the things that I do accomplish, even if they seem insignificant. I also want to be ok with myself if I do nothing. Knowing myself, I will push myself to do things and get things done when I have to. I just wish I did not have some nagging voice in the back of my head telling me that I always have to be doing something. I do not want to feel guilty when I neglect things or forget things or do not live up to the expectations I set for myself, as they are often unreasonable for me.

The wallpaper comment made me laugh. I used to have post its. I had those things everywhere but I would never remember if I did what was on them or where I put the ones I needed to remember for that day. I also have notebooks... about five of them beside my couch filled with to do lists. I figure if they are near where I sit, then they will surely get noticed by me. Now and then I wonder what the hell my husband has so many notebooks on my side of the couch for. Heh. Then I remove all of the junk I put on top of them and realize they are mine. One of those notebooks has a to do list in it from four years ago. I spent about an hour looking through that thing last month... never did any of the things to do that I had in there though.

It is hard for me to know if I am depressed or not. I was diagnosed as depressed years ago and they tried, unsuccessfully, to medicate me for that. SSRI's are not my friends. One of my personality traits is that I am not an emotional person. To me, feeling nothing is a good thing, it is calm, it is good. I suck at emotions so I have no way to really know if I am depressed or not. I know my motivation is not entirely gone, it just is nonexistent today. Yesterday, for example, I read and took notes on three chapters, did two worksheets for class which totaled five pages of writing and read two more chapters for another class. I also managed to clean my kitchen and cook dinner for five people. I also spent a few hours researching for my argument paper... but that does not really count as it is a thing I enjoy more than a thing I have to do. I was really productive yesterday. But in that I forgot to eat the dinner I cooked, forgot to take a shower, forgot to switch my laundry and start the dishwasher I loaded, turn on the gecko's lamp or drink any of the coffee I made... Usually I mean to do a lot of things, I just get lost along the way. It is like for everything one thing I do, I forget to do or mess up five more things.

I have a hunch it is school that is messing me up. My head is so busy obsessing over my classes that it is hard for me to find a task to stay on right now. I am usually pretty bad about this sort of thing, but right now I feel even more lost in la la land. Perhaps school is weighing me down in a way I should be more concerned about. I know it is stressing me out. Maybe it is depression. Hell if I know. I usually do not know what it is I am feeling until later on. It can be a problem...