Procrastinating...why?

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I came to work at 1am to do important stuff I must get done by tomorrow. Now its 5 hrs later and I have spent all my time reading this forum.
Why do I allways put off things? It's like I can't help it, I want to finish my work, it's even work thats related to my 'special interrest' (computers), but I allready know the answer which is that it's work that I can't learn from because its just some tedious programming and testing.

What can be done about this procrastinating? anybody got any ideas? special herbs, roots? am not interrested in hardcore pills though, just natural stuff. Or maybe some techniques or something I can do to whip myself out of this.

Will my boss understand? ..oh wait..I am my boss... heh heh. (thats lucky!)

STOP ANTICIPATING...

Thats the secret to stopping procrastinating, stop anticipating or dreading starting it and just do it... you keep focusing on the negative feelings and you're purposely agitating yourself.

So bottom line, stop anticipating/working yourself up and just start doing it. The more you make a habit of doing you work the more it will stick.

I'll tell you tomorrow.

um.

I procrastinate lots. wrong planetis a displacement activity. As is doing the dishes, vaccuuming the floor, laundry etc etc.

I procrastinate when the job seems too big, overwhelming. or if I don't "feel like it", I'm not "in the mood", I procrastinate when I'm scared of getting the job wrong, of stuffing it up. Though not doing the job at all is usually a bigger stuff up.

So if you're scared of getting things wrong, give yourself permission to do it badly.
A job worth doing is worth doing badly (as opposed to not at all).

Next if it seems too big, break it up into little bits. What is the easiest thing you could do right now towards getting the job done. Quick do it. Now.

Organise rewards. Run a timer - ten minutes on the job, two minutes for wrong planet. Don't try to read all of wrong planet, set your self a limit of say one thread, not one page of threads.

Make sure you have everything you need to do the job. If there are bits that require outside help or resources, make a list of questions or needs and leave those bits till last. Make a bit of a plan, what is the most important bit of the job? how can this be broken up into bite sized pieces? Take each overwhelming chunk and bust that up and then bust the pieces up etc. Try to find little things that can be completed and do those.

If you can't figure out where to go, write out your stuckness. Get detailed about the stoppages. Then start at the other end and address the bits there.

Bear in mind that the project once broken up into five minute slices may actually add up to more than the time you have remaining, which if you are reading this, is pretty much all used up anyway... In which case, what bits of the project can you get away with not doing?

my son does this also.. we feels her does it because things ahead look to overwhelming to him. like cleaning his room.. he does good for months then all of the sudden he has a break down and the room looks too messy for him to know where to start. same as homework. he sees it to be too much for him to process at once and it becomes very upsetting to him and he puts it off.

I think you can ask Alex to ban you from the site, that should improve your productivity a little bit

Seems like this is more of a self-control issue than with procrastination in general. I think I remember seeing something on Lifehack.org that could block off sites for yourself if they were distracting you from your work... Can't remember exactly what it was, though. I think it was called Invisibility Cloak or something like that.

I think being overwhelmed makes a lot of sense. I cant even begin to clean certain rooms because their is too much to do. But I can handle the living room cause its usually not too bad. And then I can vacume and it looks like I did something. However the rest of the house is too messy and I just cant even begin to clean it.

Same goes for everything else.

The only natural herb that I heard that can help keep your mind focused in Gingko Baloba - I keep some in my desk at work because there are just those days when I cannot keep focused on what I'm doing and put off my work for some topic that I find more interesting, which is very hard to pull me away from!

Yeah, me to. I procrastinate when things don't interest me, or when they seem overwhelming.

I had to get a thingy when I moved to attach my gardenhose to the watertap in the kitchen. My neighbour had one, she didn't know what it was called so I borrowed it so I could take it to the shop and show it it to them.

I can't explain why it was so overwhelming to me, but two weeks later she asked for the thing and could not understand why I hadn't bought one already; it had been raining almost every day so it was not like she needed it, but I just couldn't explain to her and got very frustrated. I had to find a day where I had nothing else planned, in order to get peace in my mind.

The next day she had bought a new one and said I could keep hers.

If you want to block wrong planet, put this in your hosts file
127.0.0.1 www.wrongplanet.net

what that does is refer all requests for wrong planet to your computer's bit bucket where it doesn't find anything and it will return "page not found" or similar. Note it takes effect after you've closed all browsers at once. Then you can open them again and it works.

this
http://www.outofchaos.ca/tips.php
and this
http://www.jeevesathome.ca/
might help. I'm quite jealous of Canadians right now.

procrastination is a GOOD thing, so dont just try and stop it. it makes u focus on the important stuff such as WP. aspie research etc

never put off till tomorrow something you dont really need to do at all.

I am a chronic procrastinator. I live by the saying, "Doing it pays off in the future, but procrastination pays off now"...

You name it, I've procrastinated on it. Wish I had more self-control in this area...

This brings back the days when I was in college and I had a whole semester to work on a term paper and don't start on it until a couple days before it is due.

Right now, I need to clean out my closets and refrigerator and I am wondering how long it is going to take me to get to it.