Self loathing procrastinators and perpetual under achievers sign in here

[Bumperlicious]

Just been on the 3 things I don't know about you thread and there seems to be quite a few people who are procrastinators but hate it.

I am full of good ideas and potential but rarely motivated enough to do anything about it. I have always been intelligent but have to some extent squandered it on trashy novels and trashy tv. I feel like I just haven't found my niche in life. I try lots of things but don't often stick to them. I have a good degree and MSc and am in a respectable but not well paid job which I don't really enjoy.

I have a 3 year old and a 3 month old and feel permanently top tired to do anything but feel crap at not achieving anything.

Anyone else care to join me?

Oh

Ooops

Only read OP but I could have written it. I am feeling particularly like this at work - full of good ideas but have no time to put them into practice. I do work FT and have a relatively stressful job but somewhere since leaving Uni, I seem to have lost, well, myself. I am relatively intelligent but it feels easier to not use it [lazy]. I don't watch much trashy tv and love reading but all I can manage atm is to flick through cookery books (the ones with pictures on every page).

Willself - my working life also consists of marking and writing papers. I also wonder why, if I love writing so much, I am not writing these dam papers faster. TBH I am sick of the sight of them. I have lost the grande passion for this particular line of research but funding requirements do not chase after new quarry. I also love change.

The balance between over-reaching and under-achieving is tricky. Where does one stop and the other begin - and how can you truly know?

I totally empathise with procrastination as a fear of failure - not wanting to put in 100% in case the results are .......... no better, or worse .... ordinary.

Oh my god!

Can i join in? I am one of lifes complete failures. I am and always have been ambitious but i am incapable of putting the work in to be any good at anything.

My DH has a very good job which he is very good at. I feel like a leech. The only thing i was ever any good at is now impossible since having children. I feel like a bit of a waste of space tbh. My house is a tip, i am always saying to DD "In a minute" my horses do not get the time and attention they deserve, i am hopeless at maintaining friendships as i put things off til the last minute, which irritates people.

Every morning i get up and just feel a bit lost. Every evening when i go to bed i think "Tomorrow will be better, i will stick to my list, i won't eat rubbish, i will be a good mummy and i will get round to doing x,y,z" It makes me miserable.

I am on the slatterns thread, a healthy eating thread, an antenatal thread, used to be on a crafting thread, and on the Positive Things thread in the tack room topic. Bit of a joke really

Perhaps this is the thread for me?

Acinonyx - that's interesting that you say procrastination is a way of avoiding failure.

One thing I am not remotely frightened of is failure. I tend to throw myself into things wholeheartedly if I want them, and take on the chin whatever comes.

I hope I can pass this down to DC.

I think that's important Litchick. I am definitely getting better (am quite, er, mature) and I do want to raise dd NOT to be like this.

It's like having a sports car that you never put into top gear. You have to test it out properly, at least once, before it goes for scrap.

Awww Alice, sorry you feel that way. Stick with us, though not sure how much help we'll be, but at least we can all sit around feeling sorry for ourselves together!

My procrastination isn't fear of failure. It's a combination of tiredness & inability to cope with it, actual laziness & not being able to focus on one thing. I'm very much grass is always greener, everyone else always has a more interesting job/life/are generally just better people than me.

The other thing for me is that I just want to be changing the world in big ways, if what I am doing isn't big, or high profile then meh I'm just not bothered. Which is how I know housework & childcare just isn't enough for me. Though obviously you need to do the small things to get to the big things don't you? That's how I find myself in a spiral of demotivation.

I think that is why I'm finding the job thing so hard. I so wanted this job, it sounded so exciting & cool but the reality is a lot more mundane. And I'm not changing the world, I am a cog in a machine.

Bumperlicious - wanting to change the world in big ways is over-reaching. If you set your sights that high, and despise anything you do that isn't world-changing, you are setting yourself up for failure.

"I am one of lifes complete failures. I am and always have been ambitious but i am incapable of putting the work in to be any good at anything."
Alice, this is me exactly, that combo of ambition and apathy is misery-making, isn't it?

