[codezero]

I say this on most threads about procrastination, but it's important to remember that chronic procrastination can be an indication of anxiety, not just a temporary state of mind. If you suffer from this kind of anxiety and not just a moment of distraction, you should see a professional, they really can help fix things long term and improve your quality of life.

[white-flame]

As a procrastinator, I can tell you that mine has NOTHING to do with anxiety, or the fear of failure, or the scope of the task at hand. There is similar projection in this article, that anybody dealing with procrastination is struggling with overcoming fear.

While I can certainly force myself into doing things better as I'm older and sick of the failures that procrastination leads to, I've not heard much useful advice for plain ol' (non-anxiety related) procrastination, where the person simply has inertia at rest and is disinterested at all levels from disrupting that. Stuff like the pomodoro method is probably the most relevant.

[codezero]

Yep, I made the comment to call out anxiety as a factor many people are unaware of. It does not mean everyone who procrastinates has clinical anxiety, but if one finds themselves often unable to make progress or having a decreased quality of life from failures, it doesn't hurt to get a professional opinion.

[white-flame]

Well, the statement "but it's important to remember that procrastination is a form of anxiety" is much more absolute than that. Putting people under broad umbrella terms certainly can be counterproductive to dealing with individual issues.

[codezero]

That wasn't my intention. I've edited the original comment.

[white-flame]

As a pedantic as I am :-), editing "procrastination" into "chronic procrastination" while leaving it absolute simply gets into the technical definitions of the terms (especially "anxiety"), and how agreeable the formal psych terms are to the common populace.

In general lay terms, "anxiety" is associated with fear-type responses, not disinterest. A lack of stress indicators would tend to indicate a lack of anxiety. A begrudging compliance when breaking through procrastination is not overcoming anxiety, but overcoming disinterest. A post-response to getting something done being "Fine, it's done, did I really have to do that?" is not indicative of overcoming fear or anxiety, because fear and anxiety are about future unknowns and would be relieved ex post facto, while procrastination still is disgruntled at having had to do it. I would present all of these as informal disagreements to blanketly equating even chronic procrastination with anxiety, as the latter tends to be understood.

Of course, that's in full acknowledgement that behavioral medicine tends to use ridiculously broad terms that tend to lead to overdiagnosis and overmedication issues we're currently dealing with (especially in schools), and they might use "anxiety" far more broadly than I am above.

[codezero]

Regardless of the semantics of how procrastination is defined, any behavior that affects your quality of life is one which is worth discussing with a professional to get actionable third party advice.

[ralfd]

I have to do laundry this weekend, and it is a very easy task: I just have to gather my cloth, go into the basement, put them in the machine and after two hours hang them up to dry. I don't fear the task. It is not giving me anxiety. I still read reddit and hacker news instead of doing it.

[Avshalom]

Not to try and armchair psychologist here but one of the things that reddit and hn have going for them is that there is no commitment there. Laundry is a whole damn thing, you've gotta be there in an hour or two to hang stuff up, then you eventually have to take it down, and you probably want to fold it (even if you don't (like me) some part of you says you're supposed to)... None of this hard and there lots of non active time but it's still committing to a course for the next X hours. Refreshing your email doesn't commit you to anything.

and again, not saying I know you or that you have anxiety but: it's inside that instinctive avoidance of commitment that the anxiety can hide without ever making you actually aware of itself.

[shubb]

I can see what this guy means because i basically procrastinated myself out of a degree once.

Sitting down to do study my worst subjects reminded me of how much less I knew than I needed to - so I procrastinated by studying my best ones instead.

That was definitely an anxiety thing, and some well time counseling might have been life changing. It's a different thing to your laundry though, which is probably more about wanting to keep doing reddit than wanting not do laundry...

[codezero]

Time management counseling helped me a lot. The laundry example is a small one but often all those small things build up into a larger issue that consumes you, so it's worth treating those as important as any, unless it's just that one thing :)

[mattfrommars]

Along the line, what will a professional say?

[codezero]

Depends on the person you see and your particular issues.

For me I did a lot of time management exercises like making an inventory of where I spent time in any given week and then planning the next week and seeing if I met my planned goals. That exercise is also good at showing you how much free time you actually have.

For me I often avoided starting tasks because I wouldn't have enough time to finish it before something else required my attention. Planning in advance shows that I usually do have the time, and if I didn't, I could plan to work on things in the slots where I did.

There are a lot of things they could say though, for me my ADD and poor behaviors when I was younger meant I needed a few things rebooted :)

[codezero]

A lot of people are unable to recognize anxiety when they have it, even chronically. I'm not saying you do, everyone is different, but it takes a professional to give such a diagnosis, so if you find yourself procrastinating very often it probably wouldn't hurt to get a professional opinion.

[bytefactory]

Interesting idea, would you be able to expand or point to any interesting reading about this?

[codezero]

To be a bit more concrete, this site has some nice bits of advice for things like time management and avoiding perfectionism: http://ub-counseling.buffalo.edu/stressprocrast.php

Most universities have exceptional resources available, even one on one counseling with qualified professionals, for free. More people should take advantage of these resources, but I assume people associate a stigma with mental health care.

[codezero]

My specific point is that you should see a doctor/therapist to adopt a plan for addressing the anxiety and other effects caused by it.