We all know the stereotypical idea that people procrastinate out of laziness because everyone wants to avoid working. Except most of the time, this is not the case. David Cain words it better than me by saying, “it’s a neurotic self-defense behavior that develops to protect a person’s sense of self-worth.” Unlike we’ve all been taught, procrastination is not something we do just because we don’t feel like it, but rather it’s a self-defense that we initiate unintentionally to protect ourselves from the risk of failure.
The article continues to talk about perfectionism and pessimism. I, as well as many of you I assume, deal with perfectionism where we get a test back, and are disappointed with getting anything lower than an A. As much as I’ve tried to convince myself of the reality that getting a B or a C does not mean that I’m clueless about the subject or that I didn’t put enough work into it, I still struggle with not feeling ashamed about it. Little did I know that this type of thinking leads to something called neurotic procrastination.Neurotic procrastination is where the self-defense part comes in. Since perfectionism and pessimism lead to thoughts about how failure is a character flaw rather than a simple mistake, this leads to wanting to avoid activities that can lead to failure. Unfortunately, it is very very easy to mess up on just about anything. This means it is very very easy to procrastinate just about everything.
Procrastinating isn’t just about avoiding failure, but it is also about the slight high you get after giving yourself a break. When you procrastinate your body rewards itself and you feel much better and relieved even though it means that you’ll be more stressed and worried about the activity later. This relief is often addicting and is the reason why a simple 10 minute task will take a month to convince yourself to do.
Overall, I do hope to try and contain my procrastination a bit more because as much as I try, I still fall victim to the relief of procrastinating tasks both big and small. I do although try to follow my own motto of doing more work now for less work later. This has saved me many times and I often end up thanking my past self for putting in the extra work since it is an even better feeling to have the stress of work already be gone. Even though you shouldn’t, what are some of your favorite things to procrastinate?
I found this really interesting to read since I'm sure almost everyone has experienced procrastination, especially in regards to school. I usually procrastinate studying for a test and use the excuse that the earlier I study for it, the easier chance I have of forgetting. Last-minute cramming usually works out for me, so this doesn't really make me want to change my habits lol.
ReplyDeleteI love this! This is so interesting and makes so much more sense. I've never fully understood why I procrastinated, but this made it click in my head. I procrastinate when doing my homework A LOT. When I get home I feel so drained and tired that I feel like I can't do anymore work for at least an hour. That hour turns into longer than I'd like to say, and then all of the sudden I'm cramming my homework in. I think that if we took some of the pressure to always do everything perfectly, it would lead to less procrastination. I've noticed I normally procrastinate the important and graded assignments more often than the nongraded ones that won't make or break my grade. This is probably due to neurotic procrastination.
ReplyDeleteProcrastination is a big problem I have so this was interesting to read. I can't find the motivation to do work until it's last minute and I have to. Reading this helped explain it. I'm going to try your technique of telling myself to do work sooner so that I have less later to do.
ReplyDeleteI really wish I was proscrasinating as a self defense mechanism. I 100% procrasinate because I no longer care about pretty much anything. Failure isn't my problem, it's getting up and doing things that I hate because it means getting up and exerting effort. I really don't know which problem is worse at this point.
ReplyDeleteOften I find that when I procrastinate on something, the reason I do it is that I can be more relaxed not having to worry about doing an assignment and I just push it off. It’s not that I fear failure, rather that I want to avoid something that seems laborious or tedious. I wish I was able to push myself ahead of time, so I don’t have to worry about it all right before the deadline. The only issue is that even though I am stressed, it still works which makes it so that I’m less motivated to change my ways.
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