Phases of procrastination
May. 14th, 2016 05:12 pmI only broke it down like this in retrospect, but I noticed that I always, always had difficulty getting on with things and getting anything done, but there were several different ways.
1. When I had an urgent deadline, I would freeze up, until it got so close it was clear I wouldn't be able to do it well and would have to give it a half-arsed job, and then I'd hurry it through at the last minute. The same applied even to fairly small things like packing: even if I just needed to throw some clothes into a suitcase, if I had a deadline, I'd not do it.
2. When I had something I wasn't sure how to do. That's fairly self-explanatory.
3. When I had a promising project and clear time to work on it, I'd be paralysed by choice.
4. When something was fairly easy and all I needed to do was do it.
It seemed silly I procrastinated in basically *all* situations. But I realised, that's why there was a problem. If there was one situation I was really good at, I could maybe arrange to work there as much of the time as possible. I only noticed, because the problem was hard to fix :(
And it turned out, "just don't do that, get on with it", SHOULD have helped, but DIDN'T. But over time, I got better at each of the different aspects. And as I did, I got projects completed quicker, and was able to see an overview of the project, rather than a cloudy bit in the middle with "here be dragons" I didn't want to think about, and then, by the power of iteration, I could practice until I got better, not only strive to fix six different fatal flaws at once.
And I slowly learned what worked for what problem. If I had a deadline, accepting what would happen if I missed it, reduced my stress. And layout out what I intended to do before then, hour-by-hour, and what was essential and I'd do first, and what I could drop, let me get *something* done.
And training myself that if I didn't know what to do, I could *usually* figure it out, and even if I set aside a day for "just think about this, it's ok if I don't solve it completely", gave me the freedom so fix that in a day, rather than weeks.
And when I had an opportunity to power through some stuff I was in a fairly good position for, setting intermediate aggressive but flexible goals helped a lot in actually getting it done at a reasonable pace, and not saying "work flat out", but "if I'm ahead of this, I have some flexibility" helped a lot.
1. When I had an urgent deadline, I would freeze up, until it got so close it was clear I wouldn't be able to do it well and would have to give it a half-arsed job, and then I'd hurry it through at the last minute. The same applied even to fairly small things like packing: even if I just needed to throw some clothes into a suitcase, if I had a deadline, I'd not do it.
2. When I had something I wasn't sure how to do. That's fairly self-explanatory.
3. When I had a promising project and clear time to work on it, I'd be paralysed by choice.
4. When something was fairly easy and all I needed to do was do it.
It seemed silly I procrastinated in basically *all* situations. But I realised, that's why there was a problem. If there was one situation I was really good at, I could maybe arrange to work there as much of the time as possible. I only noticed, because the problem was hard to fix :(
And it turned out, "just don't do that, get on with it", SHOULD have helped, but DIDN'T. But over time, I got better at each of the different aspects. And as I did, I got projects completed quicker, and was able to see an overview of the project, rather than a cloudy bit in the middle with "here be dragons" I didn't want to think about, and then, by the power of iteration, I could practice until I got better, not only strive to fix six different fatal flaws at once.
And I slowly learned what worked for what problem. If I had a deadline, accepting what would happen if I missed it, reduced my stress. And layout out what I intended to do before then, hour-by-hour, and what was essential and I'd do first, and what I could drop, let me get *something* done.
And training myself that if I didn't know what to do, I could *usually* figure it out, and even if I set aside a day for "just think about this, it's ok if I don't solve it completely", gave me the freedom so fix that in a day, rather than weeks.
And when I had an opportunity to power through some stuff I was in a fairly good position for, setting intermediate aggressive but flexible goals helped a lot in actually getting it done at a reasonable pace, and not saying "work flat out", but "if I'm ahead of this, I have some flexibility" helped a lot.