Introductions and Procrastination Discussion

Hello to everyone,

I'm a chronic procrastinator.  Although I procrastinate in every aspect of my life, the impact has been most devastating to my pursuit of a doctorate.  I was in a doctoral program in educational psychology and was kicked out twice for lack of progress.  My procrastination got really out of control when I realized it was time to begin my candidacy research project.  I was able to complete all of the coursework but didn't pass one portion of my comprehensive exam and didn't complete my dissertation.  I began a different doctoral program (in psychology) in October and once again I'm procrastinating.  The course in which I'm currently enrolled ends on Dec.

I came across a podcast of Steve Pavlina's – who's a motivational speaker -  that I found very interesting. In it, Pavlina outlines:

1) The three main methods through which our subconscious behavioral patterns are formed;
2) How said subconscious patterns intervene in our everyday conscious efforts to change our behavior;
3) And how we can break their hold and replace them with better patterns that help us achieve our goals.

The podcast starts off a bit slow, but bear with it; you'll find that the middle and ending parts are most insightful and truly worth listening to.

Hello Everyone!
My name is Joe.  I'm a procrastinator.  Looking at this site seems to be another form of procrastination for me!  I'm supposed to be writing a paper for work right now, and for weeks I have been doing nothing, and managing to avoid my boss.  Now, so much time has gone by, that anything I do cannot make up for the weeks and weeks for which I did nothing at all!! 

I really think that phone calls would be better for me.  Is there a phone list somewhere on the site?  Is it OK to list my phone number here so that I can get a call?  I saw that there was a phone meeting this morning.  Do I really have to wait until next week to be able to talk to someone?

In a recent study, subjects were asked to suppress their feelings while viewing an upsetting movie. In a subsequent test that involved self-control, the subjects performed worst than average. According to the researchers, this proves that their self-control ressources were used up during the first test. More details here : http://www.world-science.net/othernews/071011_self-control.htm

I think this study raises a lot of questions, questions that have to do with procrastination.

Chronic procrastinators often go through these cycles of procrastinating, doing everything at the last minute, thinking that this will never happen again, and then when everything is done procrastinating again. Could it be that when we are working at the last minute, we use up all of our self control ? Then we would HAVE to procrastinate afterwards, because our self control just doesn’t work anymore.

Hi everyone,

I'm still trying to make sense of all the information on this site.  But at least I'll introduce myself.

I'm currently finishing my thesis.  My mom says I've been a procrastinator since Kindergarten, and I think I believe her.  ;)  I don't remember procrastinating until about 4th grade, but who's counting?  That was more than a decade ago. 

Anyhoo, I just thought procrastination was my particular problem and "I must be stupid" or something.  In the last few months I have become convinced that it is an addiction.  I was mildly hopeful that someone else might have thought this, too, so I searched for "Procrastinators Anonymous" and here I am!  :)

Why do we put things off. Even things we know need our attention and we know full well if we avoid it, it could cause real pain later? What feeds this behavor?

What tasks are most likely to be the subject of procrastination for you, and why?

Financial and legal stuff is the worst for me -
I've been putting off some Social Security Administration stuff for two years now.  I put it on my list almost every week but I never do it.  I dread that stuff so badly, and usually I find that if I go ahead and do it it is not nearly as bad as I thought it would be.  Even if it's horrid, it still feels good to get it over with.  Sometimes I pay bills late when I really have the money to pay them, I just hate and fear money stuff so much I will do anything else rather than that. 

Phone calls - I hate making even the simplest phone calls.  I will search for businesses that I can communicate with via email just to avoid that phone.  Why?  Who freaking knows?  It's dumb. 

J. 

This is my first post here - I've been lurking around for a quite a while. I've been a chronic procrastinator for a long, long time... I think since high school. It started affecting my quality of life in a significant way in college and grad school, and much more so in the past few years of professional life. I am unable to do even simple tasks at work.,. there are days when I do absolutely nothing, and there are days hwen I work like a dog to get stuff done by deadlines. Even when I do manage to finish projects, the end-result always seems so sub-standard or mediocre. It's always a disappointment, whether the task gets done or not - a lose-lose situation. It makes me so damn depressed. Somehow, I get away with all this - I still get pretty good feedback from my peers and supervisors, which seems really odd to me. I keep thinking it is just a matter of time before I'm fired. I was given something to do over a month ago, which I've been thinking about all the time and every day, but have made absolutely no progress on. It's literally the first thing on my mind when I wake up and the last thing on my mind before I drift off to sleep, hanging over me like a huge cloud. I keep telling myself, why get so stressed over a simple powerpoint deck and some stupid quantitative analysis - it should take me 3-4 hours at most to complete. But I simply can't get myself to start - I don't even want to open the damn file. Each time I'm on the computer, I just spend hours surfing the Internet. A couple of times I've stayed up the whole night this way. Complete and utter paralysis. Every night I set my alarm to 6am and every morning I wake up not earlier than 9am. It's like I'm incapable of controlling my sleep patterns. I've absolutely no discipline in this respect. I've walked into work as late as 11 or 11:30am several times, missed so many college classes, even walked in late to exams. And I as I said, I still manage to save face in front of others, but even that is getting harder and harder now. I'm running out of excuses to make and I'm sick of lying to them and myself.

Anyway, this powerpoint deck, I need to finish in the next 3 hours. For the past 10 hours, it's literally all I've been thinking about, while at the same time avoiding it. It's not like I think about it in detail either. Other than, "I have to finish this," nothing else comes to mind.

I'm so tired of all this. It feels like such a lame condition to be in.

Having a web browser on your computer is like having a television on your desk. Dangerous stuff for a procrastinator.

The free Firefox web browser (available at www.getfirefox.com) has an great add-on available called LeechBlock (available at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4476). This add-on lets you block chosen web sites completely during your working hours, or set a maximum amount of time per day that you can spend visiting those sites. All you have to do to add a site to the list of blocked sites is right-click on the web page and select the LeechBlock menu, or select LeechBlock from the web browser's Tools menu. Even better, you can tell LeechBlock to not let you remove the blocks during your working hours.