I've got a job that has kudos, but it doesn't fulfill me at all. I'm 40 and feel like I've spent my whole adult life failing to live up to my high achieving childhood. Oh dear.

This is a very interesting thread.

I think it is really important as an adult to work out what is important to you to achieve and to recognise your own qualities and achievements, rather than to look for external validation all the time. You only feel fulfilled if you are achieving what matters to you - not what matters to other people.

I do feel as though i am letting myself down though.

I failed to have a career - ok, not the end of the world.

I had DD and thought, well, i enjoy being a mum, i would like a large family, i will throw myself into creating a good family life for us all. After having DS, i have realised that actually just being a mum is perhaps not enough for me, and i can not bear the thought of a 3rd child - i am struggling with two! But what can i do? No idea whatsoever. Everything i do tends to be rather half arsed now.

oh, lody - even the words 'completer-finisher' put the fear of god of me. how do you turn a perpetual planner into a 'completer-finisher' then?

actually, i'm off to read today's webchat - hope it has some ideas!!!

Please excuse appalling spelling in my last post, not sure it even makes sense to me not getting much sleep.

Well, my first step to non-procrastination was to email a friend I've been meaning to get in contact with for a couple of years. The longer I left it the more guilty I felt (she had just split up with her boyfriend, but I had just had a baby and didn't have the mental energy to do the necessary sympsthising) so put it off for longer.

Well done Bumperlicious

I am on house cleaning mission due to friend coming for lunch tomorrow - yet another thing that makes me cross with myself, waiting til someone is coming, then having a mad clear out, stressing myself out, rather than keeping on top of it.

I also need to email a friend, meant to do it just after DS was born 4m ago, but still not managed.

Alas no Jajas, you certainly are not! I think I should just have a car boot sale in my street.

Completely empathise with the procrastination and avoiding working hard as a fear of failure. Apart from very short (last minute) bursts, I don't really think I have ever worked "hard"

Slight diversion but there was a programme that David Baddiel did a few years which still resonates a bit. In summary, it was about never telling your kids that they are "clever" as you are setting them up for a fear of failure and subsequent paralysis/procrastination/underachievement etc. They start to avoid things that they perceive as "hard" as they may have to work at them and still not manage to do them well. "Clever" people can just do stuff without needing to work. The conclusion was to praise your child for trying hard.

So, were many of you procrastinators told you were "clever" etc as a child and was quite a lot was expected of you?

Oh, I bet you are.

I find the easiest way to overcome procrastination, especially for big jobs, is just to take that first step.

Does not matter if it is not the first step towards perfection (expecting perfection kills achievement), just any step. Then the next, and the next and with one foot in front of the other a few times, you will find you have built up enough momentum for the rest of the project to carry through to .. achievement. There.

Said yes I agree that being told you are clever is not that good, definitely meant I didn't learn to work when I was at school because I had been one of the 'clever' ones.Had a nasty shock and severe loss of confidence when I failed most of my o levels and I spent years catching up.

I found it hard to not be perfect at stuff resulting in huge amounts of stress.

My mottos now are 'good enough' and 'perfection is the enemy of the good'. Its a real relief to begin to accept I can just bumble along in life and don't have to be one of life's great achievers, have the perfect body, relationship etc.

I try not to tell my DS he is clever ( though it is very difficult) and to praise him for trying and sticking with things.

I take great pleasure in very ordinary things now, but that has taken middle age, a smattering of Budhism and quite a lot of therapy to acheive (oh and becoming a mother). I think we should give ourselves a break and if we have done no harm at the end of the day that is acheivement enough. Oh I've come over all spiritual.

'So, were many of you procrastinators told you were "clever" etc as a child and was quite a lot was expected of you?'

Completely! & I used to go to this 'special' group in middle school which in hindsight I realise was a G&T scheme. And it wasn't a middle class pushy parent thing. I was the first of my family to get a degree, we spent most of our childhood on benefits. But so much was expected of me & I was a real swot.