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Originally Posted by ScotiaCoast  This chronic procrastination is affecting every area of my life in a negative way and I need to change it. The most frustrating thing for me is that from the outside people will see me as a person who is lazy and doesn't care about his schoolwork (and rightfully so), when really I am consumed by anguish and guilt over what I haven't done. |
ScotiaCoast,
I'll tell you the secret to ending procrastination:
You need to find out what its secret value is to you. As unbelievable as it sounds, there IS a secret value in it for you. All patterns that a human being finds himself in are delivering some kind of unseen, secret benefit to himself.
In looking at it for a moment, the hidden benefit is extraordinary, yet fairly easy to see.
Take the two possible scenarios:
1) Procrastination: You have a lot of work to do, and instead of starting it, you distract yourself, sit and think about how much there is to do, or whatever the evasive tactic is that your particular character turns to.
2) Simply Begin Working: You have a lot of work to do, and you simply begin working on it. No fireworks, no great heroic arrivals, you simply begin.
Can you place yourself at the beginning of each of these scenarios and "feel" what the internal difference is between them?
In the case of #1 (procrastination), there is a very strong, surging vibration inside of you. You are someone with a ton to do, and bound on all sides by not being able to start. In this scenario, you are 100% defined by the situation.... and there's a peculiar kind of "safety" and "security" in this state, because you know exactly who you are: You are the person with too much to do, and who is destined to be a dismal failure (or whatever your mind likes to picture).
I may not have described it perfectly for your situation, you'll have to do that work for yourself. But one other common feeling in this scenario is when we imagine all the work we have, and then imagine ourselves gathering our energy in a half hour or so (after some pleasurable activity we give ourselves as an outlet first) and then imagine ourselves finally bursting through this wall that has us stopped.
In that case, the exact same thing is going on inside of you: You are defined through your own imagination as the oppressed, and in a short while you are going to emerge as the hero... as the victor... as the person who finally harnesses his faculties and gets it all done! Can you recall the kind of surging, vibrating certainty these images set-up inside of you?
Now, the important part... contrast these feelings with how you feel when you actually start a project... when you actually begin working on something:
There aren't a lot of fireworks are there? No trumpets blaring, no grand arrivals. And, strangely, you don't really know who exactly you are in those moments of productivity, do you? There's just a state of active working, but there's no "strong identity" that you can refer to to know who you are in that moment. After all, if you're actually working, there's no room to stop and take stock of who you are at the moment.
This is the actual core level engine that powers procrastination...
Every person on the planet is addicted to defining who they are by everything they do. By what they are doing, will do, or have done. When the activity promises a reward (the great recognized person I will become after the task is complete) or is something my interests are naturally drawn to, I have no problem getting started and doing the task.
But when it's just a matter of doing a task with no obvious sense of myself to look forward to, I can't see the point in getting started, because after all, who am I becoming by doing this? And so other distractions and postponements will always win out because they instantly give me something:
They give me my new, solid, surging sense of identity.
Are you getting the drift of this?
If you could just catch a glimpse of how the conflict of procrastination gives you the safety of knowing exactly who you are in the moment, and that that certainty is actually more important to a part of you than getting the job done, you would be on the road to ending the domination procrastination has had over your life.