After all, alphabetizing requires focus and effort — and hey, maybe you even went the extra mile to wipe down each bottle before putting it back. And it’s not like you’re hanging out with friends or watching Netflix. You’re cleaning — something your parents would be proud of! This isn’t laziness or bad time management. This is procrastination.
14 comments:
This article made a lot of sense to me, especially in the situations where I procrastinate a task by doing other productive tasks. Clearly that is not a problem of laziness, rather of the pure fact that I don’t want to do the other thing. I am in a situation like that right now with my interp paper. It’s due tonight, I have had weeks to work on it, yet I’m only halfway done and keep taking “breaks” from writing it and justifying those breaks by doing productive things like writing this comment (even though the paper is due first and therefore more urgent). I suppose that is a better system than just laying around and not doing anything, including the paper, but I still wish that I could get myself to sit down and knock out an assignment that I don’t want to do before it is absolutely pertinent to do so.
I fully agree with this article. I procrastinate all the time, but I do not really feel inefficient when I am doing it. I think if I take fifteen minutes to watch videos on Youtube when I am not really in the mood to working on something, it can help to change my attitude. If I just spend a few minutes doing something mindless and entertaining, I am much more likely to have a better outlook on whatever work related task I have at hand. If I am in a bad mindset to be writing a paper and then force myself to write it, it is going to be a bad paper; however, if I just sit down for a few minutes to take my mind off of it, it will kind of reset and make me able to focus on it and produce actual good work. It is not always a bad thing to let yourself get distracted, as long as it has some positive outcome.
Seeing procrastination described as "self harm" is something I've never thought about before, but which is extremely accurate. I have always been really strong into supporting my own mental state, and checking in with myself to understand why I'm feeling a certain way, and often when I procrastinate the worst I am also doing the worst emotionally. I am more attentive when the sun starts to return, and when I get to pet dogs, and just generally when the world brightens back up and my mood improves with the onset of spring. I've always known this about myself, but seeing it spoken about this way helps to put things into perspective and better understand this aspect of my brain. It's useful because once I understand that I will be better able to assess my own actions and start changing that behavior. I agree that procrastination is a weird thing that all humans do when we have a task we don't want to do, but often times you can change this thinking by just convincing yourself how important it is to start early and be excited about it.
This is a very odd article. I used to find myself procrastinating because I wasn’t in the mindset to do that type of work, wasn’t in the mindset to work, or didn’t really like that kind of work. Two of these are workable because they will pass. Not being in the mindset to work or do that type of work that moment is temporary, so putting it off was okay as long as I replaced it with something else that was important and putting the other thing off wasn’t going to hurt me when it has a tight timeline. Of course, when I was procrastinating, I wouldn’t do something productive in its place. The third isn’t really workable because I am never going to want to do that work. Therefore, it just needs to be something I don’t procrastinate and work through it right then and there. However, this all takes the insight in yourself to do this and other skills to make sure you don’t hurt yourself. The article is interesting because it highlights that mood I was talking about. Its being in a mood and it took me four years to figure out how to work with them, this article gives you what took me four years to figure out. Although I learned a lot more in that time, this is a bit of the root to procrastinating. It isn’t a bad thing, so long as you aren’t really procrastinating.
This explains so much in my life. There are days when I can literally organize every drawer in my room, rearrange all of my furniture, and color coordinate my entire closet and others when the idea of hanging up my towel is too daunting. I completely agree that doing tasks like these are based on my mood. My roommate can attest that if I’m cleaning, I’ve had a terrible day. This happens to me all of the time, I just never associated it with procrastination. I guess I do menial and repetitive tasks to calm by brain down. Patterns and routine are known to help find balance in your life, and I guess I do these tasks to try and find a steady mind instead of doing daunting homework or projects. I still don’t know how to stop procrastinating, because I feel so productive after I’ve done these tasks and the drive to do the actual important tasks almost completely diminishes.
I went to a high school that did a lot of seminars and had guest speakers to teach us how to manage our workflows, increase productivity, and curb procrastination. Almost all of these guest speakers had a different approach, but one in particular really stuck with me, and she shared a point of view that was quite similar to the one shared in this article. I often find myself procrastinating by doing other productive, but not as urgent, things. One of the most valuable lessons that I have learned is how to work intuitively. Forcing myself to do a task because I have to often results in low quality work and a lack of development in a long term understanding of the concepts I was supposed to take from the task. Allowing myself to take a break or choosing to not work for a set amount of time, like 20 minutes, is something that really helped me start each working session with a refreshed and highly productive mindset, rather than having to east into something for 30 minutes to reach a place where I am actually doing quality work. Something else that really helped me was allowing myself to work on something that I am worried about to get at least a bit of it under me, before doing a more urgent thing, just to ease some of the anxiety I have about the task. Pretty much the conclusion I have found in all of the productivity articles, hacks, and seminars I have been exposed to, is that every person has unique needs to find their own workflow, and it just takes a lot of attempts and trial and error to find it.
