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.

Which way am I procrastinating?

This bugs me quite often.

Say I've written some music for a project, and it's at a stage where nobody in the entire world, except for me, has heard it. I'd make a decision to keep it that way until I 'release' it, however that may be, so I wouldn't upload it to music profile websites or send it to friends etc. Imagine me feeling very strongly that no one person would be allowed to hear it until it was available for everyone to hear.

This would go fine until say a friend comes to vist. Now I've already told him he can't hear anything until it's completely finished; it arrives through his door. The second we're in front of my pc, tho, I have a very strong urge, one perhaps coupled with the pressure of an insecurity, to show him the entire project because I want to know what he thinks and how much it will impress him.

I rationalize this as just a simple change of mind, but now I'm starting to see that it could very well be procrastination. Instead of sticking to the task I set of NOT showing Anybody, I made a bunch of reasons why I must and why I had to know what my friend thought. Any task is a challenge, to varying degrees, and perhaps having to bare unanswered questions and untendered insecurities is enough of such to cause me to procrastinate. I suppose it feels like I pressure myself.

Then, on the other hand, I really truly always want to know what people think. Perhaps if I stuck to my original task then I would be procrastinating over getting invaluable feedback and affirming weeks of effort that went into the project.

I am itching to post a link here, to feel like I achieved when reading your comments. But I am going to resist for now, however slight.

What do you guys think?

good question

good question, roses.

personally, i can see both sides of that issue. I can see the value of keeping it secret and the value of getting feedback. which has worked best for you in the past?

I see something in this that i recognize in myself. It's the idea that it has to be all one way or the other. I find myself thinking of things as binary decisions often, black and white thinking, when often some middle ground is in fact optional? I'm not sure if this applies to your situation. Maybe there are some key people or situations that it's more important to get feedback, and some where it's important to keep it secret?

Also that urge you speak of, i feel that about things often. I have been attributing that to my addictive personality, as the first article on this site suggests. So, then, i pretty much distrust those urges--or at least their strength. I generally feel that i should be in control, i should be able to freely evaluate each option and feel free to choose the one i think is best. Or, for me, which one i believe HP thinks is best, if i'm lucky enuf to have a sense of that. If i feel compelled to choose one over the other, i usually consider that my addiction talking. Again, i'm not sure if this relates to ur situation. I just share in the spirit of the 12 steps, hoping that our personal experiences might somehow help each other.

----------
http://www.procrastinators-anonymous.org/node/1114#comment-23050

Thanks clement

for your comment.

All my previous projects I have sent to friends right away, and also posted on various profiling websites. This left me feeling as tho I had nothing left, and if I were to make a CD or some other formal distribution what reason would anybody have for buying it?

Hmm, I don't remember having identified with that tendency before, to make decisions in linear fashion. But now you mention it I can see that is what I do quite often, or at least that is what I believe I must do. I suppose this belief leads to procrastinating over said decision, as I might be afraid of choosing the wrong option and making a mistake.

It is indeed never as clear cut as I have been thinking before. It is almost funny that my 'understanding' of human definition and applied/projected meaning tells me no object is definable, yet I didn't think to apply this to my decision making!

You say urges are a sign of addictive tendencies, and that would fit too. At two different points I set a task based on the urge or subconscious desire I was feeling, so my addiction wouldn't be feeling unable to decide, but submitting to the decision that pulled me hard enough, for whatever reason. I was chasing that easy option, the one that provided the most potential short-term fulfilment.

I guess I could say I was being too objective about this decision before. Each situation has varying factors that should be taken into account in order to make decisions productively; like you said, one needs the ability to freely evaluate the options.

I must say this has provided such food for thought, and has indeed helped, so thankyou for sharing it with me.

peace to you