[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.