Posted by Larry Hoover on January 3, 2004, at 13:36:19
In reply to can anyone help with procrastination?? , posted by DramaQueen on January 1, 2004, at 18:36:29
> over the holidays i have become a complete sloth! help! i am the biggest procrastinator always it is really screwing up my life :( i can't even get myself to do dishes they just pile up GROSS! any suggestions would be appreciated
>
> i hope i posted this in the right placeI was gonna post to this thread before this, but I just didn't get around to it.
Procrastination is a big part of my life. No getting around that. When you've got chronic fatigue, recurrent depression, and joint problems, what else might you expect?
One of the things I've done, to put procrastination in the context of my life, is to put it into the context of my life. Sorry if that sounds redundant, but it is not. So often, procrastination is seen as a comparison of yourself to others. What could be more demoralizing and diminishing than that, if you're not well?
Procrastination serves a purpose in my life. It is a choice, and if I don't come to see the benefits (yes, benefits) it offers me, I will not find out why it is that I choose it (yes, choose it) over other potential paths.
One of the things I do, once I recognize I am procrastinating, is to stop right there. Once I have come to that conclusion, it serves no useful purpose to re-examine the issue again, whether fifteen seconds later, fifteen minutes, or fifteen days. Fine, I am procrastinating. If it comes up again, I literally tell myself to shut up (or to f off, actually). It does draw a little reaction if I do so in public, but hey!, it works for me.
Then, I examine why.
I am fatigued. That is my existence. If I chose eating over eating and doing the dishes after, then I have chosen to conserve my energy, or to limit my energy expenditure to the available energy. I have an energy budget, just as I have one for money. Borrowing energy is just as frought with danger as is borrowing money, as it steals from my future. So, if I don't have the energy, I don't have the energy.
Years ago, this all came to crystal clarity, in the following way. I was going through a very difficult time, one I called my "couch days". I would get out of bed, stumble down the hall, and end up curled up on the couch. At the end of the day, I'd stumble back to bed. I may or may not get up from the couch that day to feed or to bathe myself, but I invariably lay there compulsively looking at the disastrous mess around me, and bemoaning my inability to do anything about it. One day followed another, each the same as the one before it, and the mess just got deeper around me. I was in such a routine, that there even appeared a "Larry-shaped dent" in the futon-couch where I lay every day.
Then, one day, something cognitive happened, that seemed to change everything. I realized that as I approached the couch, and upon seeing that Larry-dent, I would begin to feel self-reproach. I had been telling myself that lying on the couch each day was "resting", but lying there compulsively thinking about what I wasn't getting done wasn't resting in the least. I was fooling myself.
That day, I saw that Larry-dent in a different light. It was the couch, custom-fitted to accept me, to cradle me. And, as I lay down there, I let the couch hold me, and I let myself rest. I thought of none of the mess. I only rested. For the first time, I actually rested there, I came to see. When I got up later, I actually found myself feeling better. And the next day was my last couch day. I never had another one.
I truly believe that beating myself up over getting nothing done was the actual cause of my not being able to get anything done. Sure, I had lots to do to get back on track, but I wasn't wasting energy worrying about it.
That's another part of the problem, seeing the immensity of a task, without recognizing that all tasks are done in little bits. One simple way to change procrastination is to not let yourself pass things that are out of place without picking one up, and putting it back. Not all of them. One of them.
A wise person once told me that she could move mountains. Silencing my protest, she continued, "Anyone can, one stone at a time."
Best,
Lar
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:295530
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20031229/msgs/296049.html