Work-based anxiety and procrastination. Is it just me?

[Procrastinatingpenny]

I probably do have some form of neurodivergence but I’m not seeking a diagnosis, just desperately trying to get out of my own way and stop being my own worst enemy!

And, looking for a bit of understanding because I feel like such a failure / fraud / weirdo.

I was a straight A pupil at school. graduated degree with 1st class honours. Got a Masters and PhD. I’m not stupid… in a conventional way… but God Almighty am I stupid when it comes to work.

I procrastinate dreadfully. Not everything, just the hard tasks. I’ve tried all the tricks. But it’s like my brain just goes into freeze. This morning I woke at 4:30am, yes FOUR thirty to get a difficult piece of work (that I should have done yesterday on Friday two weeks ago ) and I lay there in bed thinking about how I was going to get up and do it for four bloody hours until I finally did get up and begin at 8:30 🤯

And here I am now, at the end of another day, and the blasted thing is still unfinished.

I have asked myself so many times why I do this. It’s as though the dreaded task and I are opposite poles of a magnet. It takes SO much effort (actually, it takes distress, not effort) to make contact and the easiest thing in the world to disengage again.

It got worse after I burned out at work six years ago, but if I’m honest it was a problem before then (and completely honestly was part of the reason I burned out).

I’m not afraid of hard work. That is god’s honest truth. I would LOVE to be able to blast through this stupid task. My failure over and over again just compounds the anxiety, the shame, the self-criticism, the guilt… I am CAPABLE of doing it…
And yet here I am… on Mumsnet.

I KNOW I am unreasonable. But does anyone else get this? Is it only me? Argh!

My teen is now on adhd meds which last 6-8hrs it’s fascinating watching them kick in she goes from exactly as you described to highly focused and in the zone in about 45mins.,We are home educating so I spend a lot of time with her. It sounds like classic AuDHD mix of behaviours

AI tools can really help. Try goblin tools, or ChatGPT to breakdown tasks or simplify into bullets to get you going or finish something.

Exercise helps too 15 mins of calm yoga breathing stretches or 5 mins frantic dancing helps us to get into zone again.

For god's sake.

Not necessarily. There are plenty of reasons for this behaviour, ADHD being only one. Anxiety, stress and burnout being others. And i'm sure that's not an exhaustive list.

I think modern corporate life is prone to encouraging this type of behaviour with neverending to do lists and a requirement to push constantly. I get worse in prolonged periods of stress and it's like my brain is enforcing a break because it's at capacity and just can't take anything else in

OP I completely understand. Same here! Keenly following for tips!

I feel so seen!

I'm no help to you, but replying with reassurance and comradery. It's so very reassuring to know I'm not alone. The job always gets done (and always gets done well) but only ever in a flurry of last-minute activity and never in a consistent manner.

I get so annoyed with myself, but nothing seems to help me work more consistently. I work in a org where we record timecards which I find really challenging given my way of working.

I also have a fear of being "found out" - not sure what I think being "found out" means, but I get anxiety about it.

The only thing that helps me focus and get deep work done early is body doubling. I collaborate with some amazing colleagues and we will often be in a teams call for 2 hours working separately and/or together on tasks.

Booking time in my own calendar for tasks can also be helpful because it helps me measure the size of a task sooner - I almost always vastly underestimate how much effort is involved.

Oh, and also putting my phone out if reach - preferably in another room - helps me stay in the zone for longer

Yes very much so. I think a lot of it for me is just boredom and seeing the inherent pointlessness of my job. It’s well paid and I do it fairly well despite the procrastinating. The thing is, if I do a great job or a shit job, it makes literally no difference to the world at large. Just whether some director or CEO gets a big bonus or a massive bonus this year.

The only worthwhile thing is being friendly and supportive with my colleagues and clients, and making sure I’m not making anyone’s day worse. Basically being a person.

I think I’d be more motivated if I had a job that was actually necessary to society, like teacher, nurse, farming, whatever. Does this resonate?
https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

Actually I have one small tip for concentration. Have a background noise playing when you need to concentrate on a task, such that your brain has another source of stimulation alongside your task, but not so interesting that you focus on the noise or music instead of the task.
This could be some quite bland instrumental music (must be without lyrics or big changes in tempo) or abstract sounds like white noise, or birdsong or rain or other natural sounds. Anything that that you like, but that you won’t be tempted to pay much attention to.

Yes, it sounds like adhd and it's really fucking rough.

There is a level of procrastination that is normal, and I think most people do this to a greater or lesser extent. And then there is a level of procrastination that is pathological, which has a massive negative impact on your life. It sounds like you are describing the latter.

I recognise it and relate to it. I too got up stupidly early this morning to finish the thing I had been stressing about all weekend. I regularly compromise on sleep and exercise etc in order to get things done, and I feel like a lifetime of doing this is starting to catch up with me.
Definitely worse since peri and then menopause, but it has always been my demon.

A diagnosis did help me to some extent, if only to somewhat reduce the shame and guilt that I feel about not being able to get a grip on myself. I can rationalise things a bit more easily now, but that inner voice telling me to just pull myself together never actually goes. It's relentless and it wears me down.

It's exhausting to live with and I don't have any magic strategies. Medication does help but I had to stop it because of the side effects. It's good to find strategies that help. Body doubling works for me but only if it's the right person. Any kind of external accountability is helpful. I've probably tried every to do list/productivity app on the planet but not found anything which sticks yet. I am currently using a task list that I've designed for myself in excel. It flags up tasks where there is a procrastination risk.

