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Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

solvingprocrastination.com

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Re: Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

#81

Post by ethbr1 »

ghoomketu wrote: post #67

The easiest antidote for procrastination is boredom. This may not work for everyone but for me it works exceptionally. Most often the reason why you don't want to work on something is because you find it too hard, too boring, or too irrelevant. But if you force yourself to be bored for a while, you will eventually crave some mental stimulation. And that's when you can pick up the task you have been avoiding and work…

I'd be curious how quickly neurochemical stimulation levels reset to baseline, on order-of-hours scale.

Given that afaik tasks seeming "hard" can be a consequence of bathing in hyper-stimulation from media/games, thereby raising the "much be this stimulating" minimum about what normal tasks provide, does 30 minutes or an hour of boredom reset some of that?

Re: Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

#82

Post by gizajob »

diggan wrote: post #37
gizajob wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like I've long reached the point of having zero friends, which makes getting friends actually quite difficult.

It doesn't though, as long as you're willing to throw yourself out there. Meetup groups is a great way to meet fellow nerds, especially if you share interests. You'll probably meet some shitty people sometime, just stay clear and keep trying, you'll eventually find at least one or two people who you fit with :)

Acquaintances perhaps, but I wouldn’t say actual friends. I could try it again though. I don’t/can’t use social media so when I got rid of that years ago, almost everyone I knew then went with it.

Re: Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

#83

Post by slumberlust »

getlawgdon wrote: post #43
jokoon wrote: post #30

there's nothing wrong with procrastination doctors say people work too much, and there's an epidemic of burnout homo sapiens are not made to work and feel guilty when they don't complete tasks it's a problem of work culture and productivism, nothing else

So we are not in fact what we have made ourselves? What are we then? What are we supposed to be?

If you can figure out, you'd have bested all of modern philosophy. godspeed!

Re: Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

#85

Post by temp112123 »

ycombinete wrote: post #65
layer8 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, I don’t have any of the typical ADHD symptoms (inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity — rather the opposite), but still procrastinate to problematic levels due to perfectionism.

Yes. There are various reasons to procrastinate. ADHD procrastination is more about emotional discomfort avoidance than perfectionism.

[dead]

Re: Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

#86

Post by Aurornis »

ghoomketu wrote: post #67

The easiest antidote for procrastination is boredom. This may not work for everyone but for me it works exceptionally. Most often the reason why you don't want to work on something is because you find it too hard, too boring, or too irrelevant. But if you force yourself to be bored for a while, you will eventually crave some mental stimulation. And that's when you can pick up the task you have been avoiding and work…

> The easiest antidote for procrastination is boredom.

From my experience with young people, the worst procrastinators will often choose boredom over the task they're avoiding. Doing nothing at all is less painful to them than doing the work they're avoiding.

This is even more true for the perfectionist procrastinators: They are avoiding some exaggerated hypothetical pain that might come from failing at a task. If they never finish the task, they can't experience that disappointment. Some of them will happily do nothing at all, walk around, or daydream to avoid even engaging with their computer, because engaging with the computer would remind them that they're procrastinating, which would remind them that failure to deliver is also imperfection.

> Of course, this requires some discipline and self-awareness.

Unfortunately, the people with the worst procrastination problems are in their situation largely due to a lack of discipline and self-awareness in some variation.

Re: Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

#87

Post by OldHunter69X »

almostnormal wrote: post #77
ghoomketu wrote: post #67

The easiest antidote for procrastination is boredom. This may not work for everyone but for me it works exceptionally. Most often the reason why you don't want to work on something is because you find it too hard, too boring, or too irrelevant. But if you force yourself to be bored for a while, you will eventually crave some mental stimulation. And that's when you can pick up the task you have been avoiding and work…

An alternative to boredom is something else more important even less desirable that needs to be done, that drives progress on what is being procastrinated. Unfortunately, it only shifts the problem elsewhere.

As in, pursue something else that seems even more important, yet less desirable than what we were already considering? Or am I mixing something up?

Re: Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

#88

Post by Aurornis »

I developed a bad case of perfectionism-procrastination after working for a toxic boss.

It didn't matter how polished our product was, he'd find a way to tear it apart. When he'd have a bad day, he'd start picking apart a random team's product. "Unbelievable!" he'd say in Slack, dropping a screen recording of the app that showed something we were supposed to be embarrassed about. It could be that the app took 3 seconds to load and show fresh data from his hotel WiFi, or it could be as simple as the UI not matching some directive he gave to the UI designers who failed to update the designs or tell us about the change. He would rant about how disappointing we were. At his worst, he fired some people on the spot for a problem that wasn't even their fault.

I quickly learned that the only way to avoid that pain was to not ship anything. The people he liked most were the ones who were operating in hypotheticals: The people who made UI designs in Figma, or the architects who drew nice diagrams about how things would work, or the people who wrote long design documents to hand to other teams. They never shipped anything for him to critique, so he thought they were the geniuses of the company. As long as they could avoid having to actually implement anything, they continued to be favorites.

It took me longer than I like to admit to shake that habit when I finally escaped. I found myself delaying shipment, pivoting from design doc to design doc, and trying to operate in that hypothetical space as long as I could. Fortunately I learned to get over it, but it was scary how much that single job could shape a large part of my personality.

Re: Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

#89

Post by neon_electro »

Aurornis wrote: post #88

I developed a bad case of perfectionism-procrastination after working for a toxic boss. It didn't matter how polished our product was, he'd find a way to tear it apart. When he'd have a bad day, he'd start picking apart a random team's product. "Unbelievable!" he'd say in Slack, dropping a screen recording of the app that showed something we were supposed to be embarrassed about. It could be that the app took 3 secon…

I’m sorry you had to go through this, and I’m glad you learned from it.

Re: Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

#90

Post by layer8 »

ycombinete wrote: post #65
layer8 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, I don’t have any of the typical ADHD symptoms (inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity — rather the opposite), but still procrastinate to problematic levels due to perfectionism.

Yes. There are various reasons to procrastinate. ADHD procrastination is more about emotional discomfort avoidance than perfectionism.

Procrastination due to perfectionism (instead of working on the thing you want to do perfectly) is also due to emotional discomfort avoidance (because the procrastination takes your mind off the imperfections associated with what you ought to be working on).
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