Getting Past Procrastination

One example for me is getting out of the house: I loathe the idea of getting dressed, getting into the car and driving, whenever I contemplate it, but once I'm behind the wheel, the thought always is "this isn't so bad". If I think about the getting dressed bit, that too, thought of in isolation, isn't so bad. It seems it is the anticipation of a seemingly complex sequence of tasks that tend to put the brain off.

You might have ADHD.

And is is very important to know whether you have it or not because all that advice for neurotypical people will not work for you then. In fact it will harm you. It will make you feel as a failure.

You need to figure out how your brain works and only then you will finally manage to make lasting changes.

(I’m always curious to learn other potential diagnostic markers for adhd)

For some people struggling with chronic lifelong procrastination, the oft-repeated advice from the author such as "Action leads to motivation, not the other way around." ... and similar variants such as, "Screw motivation, what you need is discipline!" ... and other related big picture ideas such as Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams' "Systems instead of Goals" -- all do not work.

And adding extra rhetorical embellishments to the advice such as using the phrase "it's simple [...]", and using the word "[...] just [...]" as in:

- "Stopping procrastination isn't that hard to solve. It's simple. Just chop up the task into much smaller subtasks and just start on that tiny subtask. That will give you momentum to finish it."

... also doesn't work. Some procrastinators just procrastinate the initiation of starting that tiny subtask! For the few that actually do try to start with that first step, they'll quickly lose steam because of boredom/distraction/whatever and the overall task remains unfinished.

A lot of books and blogs about time management repeat the same advice that many procrastinators have all heard before and it doesn't work. The procrastinators understand the logic of the advice but it doesn't matter because there are psychological roadblocks that prevent them from following it.

EDIT reply to: >That doesn't mean the advice is bad,

I'm not saying the advice is wrong. Instead, I'm saying that some well-meaning people who give that repeated advice seem surprised that it doesn't work on some people. Because the advice givers believed "Action Precedes Motivation" worked on themselves, they automatically assume that imparting those same words to other procrastinators will also work. It often doesn't. The meta-analysis of that advice and why it sometimes doesn't work is not done because the people giving that advice are the ones who used that technique successfully. This creates a self-confirmation bias.