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

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

#241

Post by bonchicbongenre »

unethical_ban wrote: post #124
nisa wrote: post #73

Words of warning from a not so young (36) chronic procrastinator with a rather messed up life: Take it seriously. I'm not talking about reading HN in your 7th work hour when doing stupid Excel sheets. I'm talking about messing up years and years of your life. I believe it's a symptom of some deeper issues and it won't go away from alone. Lack of sleep, stress, work overload, information overload amplify the effects b…

I hear you. 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…

This is a really insightful and heartfelt comment; thank you very much for sharing it. It really resonated with me, and has highlighted problems I really should think about for myself. Thank you

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

#242

Post by mtsr »

mc32 wrote: post #27
melvinroest wrote: post #2

> Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert I love this tagline! I think this is as accurate as one can get about why we procrastinate, in one sentence. --- > What research has indicated across a wide variety of studies is that it is an emotion regulation situation. So CBT, meditation and similar things might help. I'd like to see studies on that. Hypothesis: emotion regulation…

“ > Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert” That makes sense for some procrastination, but other procrastination is laziness. Mopping the floor, taking out the garbage, mowing the lawn types of procrastination... those are under your own purview and don’t involve big emotions or decisions... So I think it explains some kinds of procrastination but not all.

But you discount that some people might start feelings lots of big emotions while mentally understimulated such as when doing these kinds of chores.

Please be careful when dismissing something you don't understand as laziness.

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

#243

Post by closeparen »

yamrzou wrote: post #209
zerkten wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly recommend therapy. Generally, men in the US find it difficult to seek out help. Often they think it's a failing and avoid it, especially in the context of relationships. Therapy is something you could almost do for yourself, if you could work out the puzzle. Therapy can do wonders at breaking the initial problem and giving you some things you can work on. Therapists can also provide useful inputs for career…

Practically speaking, what would a therapiat tell me that I can't find or learn on my own?

It's easy to underestimate just how deep the "humans are social creatures" thing goes. Your mind has capabilities that more or less only work in the context of an interaction. Communication orders your thoughts in a way that rumination doesn't. Cues from others calibrate your level of certainty.

The better question is why do you need a such an expensive, highly trained listener? It seems to me that some people (particularly women) get what amounts to therapy from very close and secure friendships. Universities also sometimes have programs to facilitate a similar kind of communication with lightly trained volunteers from your peer group. You may still get a decent proportion of the benefit from something like this. But it stands to reason that a pro is better at it.

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

#244

Post by vorpalhex »

ci5er wrote: post #223
vorpalhex wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't interpret this comment as against therapy in any way because therapy is an important and useful tool. But the tape recorder kind of conversations (and you can just do these yourself) is actually a really effective tool when you are feeling overwhelmed. I use a journal instead of a tape recorder but it lets me establish how I am feeling at that moment, and then I can revisit later and evaluate what was go…

Thanks for that. Also I need to find a way to find better therapists! :-) EDIT: Or maybe just realize that I get more depressed (and anxious) when I drink massive amounts of depressants, and, you know, stop? :-)

For me, and this is entirely anecdotal, I was typically overindulging in alcohol when I was upset about something and wanted to get my mind off of it. Which is great in theory except of course you end up stewing instead, but stopping the drinking didn't actually fix the root problem either, just a particular expression of it.

Ultimately I ended up adjusting my environment by both accepting it was OK to end some relationships with some angry people in my life (not angry at me, but angry generally) and adjusting how I approach work.

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

#245

Post by seesawtron »

Reminds me of the old saying "The only difficult part is to get started". So when I am struggling with starting a huge task, I tell myself that this task consists of parts "a+b+c+d..." but I am only going to do part 'a' today/now. And the surpising part is that when I am finished with part 'a', I am eager to keep on going! You don't have to but you just might.

