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Originally posted by Dottie
@Sleep: lol, you're probably right I just assumed he would have some kind of plan...

After reading CE's post I realize I had procrastinate and procreation mixed up

Originally posted by Weasel


After reading CE's post I realize I had procrastinate and procreation mixed up

And you couldnt figure this out by reading Robnarks post?

Originally posted by Dottie


And you couldnt figure this out by reading Robnarks post?

I was skimming the post. But I did see this posted..

My problem is that I at times suffer from morbid procrastination.

Change that to morbid procreation in my case

Originally posted by Weasel


Change that to morbid procreation in my case

Well, how nice for you father.

btw, is there such a thing as morbid procreation?

The confessions of a former procrastinator, part II

@Weasel: LOL

WARNING! Even more unsuitable reading for underage persons, following this advice could destroy your future forever.

So, there I was with all my nice grades on a piece of paper, ready to apply to any education I could possibly be interested in. What should I study? Medicine? Psychology? Or even physics? The thought of being tied up to a long education was too much. I went off to Norway and Spain for some climbing instead. And of course I must visit my friends in the UK and Russia and Germany and....and after all the city hopping, I of course needed a rest alone in nature, so off to Ireland for some sea cliff climbing...and so on.

I started university with the firm decision that this should be a turning point in my life. I knew that you can't slip through university by only reading the night before for everything...you can't memorise 10 weeks of full time courses in one night, not even I could get away with that....
For about 2 months I upheld my new, rational strategy of reading according to the schedule. I fell asleep over my books in 30 minutes every time. I fell asleep during the lectures, since I had read the night before (as the schedule said I should), so the stuff weren't totally new any longer. I was bored do death. I considered quitting after the first semester. So I went off to NZ to think and climb. We had a group assignment, which I wrote my part of at the long flight and posted from some airport. We had an exam the day after I returned, and I got an extremely good result although I had jet lag and had only read a few hours. After that, my moral and self-discipline was totally ruined - back to last minute I was, and back to procrastination. And this time it got even worse than before, since I quickly noticed that not only did I have good results, I also remembered as much, or more, as my classmates who studies the proper way (reading over a long period of time, in advance). From this, I concluded there was nothing wrong with my way of studying. So why should I feel stress and anxiety for not reading 40 hours a week 5 weeks in advance, when I get a good result by doing it my way? Voila! I stopped procrastinating. I stopped thinking "I should read", "I should this, I should that". When I no longer felt any anxeity or negative stress, I also didn't need to bother about procrastination. There is no need to push unpleasant things in front of you if you just decide to read the night before the exam, and just forget about the exam until that night comes. Great!

Or not so great. I was bored to death. So I started to study another subject full time too. Two full time courses kept me busy, and at a nice arousal level. I stopped falling asleep at the lectures. I took up the habit to read the night before exams or write essays the night before dead-line, go directly to school and then go home and sleep afterwards, to awake fresh for the party in the evening.

Since then (this was about 7-8 years ago) I simply don't procrastinate. It's a question of knowing yourself, your capacity and limits, and what "cognitive style" suits you. A summary of my experiences:

1. All boring things you can simplify for yourself - do so. Get automatic transmissions for regular payments such as rent/mortgage, electricity, phone etc. Hiring somebody to clean for you may sound like a luxury, but it is not. Even with my lousy salary, my money is better spent on a professional who cleans your house in 4 hours, when I would have spend the whole weekend doing the same thing, and hating every minute of it. It's better I work that weekend. Life is too short do spend time on things you hate.

2. All the boring things you have to do yourself: do them on "useless time". When you are ill, when you are very tired, when you are upset or depressed etc - do the boring things you have to do, since you can't do anything funny anyway. Don't start with the boring things "do get them over with" and save the funny thing for last, as some kind of reward. Always do the funny things first, that will keep you happy and in harmony with positive feelings. When you come home and are really tired after a day in school/at work - don't throw yourself in the sofa and watch TV or in front on the comp to play games. Do the boring stuff, such as filling in those protocolls you need for the meeting tomorrow, or reading that book you hate but must read because it's a school assignement.

