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.

On tidying up

First of all I would like to thank all of you people that have made this site what it is.
The amount of effort you put in it is amazing.

 So, I have been doing a lot of thinking while tidying. This was always a particularly difficult task for me because:

1) My brain instantly perceives details & differentiation instead of groups or "the big picture".
This means I find it very difficult to classify objects in large groups. And you need to do that in order to find a place for them - having each object in it's own category just doesn't do it.
This brain characteristic is very useful when drawing (I am an artist) or when engaged in meticulous activities (which again I am very good at) *but* t makes a hell out of tidying up.

So I am working on a way around this in a rational manner.

2)  I am somewhat of a hoarder. My family does it too; plus I am financially challenged right now so I tend not to throw stuff not knowing whether I will have money to replace them if I need to. 

I have also found that  procrastinating is largely a learned characteristic. My family does it too. Big time.
They tend to go easy on themselves about "being lazy" and habitually interrupt others activities to exchange meaningless words. I do find this very distracting and annoying.

More on what I am doing to get over my difficulty tidying later.

Welcome Indigo!

wishing you well with your tidying! I can relate to what you are saying about difficulty seeing 'the big picture', I think that's a problem for me too. And I can see how characteristics like hoarding and procrastination get passed along in families.

Hope this site helps you, keep posting!

the immediate vs the big picture

Welcome to P.A.! 

I am also a new member and it's been great exploring this site.

I'm sure you'll find articles on here that'll resonate with you.  For me I find that sometimes the bigger picture eludes me as well.

In case it's of interest I'm just reading 

"The Procrastination Equation".

There's an interesting section describing the limbic system part of the brain that deals with more immediate sensations, and the prefrontal cortex which deals more with the bigger picture.  It seems probs happen when the two areas work against each other, which seems to happen to me quite a lot! I seem to shut down when I need to categorise things - hopefully when I'm a bit more steady I can work out what's going on there for me.

Also it's been interesting to see that quite a few folk have hoarding issues, myself included! (And a relief to realize it's not just me!!) For example there's this post here: decluttering.

Anyhow, wishing you all the best with your tidying & moving forward.

Smile