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

#246

Post by Apocryphon »

spurgu wrote: post #236
nisa wrote: post #73

Words of warning from a not so young (36) chronic procrastinator with a rather messed up life: Take it seriously. I'm not talking about reading HN in your 7th work hour when doing stupid Excel sheets. I'm talking about messing up years and years of your life. I believe it's a symptom of some deeper issues and it won't go away from alone. Lack of sleep, stress, work overload, information overload amplify the effects b…

> The worst is that you procrastinate not only work but rather your own existence because you'll constantly attempt to catch up but just can't. Idea/suggestion: How about the old "delete all your emails" trick: Sell everything you have. Quit your job. Move to another place. Having said/suggested that, I've done this email trick a couple of times and while it works wonders short term - I stop worrying about those high…

I experienced a much minuscule version recently when I accidentally closed a browser window full of tabs. It was like letting go. It felt cleansing.

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

#247

Post by nicbou »

spurgu wrote: post #236
nisa wrote: post #73

Words of warning from a not so young (36) chronic procrastinator with a rather messed up life: Take it seriously. I'm not talking about reading HN in your 7th work hour when doing stupid Excel sheets. I'm talking about messing up years and years of your life. I believe it's a symptom of some deeper issues and it won't go away from alone. Lack of sleep, stress, work overload, information overload amplify the effects b…

> The worst is that you procrastinate not only work but rather your own existence because you'll constantly attempt to catch up but just can't. Idea/suggestion: How about the old "delete all your emails" trick: Sell everything you have. Quit your job. Move to another place. Having said/suggested that, I've done this email trick a couple of times and while it works wonders short term - I stop worrying about those high…

Are you Rick Sanchez?

I moved to another country some time ago. To me, it was difficult. Starting your social life from scratch is difficult. Learning a new culture, a new language and a new bureaucracy is difficult. Buying everything again is difficult. Upping the difficulty level doesn't solve your procrastination problem, it exacerbates it.

To me, this sounds more like running away from your problems than solving them.

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

#248

Post by ci5er »

vorpalhex wrote: post #244
ci5er wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for that. Also I need to find a way to find better therapists! :-) EDIT: Or maybe just realize that I get more depressed (and anxious) when I drink massive amounts of depressants, and, you know, stop? :-)

For me, and this is entirely anecdotal, I was typically overindulging in alcohol when I was upset about something and wanted to get my mind off of it. Which is great in theory except of course you end up stewing instead, but stopping the drinking didn't actually fix the root problem either, just a particular expression of it. Ultimately I ended up adjusting my environment by both accepting it was OK to end some relat…

Fair enough. That makes sense. And Thank you for that.

In my case, I had a couple of back-to-back life-events that I just couldn't process/accept, (and frankly using alcohol to deal with the first probably lead to the second), but, then, hey! I was an addict! It probably took me 15~20 years to stop using that as my go-to avoidance technique (even though I knew how unhealthy/unuseful it was, I didn't really have another. Shame on me)

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

#249

Post by nicbou »

markus_zhang wrote: post #154
nisa wrote: post #73

Words of warning from a not so young (36) chronic procrastinator with a rather messed up life: Take it seriously. I'm not talking about reading HN in your 7th work hour when doing stupid Excel sheets. I'm talking about messing up years and years of your life. I believe it's a symptom of some deeper issues and it won't go away from alone. Lack of sleep, stress, work overload, information overload amplify the effects b…

Yeah. I always feel that I "strategically" messed up my life by: Not having a real passion on pretty much anything, but have small impulses for pretty much EVERYTHING. Means that I wasted a lot of hours/days/weeks but didn't gain much. Plus no experience of major positive feedback makes me less and less confident.

Try reducing the scope of your projects, so that you can ride on your impulses. I find it a lot easier to maintain something I use than a half-completed project, so I try to get there as soon as possible. It worked really well for me.

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

#250

Post by alexashka »

yamrzou wrote: post #209
zerkten wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly recommend therapy. Generally, men in the US find it difficult to seek out help. Often they think it's a failing and avoid it, especially in the context of relationships. Therapy is something you could almost do for yourself, if you could work out the puzzle. Therapy can do wonders at breaking the initial problem and giving you some things you can work on. Therapists can also provide useful inputs for career…

Practically speaking, what would a therapiat tell me that I can't find or learn on my own?

Nothing.

You can learn ballroom dancing alone in a room too, it's just much easier with a partner.

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