3. Don't worry or feel guilty because you're not doing your assignments. Instead, decide when you absolutely must start in order to finish in time. Then subtract 10-20%. That's when you should start. This requires some testing though. Stress works like an inverted U-curve, we are less efficient with too low or too high stress. Everybody must learn where their optimal level of stress is. Mine for instance is extremely high, I need to be extremely stressed to perform my utmost. You also must learn to estimate correctly how much time you need for a certain work.
An example to illustrate:
I have a written exam covering 5 weeks and 800 pages of literature. I know it will take me approximately 15 hours to read the books and go through my notes. The exam is 10 am Friday. It takes me 30 minutes to walk to uni. That means I should start studying 2 pm Thursday afternoon. Now, to stress levels. My otimal stress level is always close to the dead-line, but some people may experience too strong stress then. Perhaps the day before or even 2 days before is your optimal stress level. You must fit those 20h our studying into your "optimal stress-window" so to speak. Then, the stress will make you 10-20% or perhaps more efficient than you believe you are. So in my case, I would count about 10-12 hours of reading, short breaks included.

4. When the thing we are working on is a long term project, such as a Bachelor, Master or Doctoral exam, or a large project at work, we can't use the "night before" thinking for the whole project. Instead, we must learn to split the project into smaller parts, that are achivable within a suitable time frame. I still like the "night before" approach, so I usually split my workload into "night before"-sized chunks. And yes, would you believe it, my professor, head of a world leading lab, does still spend all night up making his slides for the presentation he's holding at the big international meeting the next day. And he still ignores boring administrative work until it's too late by all reasonable standards.

5. And finally, do rest thoroughly. The stress system in your body was build for handling extreme situations for short periods of time. If you don't have any specific conditions that makes it unsuitable for you to stress at all, it is much better to stress like crazy for a short period, and then rest, instead of having a low-intensice but chronic stress. Going around for months while things are nagging and worrying you is bad for your health. Not only for you cardivascular system and such, in the long run, it will decrease you intellectual skills and increase the risk for depression.

A little word about the reasons why people procrastinate. Some people have a far more complex background to their procrastination than I have presented here. One common reason is fear of failure, that expresses itself as not daring to finalise things. Another common reason is feelings of worthlessness, you prohibit yourself from doing a good jub beacuse you don't think you are worthy of success. Etc, etc...there are more possible reasons.

You are of course now utterly tired of reading my long posts, but I will still reply to Tom's specific question, and comment his specific situation.

Originally posted by Tom
So why this bizarre behaviour? I had picked the topic and find it truly an interesting one. I also really wanted to do well.

From what you describe, it sounds like you managed to pass your "optimal stress window" time frame, without using it for work. Now, how could this happen? It might be a simple question of pacing yourself correctly. You started working on your paper a year in advance, and did very well until 3 months before you should finish it. Perhaps you allowed too much time for the paper? During the first six months working with the paper was novelty, which offers stimulation and a certain stress (stress here being used not as something negative, just equal to level of arousal in your system). I you work anything like I do, you probably spent much time with forming ideas, trying things and throwing them away, doing background reading, forming more new ideas, etc. The first part of working on a paper is always the most creative part, and the most fun.

After having celebrated you exams 1 month, you had 2 months left and you say you had everything in your head then, you just needed to type it. This might have been the key to your problem. If this was the case, that means your creative period was over, and only the easy and less stimulating work was left. If you had kept a higher arousal level here, for instance by doing some additional work with something else, this might have been the optimal time for you to finish the paper. Instead, you might have become understimulated, and thus wasted this period - next time your arousal level rises, is in the form of negative feelings, worry and eventually panick.

If you are seriously interested in this issue, you should try to analyse both your productive period and your procrastination period, and compare them. You should also try to go back to the period you spend staring at the screen and playing Solitare - what happened with you here? Why didn't you start writing? Did you feel inner reluctancy? Did you feel anxeity? Boredom? Did you get some kind of "writers block" so you couldn't think of anything to write? Did you start writing, but deleted it because you were dissatisfied and went back to Solitaire?

Also try to think of how you usually work, what is your strong and week sides? What part of writing a paper is most difficult to you? Most fun? Most boring? Are you the type who has difficulties to initialise the work, but when you finally start you can go on for many hoursand be productive? Or are you the type that start out fast and produce tons - then have problems with finishing, and getting in all together? Or do you finish your paper, then spend lots of time with minor changes such as a word here and there? Or some other pattern?

One of my colleagues has poster above her desk, saying:
"A paper is never finished. You have to submit it anyway."

