Oh My God! Why am I like this!!!!

[FrustratedProcrastinator]

I have a v.important piece of work that I need to have finished by 5pm today. It will take 2-3 hours if I rush it. I can do it no problem so why haven't I done it?

I intended to do it over the weekend (after telling myself for two weeks to get on and do it) when I had plenty of time but found other stuff to do so I didn't. I realised I'd fucked badly up so rang in sick to work today so I could do it . Won't get paid. Horrendous I know and a one off that will never be repeated!

I've spent most of today on here, doing housework which can wait, eating crisps and drinking coffee.

I am FURIOUS at myself . I do this time and time again and I swore I wouldn't do it this time.

Even if I do it now, which I have to, it will be rushed and a lower standard than it could have been.

I never used to be like this. I used to be organised and totally on the ball!

Tell me I am completely UR.

My username says it all - wish I had the answer!

I'm very much I'll do it now in a minute person.
I get round this by standing up, hands on hips and saying fuck it before getting on with what I'm supposed to be doing.
Almost as though I'm bollocking myself for not getting on with it.
It works for me.
I don't have ADHD, but I do suffer from In a minute'is. Usually because I'm a lazy mare.

I wonder if you think of it as "a three hour piece of work" and then you feel dread. I know I would.

Instead just divide it up into little 10 minutes parts, and just sit down and do the first ten mins.

Use Focus Keeper app to do 20 minutes and then have a break.

Just keep doing it in little chunks.

@Shitandhills

I was like this for years and years. Did some therapy and realised that it's perfectionism cause by having quite a controlling/critical mum. It came from a good place but she basically corrected/overguided me in everything and what I learned from it was that I couldn't do anything without guidance and that it was really important for everything to be right first time. I've worked very hard on consciously challenging those thoughts every time they pop up with 'it doesn't have to be perfect'. As long as you can get something down as a starting point, improvements can be made along the way.

I think this is right. My mum - although great in many ways - was also a bit like this and would get very angry and anxious if I spelt my name wrong in a birthday card or smudged - hard for a small child.

Start your work and just aim to get something down on paper.

The Tim Urban stuff is great.

Especially recognising that when you are in a YouTube rabbit hole you are not actually enjoying yourself, you are in the "Dark Playground" - playing when you need to be working. You don't really ENJOY it.

So do the work, and then really enjoy once its done.

Why don't you want to do it? Is it boring? Is it a faff to get your laptop set up? Are you getting distracted by other things? If you can work out the exact specific reason you're not doing it, you might be able to avoid it in future. For me, I need to get started the minute I get up, as if I pick up my phone, switch the TV on, or any other distraction I'm doomed. I also struggle with any flexibility in deadlines when I'm demotivated, so unless the sanctions for not doing it are severe, I don't. If it is 5pm with no flexibility, you'll get going in a minute!

@actiongirl1978

OP i had a boss once who said that with least favourite tasks, one should 'just f**in' do it' and I've largely lived by that since. The sooner tasks like that are done, the sooner you can relax

this^^ this is the failsafe way. Big girl knickers and JFDI

Another ADHD person here busily hyper focussed on MN while deadlines loom! I wasn’t diagnosed and medicated until I was 52 and assumed I was just a lazy self sabotager but I remember the first day I took the medication: I thought “well I don’t feel any different” but then at the end of the day I looked back across the hours and realised that I had quietly just done more admin and tidying than I would have done in a fortnight. Medication isn’t a magic bullet and I’ve had to relearn planning and chunking tasks down as well. I use a 5 minute egg timer and say to myself “I’ll just do as much of the boring task as I can within the five minutes” and usually this gets me started as I don’t have the sense of overwhelm. My psychiatrist explained it in terms of dopamine - because the ADHD brain has problems with this chemical we tend to create “risk” for ourselves in an attempt to stimulate the effects of dopamine. It’s known as “edging”. Whether we shoplift or create terrifying deadlines it’s all part of trying to kickstart ourselves in the way others can do much more easily. The great thing about an ADHD diagnosis is that I spend less time beating myself up for being a useless fucker. Mind you, quite a few people around me think that as I’m not an 8 year old boy being sent out of class I can’t have ADHD and it’s just an excuse - others skepticism is definitely something we have to manage!

I’m not saying this is your problem @FrustratedProcrastinator but just thought I’d add more diversion for you . Normally ADHD is present from a young age in the form of hyperactivity, impulsiveness or lack of organisation and sometimes emotional instability and changes a bit over the years into adulthood. ADHD aside, Procrastination falls into two categories to my mind; too boring or too scary. I have also found working out which applies helps in deciding how to tackle it. Perhaps the ADHD egg timer is the way forward for the “too boring” element?

I am like this too.

My only tips:

• I spend a lot of my day saying Just Fucking Do It to myself. Literally, out loud. It seems to help!

• Divide it up as a pp said. Think “I’ll just do the title and the first couple of headings”. Once you have started, it gets so much easier.

