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Procrastination
Jan. 23rd, 2015 09:59 am“It turns out procrastination is not typically a function of laziness, apathy or work ethic as it is often regarded to be. It’s a neurotic self-defense behavior that develops to protect a person’s sense of self-worth.
You see, procrastinators tend to be people who have, for whatever reason, developed to perceive an unusually strong association between their performance and their value as a person. This makes failure or criticism disproportionately painful, which leads naturally to hesitancy when it comes to the prospect of doing anything that reflects their ability — which is pretty much everything.”
— Procrastination Is Not Laziness | Thought Catalog
Airspaniel responds to this here.
I think the important thing to remember—which Airspaniel is kind of getting at—is that knowing why you behave in a certain way is not meant to provide an excuse for you to keep behaving in that way. The purpose of knowing the root issue behind something is so that you can tackle that root issue and, in doing so, mitigate or eliminate the problematic behavior.
If you procrastinate because you fear failure, then you need to start viewing “missing a deadline and screwing your coworkers” as a greater failure than “doing a sub-standard job”. If you procrastinate because you feel your work is pointless, then you either need to find different work, convince your boss that the work is pointless, and/or find a point (like a continued paycheck) that you can assign to it.
If you read something that gives you an in-depth understanding of your problem and your reaction is, “Oh, it’s not that I’m lazy, it’s that I’m a perfectionist. So I don’t need to change at all,” then you’re either a dumbass or a jerk. The problem is still a problem and still needs to be solved.
Or, as a commonly-used Brooklyn 99 reaction gif goes, “Cool motive! Still murder.”
You see, procrastinators tend to be people who have, for whatever reason, developed to perceive an unusually strong association between their performance and their value as a person. This makes failure or criticism disproportionately painful, which leads naturally to hesitancy when it comes to the prospect of doing anything that reflects their ability — which is pretty much everything.”
— Procrastination Is Not Laziness | Thought Catalog
Airspaniel responds to this here.
I think the important thing to remember—which Airspaniel is kind of getting at—is that knowing why you behave in a certain way is not meant to provide an excuse for you to keep behaving in that way. The purpose of knowing the root issue behind something is so that you can tackle that root issue and, in doing so, mitigate or eliminate the problematic behavior.
If you procrastinate because you fear failure, then you need to start viewing “missing a deadline and screwing your coworkers” as a greater failure than “doing a sub-standard job”. If you procrastinate because you feel your work is pointless, then you either need to find different work, convince your boss that the work is pointless, and/or find a point (like a continued paycheck) that you can assign to it.
If you read something that gives you an in-depth understanding of your problem and your reaction is, “Oh, it’s not that I’m lazy, it’s that I’m a perfectionist. So I don’t need to change at all,” then you’re either a dumbass or a jerk. The problem is still a problem and still needs to be solved.
Or, as a commonly-used Brooklyn 99 reaction gif goes, “Cool motive! Still murder.”
