“I don’t procrastinate. I proactively accumulate guilt-contingent motivation.”
– Seen on Facebook.
I’ve always been a procrastinator. For the most part, I don’t think procrastination got in my way too much. Sure, I pulled a few all-nighters in college, but I got good grades, so it didn’t seem like a big deal to lose some sleep on occasion. There were friends to hang out with and video games to play. I knew I was procrastinating, and I knew there would be consequences. But that was my choice.
Nowadays, I still struggle with procrastination, despite wanting to tell myself that I no longer do it. However, procrastination looks different now than it did when I was younger.
As tricky as it may be, learning to recognize what procrastination looks like is a critical first step to combating this insidious habit.
Here are some ways that procrastination masquerades as faux productivity.
Perfectionism
I just need to proofread this one more time.
Maybe I should use that other image.
It’s still not quite right.
It needs a bit more work.
Sound familiar?
The author who is continuously writing and rewriting her novel. The artist who keeps working on the same painting. The musician who isn’t entirely happy with the melody yet.
Or the blogger who spends an embarrassing amount of time looking for just the right feature image.
According to Dr. Brené Brown, perfectionism is a pretty-sounding mask for shame. Perfectionists feel the need to revise and tweak because of a shame-based fear of not being enough. Smart enough, pretty enough, talented enough. It doesn’t matter what the perceived lack is.
Chasing an unattainable ideal called perfection is just an excuse to delay doing something challenging or scary, under the guise of fine-tuning. Perfectionism is different from striving for excellence. Striving for excellence is healthy and about growth. Perfectionism is damaging and holds us back.
Accepting that you are enough, that your worth as a person isn’t tied to whether or not someone likes your product or hires you for a job liberates you from the shame of perfectionism.
Cleaning house
I have a confession to make. I love cleaning. While I wouldn’t label myself as a full-on neat freak, I do enjoy folding and putting away my laundry.
I’ve recently noticed that I tend to clean even more thoroughly when I feel stress. Just the other day, I spent some time meticulously dusting all the baseboards in my home, for no particular reason.
Okay. There was a reason.
I had been feeling overwhelmed by some things, and when I clean and tidy things up, I can impose order on this particular chaos in my life. And that makes me feel better on some level. This sort of activity, filling my time with chores to the exclusion of other tasks, is so easy to fall into.
This form of procrastination is just a form of avoidance, though. Sure, I was staying busy, and my house is spotless, but those activities weren’t helping me achieve my goals.
The tasks I’ve been avoiding haven’t gone anywhere. They are just waiting for a quiet moment when you aren’t distracted by all the productive adulting you’re doing, and you don’t have a suitable buffer to hide behind anymore.
More research/studying
Some people collect things – coins, books, shoes. I collect knowledge. That’s why I spent so much time on my education, and even now, I love learning new things.
This desire to learn is incredibly useful most of the time. However, I have to be very careful to not fall into an endless spiral of more research.
At some point, you have to stop. You have to step back and accept that you’ve done enough prep work and it’s time to move forward. You can’t know everything, and just like the endless revising of perfectionism, endless research is another avoidance tactic.
Timing/situation/mood isn’t right
Creators sometimes talk about a mental state called flow, where you’re so focused on what you’re doing that time melts away, and you enter a sort of zen-like state. I can tell you from experience that it feels incredible. Your brain firing. Ideas and words leaping from your fingertips onto the page…
It’s wonderful.
I used to believe that I needed a very particular set of circumstances to get into a good writing flow. I needed to be in a coffee shop, listening to my favorite music, drinking an iced mocha. The flip side of that was, if I was anywhere other than my perfect scenario, I clearly couldn’t write anything.
What a great excuse to avoid writing that blog post, right?
There’s nowhere to sit at the coffee shop.
I left my earbuds at home.
I’ve already had eight cups of coffee today, and my head will probably explode if I drink more caffeine.
I have extended this list of excuses to include things like: It’s too early in the morning. It’s too late at night. I’m hungry. I’m sleepy. I’m not in a creative mood.
Sure, it’s easier to get into the flow headspace with a bit of ritual and habit, but the truth is if you’re always waiting for the muse to find you, you’ll never get anything done. Just start. You’ll be surprised at how a few minutes of dedicated effort can put your mind in the right place to get things done. But you have to start.
Procrastination is a deep-seated habit many of us struggle with. Sometimes we are up front with ourselves when we procrastinate, but other times we find ways to hide it from ourselves. Changing habits takes a lot of time and effort, but one of the first steps is recognizing when we engage in these self-destructive behaviors. Awareness empowers us to effect change.
How does procrastination disguise itself for you? Let me know in the comments!
Photo by Carl Heyerdahl on Unsplash