Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert

When you try in earnest, you spend a lot of effort, all for the potential reward of "All your effort isn't good enough, you are a proven failure."

I am not saying that this doesn't conflict with "It is the mean in the arena...who dared greatly...", but it makes perfect sense to me.

For me, it is a feeling like you said, of never being able to catch up. Like with debt, for years, I would just keep spending on my credit cards. I tried consolidating several times, and finally, I have used a 401k loan against myself to consolidate. My student loans and car loan are paid off, and I have When something seems hopeless, or too much to overcome, I think the mind says "fuck it", and wants to escape.

I find myself very productive at cleaning when I am on the phone with friends and family. I will pace the house, sweeping or mopping or throwing away papers that need sorted. Why? Because doing it alone is lonely, boring, unfulfilling.

I'm lonely. Despite several good friends and family who care about me, I am very lonely for someone to love and care for me in the way I feel I can care for them - I've had love before, though I didn't know it when I was younger. I miss it.

With debt finally going away, and with a good job, I at least see the light at the end of that tunnel. I may finally be able to travel more, buy a sailboat, buy a house. I have been more intentional about my spending, that I don't use any credit I can't pay off immediately. See? having hope, seeing that things can be better, really helps.

I had to get that out there. TLDR: I procrastinate on doing chores and making hard decisions because it is overwhelming at times, hard to envision the immediate benefit, and so I go a bar to chat with other people who are running from something, too.

Fuck, there should be a support group for this.

(Anecdotal warning) And my ex roommate was a large prescriber of Adderall. He would see patients for 3 minutes. He had 3 homes (one an $8m condo) and drove a matte black Lamborghini Aventador. He was way overweight and dressed like Mick Jagger on LSD. That’s the type of person diagnosing ADHD at least in Los Angeles.

I don't think it's that simple. During low periods, I let plates/wrappers/leftovers pile in the dishwasher, in the sink, on the sides, and in trash bags. The result is that when I need to eat, I clean a single dish, make room (more piling), and make a trivial meal.

The pending cleaning grows, yet I avoid doing it, live in filth and avoid cooking.

I'd be better putting a trash bag in, putting the wrappers/food in the bin, and using my dishwasher to batch clean, rather than JIT clean by hand. But I don't.

That's a problem, not a conscious trade off.

I had worked my heart out on a project that the business decided not to pursue. It killed me, all my time was wasted, business was fucking up, would have to re-do all this work in subpar tools etc. As I got moved onto a new project, it has been insanely hard to get motivated to work on it.

Just assuming that it will be a business failure again... it relieves a lot of pressure off me. And you are right - at this scale I have almost no say on whether the business decides to run with it or not, so why worry about it?