Procrastination

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Do any you suffer from procrastination? Do any of you have strategies for avoiding it?

Maybe the biggest curse of my life. Deadlines probably help, somewhat.

Procrastination is one of my biggest problems. It seems to be going together with my perfectionism and indecisiveness. I'm paralyzed by them. I'm overwhelmed by most things that require decision making and action. In addition, the sense of guilt resulting from procrastinating overwhelms me, too.

A not fully successful strategy that I can think of is to do whatever you have to do step by step. A small step at a time. It sounds like a cliché but it's not totally useless. Motivation follows achievement. Once you achieve something small, it motivates you to go further.

Another one is to try not to think too hard about what you have to do. I try to start something rather casually without too much expectation. In other words I try not to put too much pressure on myself. Whatever you try to do, planning well helps. But even with planning, I try to start with a casual plan that is easy to carry out. The important thing is to get started.

I used to be a bad procrastinater. I still am, with some things. One thing I have found that helps me is to do things immediately, if possible. This even applies to small things--if I have been out running errands, I don't dump everything on the table and walk away when I come home. I bring everything inside, do necessary things (like bathroom, letting the dog out, getting some water). Then I immediately put things away. If they are small projects (replacing a stripped screw on a door hinge), I do them as I'm putting things away. Larger projects of course have to wait, and those still bite me in the butt from time to time.

A schedule helps a lot too. Or a don't-break-the-chain calendar (google it), but that can backfire. I did the calendar for 3 months with "something creative" as my goal. Then I got too sick to do anything for a couple weeks. Then the guilt kept me from resuming the calendar, so I just threw it away.

You know what else helps? You'll laugh but it's true--pets. Or kids, I guess. Small creatures that you have to worry about getting into things, eating things, hurting themselves, etc. You wouldn't believe how good I have gotten at putting away clothing now that I have a cat who will eat it.

I've been meaning to sit down and come up with some strategies, but I keep procrastinating.

I read "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" some years ago, and it did help, as far as sorting things into priorities. I've always had something of a knack for prioritizing (I think probably as a survival mechanism), and to be honest, my best strategy for dealing with procrastination is to use lots of little things I'm not terribly excited about doing to procrastinate the bigger things I REALLY don't want to do. Example: I will do dishes to put off vacuuming, which I hate more (and takes longer) than doing dishes.

Also, in my job, I have deadlines, so eventually those looming deadlines will kick-start me into taking care of some of those bigger things. Meanwhile, I'm addressing the little things that can be done quickly without too much mental input. Eventually, just being in the "doing something" mode may translate into tackling something that requires more focus.

I'm pretty sure this is part of the whole "lacks executive function" thing.

Sigh, I get that stuff too. Perfectionism didn't make any closer to being perfect, just more self-critical. And the guilt, so much guilt. And indecisiveness? Often I can't decide between doing two things and I end up doing nothing even though doing nothing is more harmful than doing either of the two things.

Another way my brain tries to trick me (BTW, my brain hates me), is when I have a series of tasks to do, I end up doing the least important one first. I'm trying to get more useful stuff done and less fun stuff, like video games but I often get to the end of the day and realize I didn't do anything fun or anything useful. A wasted day by any measure. At an earlier time in my life, it was my goal to beat video games and yet I procrastinated those. If it was my goal to play a video game before midnight, I wouldn't start 'till 11:00AM. Even playing a video game seemed like too much effort.


LOL

I read "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" some years ago, and it did help, as far as sorting things into priorities. I've always had something of a knack for prioritizing (I think probably as a survival mechanism)[/quote]
Survival mechanism? Yeah, it's funny how much vigour I can conjor up for a task when my well being depends on it. That sounds like an interesting book. I should buy it but I'll probably put off reading it. No joke. I have a growing pile of unread books.


That's an interesting way to put it. That explains a whole lot about me.

i'll answer later, when i get around to it.

Procrastination has been a problem for me my whole life. A few years ago I bought a "Stop Procrastinating" self hypnosis CD from ebay. This definitely helped but you have to keep listening as the effects wear off after a while. This reminds me, I need to dig out this CD again

I will tell you about my procrastination problems later.

It's really bad for me.

I started to write a post for this, but I think ill just wait and do it later.

Yeah, procrastination is a major, major problem for me. Whole days pass where anything but mindlessly browsing the net is too much effort for me; can't even bring myself to post. (Much to the dismay of those who are awaiting my pearls of wisdom... >_>)

As for emails, I have no idea why I act like it's a literal impossibility to take half an hour out of my day to reply to one.

And one of the biggest problems for me is when there's a few different things I need to work towards but I end up concentrating on only one of them (not necessarily the most important one) and then I'm kicking myself because I didn't work on any of the other things.

Yeah.. started at school and i never lost the habit. "Ill do it tomorrow, i swear!"

I seem to wax and wane between periods of procrastination and periods of when I get a tremendous amount of stuff done.

If only I had periods like that.

I can relate to all that, too.

-Perfectionism only paralyzes me. It doesn't make whatever I do perfect at all. I sometimes consciously tell myself that things don't have to be perfect in order to release myself from that paralysis.

-I also end up doing neither of them, when I can't decide between two things to do. I somehow illogically seem to think that choosing the "wrong" one of the two is very bad, which is not true. I also sometimes wait until one of the options is no longer available because of a time limit etc, which is pretty stupid, too.

-I often do the less important tasks first. I think it's because less important tasks can be done kind of casually and there's less pressure. So I can do them more comfortably. Important tasks put too much pressure on me and I hesitate to start doing them.

-When I become seriously interested in something, it starts feeling like a "task" rather than fun and I actually start avoiding it. I think it's the combination of the perfectionism and the pressure I mentioned above.



I tend to be like that, too. It's very hard to divide my concentration for different tasks. I tend to want to focus on one thing until it's done. Only then, I can seriously start doing others.

I don't know if your mind works like mine, but the symptoms/problems seem to be very similar.