• The internet is EVIL. I swear I’d never have got A levels or a degree if I’d grown up with the internet. Keep your phone somewhere out of reach and delete your web browser on your laptop (unless you need it for work…)

Pomodoro timer might help (even this afternoon) to get you working in 25 minute chunks. Things don’t seem so daunting with the timer but you do have continual deadlines (and breaks). Good luck.

When I read the title I thought, ha, I bet this person isn't like me who's left a major piece of work to the last minute because instead she's distracted herself with every possible thing going! I'm so reassured I'm not the only one! Good luck!

because the ADHD brain has problems with this chemical we tend to create “risk” for ourselves in an attempt to stimulate the effects of dopamine. It’s known as “edging”

Procrastination falls into two categories to my mind; too boring or too scary.

This is fascinating and very, very familiar. Thanks Youokhun.

You’re still procrastinating. Starting this thread was just further procrastinating. Go and do your work.

This is me.

But my life has been a lot happier since I accepted it. That is who I am so now I don’t think about things until the deadline. I waste less time & certainly a lot of stress and worry is just gone now.

Well, i hope you're doing it now!

I go through phases like this. On a small scale it's time of the month - can't be arsed with anything for 4/5 days just before i'm on.

On a larger scale it's the season. This time of year is so damn grey and miserable and dark and depressing and uninspiring and damp and cold and you just want to do bugger all until the sun comes out again. Getting up in the dark, dark by tea time .... ugh.

sigh.

Good luck OP.

Can't remember where (probably here!) but I read something recently about 'pottering' and it's working really well for me after being a chronic procrastinator all my life. So I don't 'decide' to do the job anymore, I just sort of absentmindedly potter at it instead, almost like tricking my brain that I'm not doing it when I actually am. I have no idea if it makes sense to anyone else but for me it's that 'right I'm going to do it' moment that makes my brain rebel and find something else to do instead, so by avoiding that moment I find I can actually do the job.

It does sound like an adhd trait for sure. I failed my a levels spectacularly, twice, because of basically this exact thing (the 'thing' I would procrastinate was revision, and I did Stem subjects so you really can't wing it). I got a*s in my gcses because I am actually pretty clever and managed to get good marks without revision.

I have been actually diagnosed with adhd in the last couple of years on the NHS.

There are lots of other factors too, not just severe procrastination, but it's a big one for me.

Those awful jobs just don't dole out the dopamine like we need them to.

You don’t have to be ADHD to do this.
I’m not, and I still do it. I always have done. In my case it’s a cross between sheer laziness and always finding something nicer/more congenial to do - often e.g. just getting on with reading the latest book.

Most recent example was the pretty much last minute tax return!

I’ve done it with study deadlines and once very nearly came unstuck - essay for an OU course, left it until what I thought was a couple of days before - only to find that it was due in by midnight that same day! And I didn’t realise until about 5 pm.
But I did make it - just.

I have spent my entire life doing things last minute, I can still remember revising for my GCSEs on the morning of the exam - having started a couple of days earlier

I'm definitely worse since the switch to WFH, there is more to procrastinate about at home. So far today I have done about 2 hours of non work work, which means I will end up working til 7pm to do the work work that I should have been doing earlier!

Many of us are like that, me included, which is why I'm here, not looking at my notes for an exam in 40 minutes, and why revision panic barely set in til last week.

Total recognition!

@minipie I’ve been thinking about all this a lot because when I’m not procrastinating I’m working as a CBT therapist so we spend a lot of time considering the behaviours of anxiety (the biggie being Avoidance) but also how perfectionism manifests and how people develop low frustration tolerance and whether that low frustration tolerance is really about boredom or fear. It’s an interesting area of human behaviour. But it was even more interesting when I found out that mine was very much chemical. I’d been feeling a bit inauthentic up to that point with my patients/clients as I was struggling with these things more than they often were!

Right, I REALLY MUST get on …

I’ve always been like this. Diagnosed with inattentive adhd 2 years ago. It all makes sense now and strategies and meds really do help.

I also did a last minute tax return GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER with panicking about getting hold of the information I needed a week before the deadline. And cursing myself for doing this again when I could have done it months ago.

If it wasn't for the last minute, nothing would get done round here.

Now I'm off to Google ADHD.

@IcicleIcicle

Can't remember where (probably here!) but I read something recently about 'pottering' and it's working really well for me after being a chronic procrastinator all my life. So I don't 'decide' to do the job anymore, I just sort of absentmindedly potter at it instead, almost like tricking my brain that I'm not doing it when I actually am. I have no idea if it makes sense to anyone else but for me it's that 'right I'm going to do it' moment that makes my brain rebel and find something else to do instead, so by avoiding that moment I find I can actually do the job.

Yes! I did this exact thing earlier. I took some laundry upstairs telling myself i was just going to put it away, that's all. On the way i slipped a bottle of Ciff and my rubber gloves on the pile - no reason - just in case i decided to finally clean down all the (bloomin' matte white) furniture in our room.

I started with 'just' doing the window ledge ...

and it worked. Whole room clean! AND, as usual once, i started i enjoyed it tbh