I’d like to hear about the psychological reasons for chronic procrastination.
Sometimes it’s obvious why someone would want to put off starting a project. If it’s a large difficult project, and will take up a lot of time (like finishing a basement) you might dread the long commitment it will take. Maybe it’s an inherently unpleasant task, like cleaning up mounds of dog poop it the yard – you put off doing that particular thing because you truly don’t like the experience of doing it.
But what about chronic procrastination about simple ordinary things? What is the basis for procrastination involving basic tasks like changing a light bulb, balancing the checkbook, going through a pile of papers that needs to be organized, etc. I see these types of simple projects, and sometimes it takes all my will power just to get started. None of them are difficult, time consuming, or unpleasant, yet there sometimes is a kind of force field between me and them. What causes this sort of mind set?
The worst for me is filling out forms. I will sit in a darkened room twiddling my thumbs rather than fill out important forms. It’s really bad, actually.
Garden variety procrastination is one thing. There’s always something more fun to do than what you ‘have’ to do. But the extreme can get really problematic.
My own “logic” goes : I really should do X. X’s been on the to-do list for ever, it’s getting pathetic. All right, let’s do X. Where should I start ? … Heh, it’s not that much work, is it ?.. it’s gonna take me what, 10 minutes ? I can do it anytime, really. I can do X just before I absolutely need X to be done, and it won’t put me late or have any consequence. Oooh, new episode of House !
I’m like that for a loooot of things. But the funny thing is, once I do get started, I cannot stop until it’s over and done, t’s crossed and i’s dotted. I’ll put aside eating, sleeping, anything really until I’m done - first because I’m a very focused, mono-task person ; but also because I know that if I do stop mid-way through, it’s likely to remain half-done and to gather dust for fucking ever.
The large tasks I will actively avoid because they are too daunting to start.
For the small stuff I just tell myself they can be done at anytime so there is no need to do them now. I’ve been meaning to hand in one form to my financial aid office at school since April 15th. I have to get it done by June 1st, so I have plenty of time.
The best way to get the small stuff done is to do them while you are looking for a reason to put off the large projects. It’s amazing how much cleaning I can do when I have a paper to write.
I used to procrastinate to the point of really screwing up opportunities. It was mostly because I was afraid of failure, and hence I thought if I held off on doing it, I would delay the inevitable. I never really failed, but I never really excelled either. I wish I had been smarter during my university years.