Speaking solely for myself. It bloody well is laziness.
I had to think twice about whether or not I'd be bothered to write this comment.
Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert
41–50 of 324 posts
Re: Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert
#42>'Just get started'? If I could just get started then I wouldn't have a procrastination problem." I thought: fair enough. This never worked for me. I write one sentence or do the small task and then I go off and do something else. Perhaps it's due to my (bad) habit of context-switching but either way I've never benefited much from this approach despite often trying it.
I am exactly the same, though ADHD medication has helped tremendously in this respect. Terrible context switching, not lack of attention, is the bane of my existence.
Have you ever had a test?
Re: Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert
#43Also there is a thin line between procrastination and brutal prioritization. I often feel that procrastination ping and think to myself, is this really the next most important thing for me to do? Often times it is not, and once in a while it is. A lot of my work is creative in nature and forcing the creative process when you’re blocked is not always a good use of time. There is a balance between deadline, now and the…
> A lot of my work is creative in nature and forcing the creative process when you’re blocked is not always a good use of time.
Yeah I gotta agree with this. Sometimes it's like you are trying to walk through a wall and it's just not working. Our subconscious tells us "this is not working, try something else". Now the dysfunctional reaction is to pass time waiting for the wall to collapse under its own weight. And the "correct" solution is to search for a door. But the tricky thingy is we may not realize on a conscious level that the wall is even there or that the wall is the reason we are passing time.
Re: Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert
#44> 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.
It might not be laziness if the difficult emotions would have to be confronted by the mopping the floor kind of procrastination. Or, worse, if realising you need to mow the lawn makes you realise your entire yard is a mess and probably a shame to your community and you feel worse because of it - so you suppress and procrastinate.
Re: Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert
#45>'Just get started'? If I could just get started then I wouldn't have a procrastination problem." I thought: fair enough. This never worked for me. I write one sentence or do the small task and then I go off and do something else. Perhaps it's due to my (bad) habit of context-switching but either way I've never benefited much from this approach despite often trying it.
I’ve been reading “Deep Work“ which talks about the negatives of context switching. I wonder what could be done in cases like yours to avoid needless context switching. Do you have any feeling as to how or why it happens? Eg do you get bored of tasks easily or something else?
Re: Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert
#46>'Just get started'? If I could just get started then I wouldn't have a procrastination problem." I thought: fair enough. This never worked for me. I write one sentence or do the small task and then I go off and do something else. Perhaps it's due to my (bad) habit of context-switching but either way I've never benefited much from this approach despite often trying it.
I am exactly the same, though ADHD medication has helped tremendously in this respect. Terrible context switching, not lack of attention, is the bane of my existence. Have you ever had a test?
You're absolutely right! I've personally only just been diagnosed, well into my thirties, and am on month 3 of trying to get my medication correct, compounded with fun things like pandemic lockdown. It's a ride.
Re: Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert
#47Just want to say that if someone here truly has tried to overcome procrastination, but still fails, try to get screened for ADD/ADHD. Even though it's a condition that is also quite over diagnosed, it's simultaneously a condition that's underdiagnosed IMO - it really depends on where you're looking / sampling. A lot of kids fly under the radar, because they don't show any obvious signs, even more so those with ADD /…
ADD doesn’t really exist anymore. The way they classify it nowadays is by assigning a score to each of the three main “pillars” of ADHD: Hyperactivity, Attention, and Impulsivity, and if one of these is especially dominant, they classify you into that category (eg. ADHD-Primarily Inattentive - which is the replacement for ADD).
Re: Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert
#48> 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.
When you procrastinate on mopping the floor or mowing the lawn, you're making a choice to live with dirtier floors or longer grass in exchange for more time to spend on other things. Some of that work actually goes away forever when you procrastinate. It's not like you mow the grass twice to make up for missing a week!
Perhaps the difficult emotion that 'lazy' people are avoiding is admitting to themselves that they're ok making that trade-off.
Re: Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert
#49Just want to say that if someone here truly has tried to overcome procrastination, but still fails, try to get screened for ADD/ADHD. Even though it's a condition that is also quite over diagnosed, it's simultaneously a condition that's underdiagnosed IMO - it really depends on where you're looking / sampling. A lot of kids fly under the radar, because they don't show any obvious signs, even more so those with ADD /…
Good point, Tracker!
I didn’t find out I had ADHD until after college. Now I see all the normal adolescent problems like sleeplessness, impulsivity, stress, lack of direction are amplified by ADHD. I don’t know how I graduated, haha I guess by ramming into the same walls until breaking through.
Re: Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert
#50People wouldnt procrastinate if there wasn't some evolutionary advantage... Personally, I have found that if I get on with certain tasks in a team environment with too much vigor, I start to get other team members feeling left out or feeling their input isn't adding value. Keep doing it and the team will fall apart. Sitting around and being lazy for a bit helps keep the team together and has more forward progress ove…
On an evolutionary timescale, we've pretty much always been hunter gatherers... Sitting around being lazy with our friends, picking stuff up off the ground and eating it, occasionally running some animal in to the ground...
The activities that people tend to procrastinate didn't exist until very recently...