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.

Fear of Failure?

30 August, 2011 - 2:54pm - reallyneedhelp

I realized today that I dislike difficult challenges.  That is not the same thing as being lazy.  I generally work hard and am responsible.  But I take pleasure in doing things that I'm good at, that I find easy, and that I usually excell at.  When I do a good job at something that was not very challenging for me, people often notice how good it is, and this reinforces my sense of being a smart and important person.  I pat myself on the back, even when I didn't have to work all that hard.  I bet this is why I keep my expectations of myself pretty low.

Problem is, I'm disappointed in general at what I've been able to achieve in life.  I've got a really great life, so why all the discontent?  It's because I feel like I'm not doing all that I could be doing.  This haunts me.  I wonder why I procrastinate so much?  It leaves me no time to really focus and work hard and see what I'm really made of, deep down.  Maybe I'm not capable of doing too much more than I'm doing, but not knowing for sure what I could do if I were just more disciplined bothers me.  A lot.  Yet I keep procrastinating.

Today, for the first time, I realized that I don't like to work hard.  I like to work.  I like to be busy.  I like to be responsible and reliable and successful.  But I really hate the feeling of intense stress, of pressure.  I hate feeling like a project is taking over my life.  I hate feeling like I don't have enough sweat, time, synapses, whatever to get the job done.  I mean, I really HATE that feeling.  I don't like being challenged.

Whenever I have been faced with an unavoidable challenged, I manage to pull through. I can't say I've ever really failed at any big challenge that I've really taken on.  I usually wring my hands for a while in dread, procrastinate, waste time, worry and fret, feel that I'm going to fail, have a breakdown, then get at it and ATTACK.  I don't sleep much by the end and just barely pull through at the last minute.  Invariably (so far anyway), the people to whom I produce my last minute stress-produced work praise me for it and say I've done well.  I feel no satisfaction at all.  I'm tired.  I'm stressed.  The praise and product were not worth the effort and stress and self-doubt.  I don't like feeling like I don't know what I'm doing.  And believe me, in the moment, I really think I am going to fail.  There are no guarantees in life.  I'll fail.  Then I'll be a loser.  Probably I'll end up middle aged and look back and realize I've wasted my whole life watching YouTube videos and planning for what I'll do when I finally have the time or discipline to do it.  Everyone seems to have an easier time with things than I do.  Other people seem to just go about life without any reflection.  They're happier.  They work less.  They understand things faster.  They don't have to work as hard as I do to understand the same material.  They have talents and projects and creations!  I hate feeling this way. I hate it.

The pleasure and self-worth and self-pride I feel from carrying out relatively easy tasks well FAR surpasses the pleasure I get for rising above and excelling at something that challenges me. And that, in my opinion, is the reason I procrastinate.  Why put myself through it?  Why not just succumb to all the distractions?

 

Problem is, I'm disappointed in general at what I've been able to achieve in life.  All the things worth doing are hard.

 

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Okay, first things first.

studentessa - 31 Aug 2011 - 9:42am
Okay, first things first. What first came to my mind when I read your post, is that I believe there is no one, and I mean not one single person on this planet, who enjoys their life throughout and is pleased at every new challenge. Even successful people, who seem to have the talent for what they do and love what they do, might face challenges in other areas of their life. (job: great/relationship with family: not so great) And I believe NOBODY likes hard work, otherwise it wouldn't be called hard, and nobody would complain about it.
I know that I sometimes look at people and think: "Good god, she/he is so talented, delivered a great soandso and look at how super organized he/she is as well. Why can't I be like that." But then I realised people sometimes look at me that way too. Like a friend told me about some procrastination problem and she was like, "Oh, but you would'nt know, Miss Super Organized." And you too said, you always get praise for the work that you finished after all that struggling. So from the outside you would possibly be one of those who seem to have it all lined up for them.
Makes me think, there might actually be no-one who has it easy.
 
But yes, I think there are definitely ways to make it easier. And those are different according to what your problem really is. Procrastination too is a symptom of something. 
 
I too know the feeling of enjoying my clean bathroom more than delivering a paper that was written with sweat and tears. But those were usually papers of something that didn't really interest me and all I felt afterwards was a certain emptiness.
You didn't say what your dreams and plans were, that you feel like you could have reached. First, what is it that you really really want to do? And sometimes it helps to ask yourself, what are the goals behind your goals? What are your true goals, what would really make you happy?
And would you be willing to work on challenging things for that? If not, it might not be what you want. And if you are on your way there and find things too hard, it might just be a slump.
Another thought I had, that you might make things hard on yourself, like perfectionists do. As in, you finish thinking about every single consequence and step of your task, and feel overwhelmed, naturally. Nobody would have built the first house if they did that. Its hard work, after all. 
Tell me what you think...
 
 
You
cannot run away from a weakness; you must sometimes fight it out or
perish. And if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894)

The things I actually want

reallyneedhelp - 1 Sep 2011 - 2:44pm

The things I actually want are not practical in a financial sense, and they are risky.  That would be OK if I were young, but I am not.  I must continue doing things that I don't really want to do, at least for another 3-4 years.  Actually I like what I'm doing just fine, but it's not what I really wish I could do.  We can't have everything I suppose.  But I feel like if I could cut myself some slack and stop procrastinating all the time, I could do my job AND have free time to start taking small steps towards what I really want.  It's hard when I'm always playing catch up.

 

re: The things I really want

journey - 2 Sep 2011 - 8:59am

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Avoiding the truth consumes great effort and energy. - Jim Loehr