I truly am the ultimate procrastinator. Not only did I not do homework in either of my math classes at all this year, opting rather to study the entire course right before the exam I also wasted 2½ weeks before my exams that i had last week, and studied for about a week for the 3 exams I had in 2 days. As well, I can't think of a single english assignment (other than the major ISU) that I did before the period before the class

Procrastination ?

Interesting.

Let's talk about that tomorrow...


No worries,

Beldin

i almost didn't finish high school this year with my friends because of Procrastination... i had failed to pass two consecutive swedish exams so i was unable to proceed them until i completed the other or both.. that happened in the fall of 2000!!! i waited and waited and waited and when i finally putted in the paper to apply for a new exam i noticed i filed for a wrong course and i didn't have the book so i couldn't study so i would more than likely fail the test, so i didn't go there. since i had applied for the test i only had one more chance or i'd have to go through it again, luckily the test was too easy(yes, easier than any swedish test ever) i got a 5 (A equals 10 in US) had i failed i would've had to home-study two courses and then study one more in classes and i might've failed... and i didn't read to any of the tests... i had to take a last test in it course 5... i didn't read and damn near almost failed, had i failed i wouldn't have gratuated, so i think I'M the MASTER PROCRASTINATOR

Originally posted by C Elegans


You should also try to go back to the period you spend staring at the screen and playing Solitare - what happened with you here? Why didn't you start writing? Did you feel inner reluctancy? Did you feel anxeity? Boredom? Did you get some kind of "writers block" so you couldn't think of anything to write? Did you start writing, but deleted it because you were dissatisfied and went back to Solitaire?

Thanks alot for the long answers.

I'm afraid it was all of the above. yes to every single one of your points.

it is true that the interesting bit was over but surely it should be possible to force your self to WORK.

I could see disaster coming closer and closer and yet I didnt start untill it was too late. It is hard to forsee the future but I am clever enough to see that if I try to do 2 months work in 9 days it will not be good. So I had lots of reason to start working, I wanted to start working and yet nothing.

Underdeveloped frontal lope doctor?

Originally posted by C Elegans
STOP PROCRASTINATING. JUST START TO IGNORE IT!

You mean procrastinate on your procrastination?

I will try ... soon ... next week maybe.

Originally posted by Tom
I'm afraid it was all of the above. yes to every single one of your points.

it is true that the interesting bit was over but surely it should be possible to force your self to WORK.

I could see disaster coming closer and closer and yet I didnt start untill it was too late. It is hard to forsee the future but I am clever enough to see that if I try to do 2 months work in 9 days it will not be good. So I had lots of reason to start working, I wanted to start working and yet nothing.

Underdeveloped frontal lope doctor?

Underdeveloped frontal lobes would cause other problems than procrastination for unviersity graduates.

Yes to all my points, that's too bad. I think most people can force themselves to work, but the threshold for this varies greatly. I for instance have extreme difficulties with forcing myself to work, I must create the utmost stress before I'm able to force myself to do a work I don't feel inspired to do.

Seeing disaster coming closer and closer is a negative motivation, ie you need to work to avoid disaster.
Writing because it's interesting and fun, is a positive motivation, you have a drive to it, not away from something else.
Positive reinforcement by inner motivation, is IMO both the most healthy motivation and the motivation under which we perform our best.

If those things do not explain your behaviour, you should probably turn to looking at underlying factors such as: Do you have performace anxiety, are you afraid to fail, do you have unrealistic demands on yourself etc, etc.

You mean procrastinate on your procrastination?

LOL Not really, I mean just don't give a damn about it until it's time to do it, and then just do it. Don't think about what you should do - either do it or not do it, make a conscious choice.

Can I get back to you on this? I have a philosophy paper on Descartes that I should have turned in, um, let's see - oh, three months ago.

Well, I did turn in something, although it was written 30 minutes before class and wasn't even low quality, since I didn't have the foggiest idea what I was talking about... So I managed to talk my lecturer into letting me turn in a new one. It had to be good, and I had a week to do it. So, who is this Descartes guy?

Besides procrastination, I also tend to fall for it's cousin beast - Escapism. I still haven't finished writing my resumé...

LMAO at CE's early comment "must rush".

I am a procrastinator but I'm taking it one day at a time.

Look at me now, I'm responsible for a project covering 9 hospitals in London.

"Procrasturbation"

Anyone guess of a definition for this "Viz" comic word?

Those who put off everything in life because they are chronic masturbators.

roflmao@grunt