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Procrastination is Not Laziness

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Re: Procrastination is Not Laziness

#11

Post by nikatwork »

Interesting theory but I'm not sure it's the whole picture.

Personally, while I definitely identify with the "fear of failure" personality trait, I find my procrastination is down to two things: depleted willpower and inertia.

To help with willpower, I try to keep my home environment as tidy and organized as possible (which doesn't come naturally). There's not too much I can do about my dayjob other than minimize my emotional investment (which also doesn't come naturally).

I find inertia is the most important and possible variable to change. A yoga teacher told me once: "it's not so hard. Just start... then continue". Once I actually push past the hurdle of starting a project, and make sure I put some time into it weekly (even if it's only 30 minutes), over time my mental resistance aka procrastination diminishes, and I start to enjoy myself.

Start... then continue.

Re: Procrastination is Not Laziness

#13

Post by jmj42 »

Swizec wrote: post #8

"You see, procrastinators tend to be people who have, for whatever reason, developed to perceive an unusually strong association between their performance and their value as a person. This makes failure or criticism disproportionately painful, which leads naturally to hesitancy when it comes to the prospect of doing anything that reflects their ability — which is pretty much everything." I disagree. My reasons for pr…

I disagree as well. My reasons for procrastination tend to fall around artificially creating a high stress situation. You see, I perform very well (very high productivity) under stress, to the extent that high performance may actually be a stress coping mechanism for stress.

I certainly do not procrastinate because I'm lazy, or have poor work ethic, or even risk averse. You can ask my family about that one. None of them would describe me as risk averse.

For me, it really comes down to stress as a motivator. Procrastination means doing things at the last moment, which creates an artificially stressful situation.

It may also be interesting to note that I do not suffer from any traditional high stress related health issues. My doctor recently commented that I am in exceptional health for my age (mid-thirties)

Re: Procrastination is Not Laziness

#15

Post by jongold »

"You see, procrastinators tend to be people who have, for whatever reason, developed to perceive an unusually strong association between their performance and their value as a person. This makes failure or criticism disproportionately painful, which leads naturally to hesitancy when it comes to the prospect of doing anything that reflects their ability — which is pretty much everything."

What's most cutting reading that paragraph is how true it is, and how much of my self-worth I feel diminished by admitting that.

I've got better recently, but that post really hit home.

Re: Procrastination is Not Laziness

#16

Post by ChuckMcM »

My biggest source of procrastination is the fear of making a change that can't be undone. I find this particularly challenging on projects around the house like putting in a new door, and having the door ready to be hung on and knowing if I screw up the hings placement I need to get a new door. Blam! I procrastinate the crap out of taking the irreversible step of routering in the hinge mounts. I have to sit down and give myself permission to buy a new door if I screw up, and even then it's painful to move forward.

I never really thought of it as a judgmental problem (self worth related) so much as a sort of efficiency problem (hate to have wasted all that resource (time, money, whatever)). One of the weird things about quitting World of Warcraft was that I played hours on that game, so I could pretty much do anything and it would be less wasteful of my time than that. So for a while that was a great crutch, "We'll hey, I didn't get much done but if I had been playing WoW I wouldn't have gotten anything done."

Re: Procrastination is Not Laziness

#17

Post by DocG »

all goes for me also. but For some bigger things I need extra prepare time. Specially communicating with strangers, its mentally exhausting. So phone call might take me 24h instead of 10 minutes, but then I am not out of energy, after that call. I am really good at talking with strangers and organizing and nobody knows, but it takes huge amounts of energy.

And often, procrastination helps. With bigger plans or things, mind subconsciousnessly tackles problems, while I am "resting". And after that procrastination period, I know the answer I didn't know before.

Re: Procrastination is Not Laziness

#20

Post by mikeash »

nikatwork wrote: post #11

Interesting theory but I'm not sure it's the whole picture. Personally, while I definitely identify with the "fear of failure" personality trait, I find my procrastination is down to two things: depleted willpower and inertia. To help with willpower, I try to keep my home environment as tidy and organized as possible (which doesn't come naturally). There's not too much I can do about my dayjob other than minimize my…

Yes, some people may procrastinate due to fear of failure, but it seems clear that it's not universal. I know I'm not procrastinating on filing my taxes right now because I fear failure somehow. There's not much failure to be had, and I'm comfortable with the process and have a great accountant who helps me through it. I just don't feel like doing it right now, because the process itself is painful. I'd rather have silly conversations on the internet than dig through paperwork. It seems to simply be a matter of valuing immediate rewards more highly than distant ones. And this applies almost everywhere. The immediate reward of eating a donut can be far more prominent than the delayed reward of eating healthy. The immediate reward of spending money on dinner delivery outweighs the delayed reward of saving money. This seems to me a far more fundamental and interesting problem than fear of failure.
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