Is procrastination an AS trait?

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My AS BF and I both procrastinate on cleaning up, doing laundry and going to the grocery store. Part of it, I think, is that we develop routines that don't include doing those things. It's the "rigid patterns" thing that makes it almost painful to do the above. I don't think we're lazy, since it drives us crazy to not get things done, and yet we don't.

Do you think this is an AS trait?

You mean like saying "in a minute" then getting halfway through then stopping for a bit then eventually getting it done or what?

It's been documented that students with AS often leave their assignments till the last possible minute, though they usually manage to hand them in just before the deadline. If I remember right, it's something to do with perfectionism.....I guess they feel that what they've written isn't good enough so they're scared to hand it in until there's no more time left to improve it. When I was at school I was often doing stuff at the last minute, because I felt I didn't understand what was expected of me; sometimes what I'd got was actually OK, other times it was way off the mark, but I hardly ever felt I'd got it right.

I certainly procrastinate to the extent that it worries me. I tend to avoid starting tasks at all unless I feel sure that I know exactly how I'm going to achieve the desired result. One whiff of uncertainty and I'll wait till things are better......I have a coping strategy of telling myself that if I can't start the actual task, then I can at least do some preparative work to make it easier when I do feel able to begin properly. But sometimes when it's a special interest, I'll just feel so fired up with excitement, about pushing the envelope and achieving something I've never been able to do before, that I'll find myself wading in before I can stop myself.

I tend to feel that everything I do, I must do to a very high standard, and I'll often hold back from starting a thing just because I know how easily I can get sucked into spending loads of time on it. And once I begin, to leave off before I'm done just seems so inefficient, so I'm quite wary of starting at all, in case the rest of my life falls by the wayside.

As for household chores, I think for me an additional issue is that they're so mundane, compared to my special interests, that I can't push myself into spending my time just doing them. And the results seem so impermanent......I can clean the dust off my stuff, and then a week or so later it looks like I never cleaned it. I'm always looking for ways of avoiding things getting dirty, so I won't have to clean them so much. Cooking with fat or oil seems to vapourise a lot of grease that sticks onto every surface in the kitchen. I guess I should get one of those extractor hoods, but the kitchen would have to be completely refurbished first, because the cooker is on the wrong side of the kitchen for that kind of solution. Meanwhile I prefer to avoid cooking.

And I hate vacuuming because the cable always gets in the way or just isn't long enough, or it's hard to move the vac around without it banging into things....I'm naturally clumsy so I tend to instinctively avoid doing anything that seems physically precarious, because I always feel really annoyed at myself when I knock stuff over or damage stuff. I've tried cordless vacs but they don't seem strong enough.

Yes I think rigid patterns come into it too. I keep telling myself that I should spend a fixed time every day just doing the chores, but it's just not part of my way of life. I'd rather wait till the mess gets ridiculous, and then I can wage war on it properly.

Well, I put it off long enough, I must reply.

Being lazy does not qualify me to be an Aspie,
no more than being an Aspie is an excuse to be lazy.

All humans are a sloth at one thing or another at some point in time,
yes, some more than others, but Aspie or not, it is still just a human thingy.

I don't think it's lazines. Lazy people are not bothered by things not getting done. It's the state of being driven crazy with the need to do things but not having the energy or ability to do them--almost like being paralyzed and stuck in the same rigid habits instead.

AS BF and I both share this to the extreme, so we wondered if others did.

My sincerest apologies,

perhaps the term lazy is a bit harsh.

Although priorities always take presence over each other in one way or another.

When I become unaware of my priorities, things pile up, and become increasingly difficult to solve.

I've seen so many incidental mentions of individual procrastination habits in these forums, adding that to personal experience, I'd have to say it does seem to be a very common Aspie trait. And it's not the same as laziness - for myself, I can put herculean amounts of effort into doing something that interests me, just don't expect me to rush to a project I don't particularly care about.

If I thought about it enough, I could probably come up with a fairly neat theory as to how it fits into the overall disorder, but I'm just not really motivated to do that just now.

Seriously, I probably will, though.

Later.

i don't think it's a direct trait, but rather a side effect another.

like the tendency to highly absorb yourself in your current task (some call it hyperfocus) and being loathe to drag yourself away from it. if you have a routine of set events and none of them involve cleaning then this is worsening that problem.

procrastinating involves doing something else or nothing at all to avoid something whether intentionally or not. your problem isn't the inability to clean, it's the inability to break away from your current activity to start cleaning.

when you catch yourself realizing this downfall, try self-motivating. induce an interest. and gradually try to work it into your routine. or if you can't seem to fix it permanently in your routine, just do what i do: if you catch yourself thinking how dirty your place is and you can honestly say at that moment that the cleaning would be of more benefit than whatever you're then doing, then just get up then and do it. got to be firm with yourself though. habits don't form overnight and that one certainly won't unless you keep at it and find ways and incentives to encourage you in your cleaning endeavors.

if you find yourself forgetting to do it (as we often do), then try writing it on your hand, or carry around one of those pocket sized writing pads to write reminders to yourself, or if your cell phone has the calendar option where you can set it up so an alarm goes off to remind you of upcoming events, that helps too. or something similar or whatever works best for you.

I procrastinate quite a bit, but I'm not lazy. If I have no choice I'll work five times harder than anyone else, for example when I'm working on a building site or bog. But if I'm at home, and I have more pleasurable alternatives, I always take them instead. I wish I didn't, as it means I never get projects done well (because of that, and my absolute God Complex teacher), but I can't help it. I guess I see life as ultimately pointless, but I'll still try to achieve hedonic pleasure (pleasure pleasure? lol) about utilitarian pleasure. By doing that I can just drift though life, without consequence. It's a sad way to live, but to live is sad

In any case, I'm sadly going to have to disconnect my PC and Keyboard next year, so I can't dodge study, and get my 6 A1's

I am the king of procrastination. It's not because just the special interests, it's really a tendency to not doing any work without some form of urgency.

I also procrastinate when it comes to cleaning and tidying my room. A large part of this is due to executive functioning prolems - I usually can't work out where to start or what order to do things in. I actually work as a cleaner which I have no difficulty with because my job support coach made me a schedule, where everything is broken down into very specific steps, so instead of 'mop the kitchen floor' it will say 'take the bucket and wet floor sign out of the cupboard, then put the wet floor sign outside the kitchen, then fill the bucket' etc.

If I had a similar routine for tidying my room, it probably wouldn't look like a pigsty.

The best way for me to accomplish a task is to do it instead of another task, thereby procrastinating and accomplishing at the same time.

Pro crast or anti crast? topic

I am putting this off, consciously, for now.