I fully fall captive to being unproductively productive in my day to day life- but I definitely don’t feel like I am being unproductive which is why I feel like this article is so relatable when it talks about procrastination. I definitely understand what the article says when it talks about procrastination not making us feel better long term, because, especially recently, after a series of days where I procrastinate by doing things that aren’t necessarily priority, I have found myself feeling more stressed, more anxious, and less functional because I then feel like I am so far behind that it doesn’t make sense to try to get ahead anymore- which is fully false, and something I have slowly but surely begun rewiring in my brain. I think to improve from this, it is really important to assess workflow and see how that will be influenced by what I am doing in the present, but also taking each task as one thing at a time that can be properly accomplished- as the article talked about. I think this article really allowed me to look at what I am trying to implement in my life a little closer.
There has been so many times where I have put off a task by giving myself another, like “alphabetizing your spice drawer”. Back home some of the only times I cleaned my room is when I had something else important to do, like a big project assigned at school that was given many days to work on but I have done in fewer days, due to procrastination. In the past when I have tried to discipline myself and direct my focus to the important task by treated my “affliction” like it is laziness, that often backfires at me. My procrastination habits is something I still struggle with, by approaching it for what it is I can try to control my urge to delay. First I have to find a way to manage ,what is sometimes overwhelming, negative moods that surround a task, to do so successfully in the past I have done the opposite of “self harm” and create positive rituals to help soothe my nerves before starting a task. I should start ritually implementing those rituals.
This article really opened my eyes insofar as procrastination is concerned. I often find that I procrastinate most when I am not feeling well, or am in a bad mood. Yet, not doing my work tends to put me in a worse mood and increase my stress. Why am I not doing my work? Am I lazy? Am I incompetent and unable to admit it? I really connected with the concept of procrastination as self-harm. I know that the consequences of my procrastination are negative, and I will most certainly suffer for it. Yet, I irrationally make these decisions anyway. This is why I am interested in how the article presents procrastination as an emotional regulation problem, rather than a time management problem. Anyone who has seen my google calendar can tell you that I do not have an issue with time management. However, as someone who struggles with mental illness, emotional regulation is something I actually struggle with on a daily basis. By recognizing that procrastination is just another facet of these issues, I can apply strategies and other techniques I already know and use to be more productive and efficient with my time.
This is a really interesting idea one that I had never previously thought of when procrastinating. Cleaning my apartment is the most common thing that I do when I have either a large project or a lot of work to be done. I almost always find that doing this cleaning leads me to rush my work later with shorter time periods and a more tired mind. I almost always make these decisions however I'll go out and get groceries or even walk around town to "exercise" instead of writing comments. It was really intriguing how this article presented this all as a different facet of mental illness. I think by looking at it through that lens and understanding it more as apart of yourself. Not being so negative with oneself about doing it but accepting that it is apart of you and working to find the best solution for working around it.
This article definitely hits home for me. Often time when I find myself pushing off the essential things in life it is not because im lazy and want to sit around and look at the ceiling. The most common type of procrastination in my day to day structure directly correlates with lack of motivation. If something is more appealing at the moment, then I am more inclined to do it. Where I start to feel rotten is when I realize that I could have been significantly more productive if I went about my day to day tasks in a more structured way.
I am not going to lie; this article has done an excellent job of scaring me into thinking that my future self is a stranger. When you begin to analyze yourself on that level, it is really easy to fear what the future holds. The major take away from this article is that I should be actively thinking about procrastination when performing day to day tasks and think about the principles and concepts discussed in the article with the hope that I will adjust my decision making in the moment.
This article addresses something that I think a lot of teachers do not understand, as many teachers are, by nature a type-A personality, and are not naturally prone to procrastination to begin with. I have had so many teachers tell me that procrastination is a choice, and that effective time management and sticking to a schedule will help eliminate the “nasty habit” of procrastination. However, procrastination is often a symptom and not a cause. Often times, as mentioned by this article, a negative mood can affect whether or not people “decide” to procrastinate. However, I have also seen other studies in which procrastination seems to be biological (but as far as I remember not genetic). This means that “poor time management” and procrastination are anything but the choice of the people suffering, rather it is completely out of their control. Of course there are strategies that can be used to mitigate this problem.
I this the article and reasoning make a lot of sense. When I make the choice to procrastinate, it is often a conscious choice where I know I shouldn’t, but I choose to prioritize instant happiness over long-term happiness. The relief that comes from doing what I want to do in any given moment rather than what I have to do feels a lot nicer than just getting to work in the first place. Even though I know logically that it is much better for long-term success to not put things off, it just feels so much nicer to spend my time doing other things before deadlines force me to actually get to work. I agree with the article’s point that we often try to be productive in other, smaller ways to avoid doing a large task- sometimes that takes the form of doing small, easy assignments while putting off a big one, or maybe the form of an evening of “self-care” instead of working on a paper. I think the way the article describes procrastination as an emotional issue is a really interesting way to look at it and I hope it helps someone out there develop better strategies to combat procrastination.
I’ve always had a problem with procrastination throughout my life and seeing it described as “self-harm” is a little shocking, but it makes a lot of sense. Instant gratification held over future happiness and health. Maybe framing it in that way is what needs to be done in order to actually stop procrastinating so much. I’ve gotten much better with it over the the last year or so, but even still I find myself putting of things like these news comments because I simply don’t feel like doing them. I know a lot of my reasons for not getting things done also ties into being anxious about so many other things and insecure about doing certain types of work while other people are around me. I like the points the article made about what the problems are and how we can go about managing them; and that taking care of yourself emotionally is more effective than trying to just force yourself to get through things.
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