Procrastinators Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from chronic procrastination.

Can you tell when you're procrastinating?

I don't mean the sort where you suddenly catch yourself and realise you've been at it again. I mean do you sometimes think "I don't know if this is procrastination or if there's another reason why this thing isn't done yet?"

A couple of things recently have brought this up for me, and it was my accounts and tax that sparked it off today. I'm very close to finishing my accounts and tax form for the last financial year (to April 2006).

I'm not quite sure if I've been genuinely too busy to finish them off and submit them - I have certainly been 'busy', but I don't know if I've genuinely been 'too busy'. Or is that just an excuse and I'm doing my usual trick of stopping at 98% of the job done?

It's all very well having insight into procrastination tricks and knowing which ones I use (pretty much all of them from time to time), but I still can't always tell if I'm procrastinating or not.

Maybe it's compounded by the fact that I ~would~ have procrastinated if I'd had time, but even if I didn't procrastinate I still wouldn't have had time to do it (confused? So am I!).

If it's a procrastination thing I want to root it out. If it's not I want to stop giving myself a hard time over not being able to do things I genuinely can't do at the moment.

Does anyone else have a similar issue? Any ideas or suggestions?

Procrastination as a process addiction

I'm curious about people's thoughts on procrastination as a process addiction. To me, it seems like what makes at least some process addictions especially hard to deal w/is that total abstinence may be impossible (e.g., with compulsive eating). Now, you have to eat. You don't have to procrastinate. But I think procrastination may be too murky to feel confident that one is totally abstaining from it. It's a relative thing, at least for certain to do's, whether something they ought to be done today, tomorrow, next year, or never.

I guess I'm raising this b/c, as I posted elsewhere, I've been able to give up decaf coffee, alcohol, meat. And I've given up playing computer games. But it's not entirely clear to me if it would even be possible for me to give up procrastination in a similar way.

Any thoughts?

Thoughts/feelings can reveal what's going on

To oversimplify, for me, my procrastination resides, primarily, in 4 causes. First, foregetful. This looks like "Oh nuts, I was going to do this and that today." Second, too many things and not enough time while still thinking I can get it all done. OOPS! Third, intentional mis-proiritization. I've done this and this and this and this :) so it's not a total loss but I really should have done that. :( Fourth, stamp my foot, pout, cross my arms and say, "I just don't want to." }:)

If I close my eyes and look at what I am feeling/thinking before I consider 2, 3, or 4, (1 is a little trickier) I can, sometimes, re-direct my thoughts to doing instead of putting off. But, at least, I can recognize a choice instead of seeing myself as a victim. That doesn't keep me from beating myself up, but it does expose my action as a choice. Many times I make the wrong choice even though I want to make the right choice. It seems as if I don't have the strength to choose wrightly. Sometimes it is as if I don't deserve the benefits of choosing wrightly. :?

Self-Sabotage

Yes, a lot of it for me has been self-sabotage and punishing myself. I've noticed from the boards I go to that procrastinators seem particularly hard on themselves.

Yesterday was clearly a 'don't want to' day for me, but I'm not 100% sure what's going on with the accounts - can't figure out if it's a two-er or a three-er.

Anyway, now I'm putting off going to bed! Night night all!

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yes skipping THE LAST 2% of a task is a procrastination

Hi everyone,
i read an article on wikipedia about overcoming procrastination
i think it replies to the questions : if doing a job at 98% is procrastination or not ... for me i found by reading this article that doing 98% was a bad habit and was a kind of procrastination since i used many times in my daily life to do 98% of the task maybe because i was scared to do 100% and i have developed this bad habit or maybe i had some hiden reason... the solution for me was to do small tasks 100% and then develop this habit for all tasks ( of course i mean by 100% doing all the steps of a tasks didnt mean something perfect wich can led maybe to more procrastination)
ill copy and paste the content of the caracteristics and also the link for the article
Contents
1 Procrastination as poor judgement
2 Procrastination as being distracted
3 Procrastination as a phobia
4 Procrastination as bad habit
5 Procrastination as a complex
6 Procrastination as a symptom
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Overcoming_Procrastination/Characteristics

not finishing stuff

I have a problem with this lately. I never used to think of myself as someone who didn't finish. I was always the one who had trouble getting started, but once started was fine. Lately, though, I have a couple of really important projects that I started and then stopped right before the finish line - 98% then STOP, for no reason. Well, maybe there's a reason. In my case, I think it's fear of failure. That's a recent thing with me, since I got laid off from my job.

Not finishing projects

I think that not finishing projects is a sign of perfectionism. As you suggest, pro, it's like the fear of failure. If you finish a project, you tie your self-image up in it -- and if someone finds a problem, error, or imperfection in the results, your image of perfection is shattered.

You might look into "Never Good Enough" by Monica Ramirez Basco for more ideas about overcoming perfectionism when it's not helpful.

You are not your work -- it's easy to say, but hard to really believe. :)

--
flexiblefine
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheNowHabit/

perfectionism

I have big issues with perfectionism - that is true. I read "Too Perfect" and it rang very true for me. Maybe I'll look at "Never Good Enough".