I procrastinate for two reasons. One, I don't want to do it at all, and if I put it off long enough, I might end up not having to do it... someone else will do it, or the thing will die or expire and I won't be able to do it. Whenever I find myself procrastinating a task, I have to think about why I'm doing it in the first place, and try to see if I can redesign my life in some way to remove such tasks.
The second reason I procrastinate is to gain a form of control over the situation. I can't always get the results I want if I perform the action, but I can definitely get a specific result (failure) if I don't perform the action. Doing something is a crap-shoot, but not doing it has very specific and predictable results. So I try to detach from the result of an action and try to think of it as its own thing instead of a means to a possible-but-not-guaranteed end.
I try to incorporate my natural need to procrastinate into my life: For example, I've never tried to go into business for myself because I have always needed an outside pressure, like a boss breathing down my neck, in order to get anything done.
And sometimes it works for me: I was never able to get a paper started for school until the night before it was due; the pressure of the deadline was required to get the creative juices flowing, and the papers I wrote in advance weren't anywhere near as brilliant as the ones I turned in while the ink was still wet.
If I don't have a deadline, I have nothing to procrastinate towards, so I just keep on futzing about until I'm so far behind I can never catch up.
The second reason I procrastinate is to gain a form of control over the situation. I can't always get the results I want if I perform the action, but I can definitely get a specific result (failure) if I don't perform the action. Doing something is a crap-shoot, but not doing it has very specific and predictable results. So I try to detach from the result of an action and try to think of it as its own thing instead of a means to a possible-but-not-guaranteed end.
I try to incorporate my natural need to procrastinate into my life: For example, I've never tried to go into business for myself because I have always needed an outside pressure, like a boss breathing down my neck, in order to get anything done.
And sometimes it works for me: I was never able to get a paper started for school until the night before it was due; the pressure of the deadline was required to get the creative juices flowing, and the papers I wrote in advance weren't anywhere near as brilliant as the ones I turned in while the ink was still wet.
If I don't have a deadline, I have nothing to procrastinate towards, so I just keep on futzing about until I'm so far behind I can never catch up.
