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.

procrastination and obsession

Dear Friends,

 

I'm new to the website, and am immensely glad I discovored it.  I am an intense procrastinator, and these past few years I've attempted to get to the bottam of my emotional and spiritual issues in order to figure out what the underlying cause to my procrastination is.  It's the usual things that one would imagine.  Despite my procrastination I've managed to be fairly successful, but I've always felt empty and I never was able to take advantage of things that a "normal" person in my situation would have, simply because I passed up way too many opportunities through procrastination and laziness.  I've been in India for the past year on a fellowship, supposedly doing "research."  I had a lot of plans for this year, and as you can imagine, I couldn't put the work into them to make them a reality.  For the past 6 months or so I've been trying to work on this research paper and kept telling myself that I would do fun stuff after finishing the paper.  Well, the paper hasn't even really started, and it's almost time for me to go.

Because of my procrastination, I was unhappy most of the time this year and missed out on a lot of really great moments.  The more and more I procrastinated, the more and more this paper became the object of my obsession, and the more and more I couldn't focus on anything else, and the more and more I couldn't work on the damn paper.  I knew 6 months ago this would happen and that I shoud just leave the paper for the last minute, since that is what would inevitably end up happening.  My premonitions turned out to be correct, of course.    

 

What I really want is to have a balanced, healthy life.  When I'm working on a project, I become totally obsessed with it.  It begins to take up all of my mental space.  No matter how hard I try, I can't tear myself away from it, despite the fact that I also can not actually WORK on it.  I am constantly frustrated, resentful at people who take up my time, and generally just feel awful.  This website has helped me to get some work done and gain perspective, hopefully I cant stick with it.   

Hi Scor,  I'm not an

Hi Scor,

 I'm not an expert in handling procrastination in general. I've been plagued by internet procrastination. For that I recommend k9 protection (free). I just wrote a great post about it.

 

Anyway,  for bad habits in general, I'm finding that just putting in the mental engergy can be a significant helper. I got on walks and I think and pray about all that I'm doing. If you're atheist, you can just think. But I go through the why's of what I'm doing and I come up with plans to deal with them. I find this helps a lot.

Welcome Scorellini

I can relate so much to so much of what you said. The resources and tools here will help you begin to make the progress that you are looking for. Good luck and we will be here to support you through the good and the not so good.

Example of progress-- I have just come back from vaction and I have been in a bit of a slump because my routines that I have developed using this site and resources have been not existant until today. I have been feeling very overwhelemed and have been focusing on all the opportunities lost. Well when I logged on today and read your post I begain to reflect on the progess that I have made over the past 10 months. While I still have the feelings of dispair over opportunities lost I also know that I have a plan in place and that over the past 10 months I have fewer opportunties.

So again welcome and good luck to you as you begin this journey.

hope-faith

welcome scorellini!

"The elevator to success is out of order.   You'll have to take the stairs . . . one step at a time." - Joe Girard