The other advice that you tend to get is to learn to live with it - just accept that that's how you work. But I haven't really found a way of doing this yet. I don't want to accept it, I guess. It's such a stressful way of living as you're either in full-on crisis mode or else you're feeling guilty /panicked about the thing that you haven't done yet which will at some point in the not-too-distant future tip you into crisis mode. Again.

The one thing I have learnt is that guilt and shame really feed the procrastination habit. The worse I feel about the fact that I haven't done something, the more insurmountable a task it seems to become. So I think cracking that is possibly the key. But how? I haven't figured that out yet.

ETA I find copilot helps me immensely. I never really use what it churns out in the format that it churns it out, but it does help me get started, which is often the hardest bit.

Just joining in to say, yes this is me too. I'm autistic and peri. I find WFH such a struggle. What works for me is using body doubling websites like Flown, or going in to work even though it feels like a hassle at the time. Also, the more you procrastinate the more anxiety and shame you feel and the less likely you are to start the task. It sounds counter intuitive but doing something nice instead like catching up with a friend or sitting in a cafe for an hour helps your body to reset and bring you out of your threat state, thus making it easier to get going with the task when you go back to it. Don't just sit there feeling increasingly panicked and desperate.

There's a lot of info regarding this if you Google it

You know you can change your job right?

Of course. But I’d need to take a few years off, and burn through savings to retrain to a worse paid career. Because as far as I can tell in the private sector at least, the more inane and pointless your job, the better it’s paid.

My point is that many many people are in bs jobs like mine, diagnosing themselves with ADHD when really they’re just having a normal reaction to boring tasks. Of course writing a bullet point list of those pointless tasks doesn’t make them any more appealing. And maybe that applies to OP too.

I could have written this about my day. Awake worrying at 5am and still didn't bloody finish it today. And it's midnight, I'm tired and I'm faffing on Mumsnet. I'm my worst enemy

Op said she suspected being ND and this is a very common issue for those with ADHD.
I'm aware ADD/ADHD diagnoses seem very common now but in this substance, it doesn't mean it's incorrect. It's the simplest explanation and therefore the most likely one to be accurate.

Well I’m up at 00:14 working on something I absolutely promised I would do by 27 January.., so yes, can relate.

Another paragraph.

Clocking in to MN while working on needlessly overdue problematic work to say what everyone else said.

Hello friends!

Omg, I love this thread and I love all of you. I'm exactly the same. Diagnosed autistic but wondering if I have ADHD too. Can't relate to all the advice to break things down into bite-sized tasks, My To Do list is epic as it is. If I break things down it will swell to the size of a novel. Please send help!

Gonna try and attach a graphic that seems to sum up the problem.

Lovely graphic!

Amended. There’s the deadline (not shown), then the real deadline, then the extension period. Panic bubbles from the start, but is masked at first by the overt panic related to the previous overdue work.

Yes, me too. Definitely.

Not to the extent that you describe because I probably don't have ADHD (just poor mental health and lifestyle) but I dedinitely relate to the cycle of unproductivity and procrastination. A hard deadline does work for me though. The only other thing that keeps me vaguely functioning is being single with no children and therefore it not mattering if I take 10 hours to do 3 hours worth of work. But that's not much help to you if you do have a family - you can't exactly get rid of them!

How did you manage to do your MA and PhD? Could you use some of the same techniques ?

I didn't manage to finish my MA because I kept putting off my dissertation, I got given two extensions but I missed the deadlines for those as well because I couldn't bring myself to do it. I got a PgDip instead, but they couldn't issue the certificate until I returned my university library book that was overdue (believe it or not), it took me 2 further years to return my library book. I knew I had to do it but it just hung over my head for that long and I kept putting it off. I had to pay a hefty fine and finally I got my PgDip certificate. Complete nightmare. I was so ashamed I didn't tell anyone in my family that I didn't get my MA.

I've started two other diplomas that I didn't manage to finish even though I got pretty close. I struggle with work tasks and have several things on my to do list that are massively overdue because I've been putting them off down weeks. They will take about 20 mins each. I seem to have a block about creating Doodle polls. They feel very stressful even though they're not.

I'm sure I could be diagnosed with ADHD but I'm so resistant to jumping on that particular bandwagon that I know I'll never seek out a diagnosis. I think I've been scarred by constantly bombardment about neurodiversity on social media and 'neurosparkly' this and that, and '10 signs you have ADHD'. It just seems so bloody tiresome and not something I want to be part of. No judgement on anyone else with a diagnosis, I know it can be very helpful to many people.

Op I am you. Whats your job!? Mine has meaty reports to write as well as lots of smaller tasks and meetings and I feel I can only do one or the other - totally ignore the small er tasks and let them build up to the point i might be complained about to get the reports done, or keep on top of the other stuff and neglect reports. It’s so hard!
I struggled with getting my PhD level qualification done but did in the end, I desperately wanted to publish my thesis but didn’t manage to do it alongside work, in hindsight I wish I had it would have only taken a weekend to write up if I’d been able to focus !

It’s so much harder now I’m a single mum and all the household and child admin is on me alone, I forget to return things to shops and pay parking fines and life admin is always so hard too

Thank you so much for this. It's exactly the same for me and I'm wondering what it is.
Stress and burnout plus perimenopause have left me barely able to function but I feel I have always had adhd.

I make to do lists and then forget they exist. I'm forgetful about where I put things as it leaves my mind the moment I put something down.I can't 'see' mess. I zone out of conversations. i'm so easily overwhelmed and hate change but can't sit still either. So much weird stuff going on with my brain. I'm in my 40s 😐