by David Parker
The procrastinator is very unhappy with his way of life and wants to change, but he doesn’t know any other way of life.
The lazy person is quite satisfied with his life and is generally as happy as anyone else. He’s apt to sum up his situation with, “It’s no big deal!”
As we can see in the above chart, there are several differences between procrastination and laziness. The first difference is that procrastination is a long-term problem. Many procrastinators complain that they’ve suffered with the condition for years and don’t have any expectations of living any differently. On the other hand, many persons who accept that they have a lazy-streak often claim that it’s not a big an issue for them because their laziness comes and goes over time, depending upon how involved they care to be. A second point is that the procrastinator is puzzled by his errant behavior: “I know I should take care of my needs, and I know what those needs are—so, why don’t I take care of them?” Conversely, the lazy person is the first to admit to his situation, because he knows full well that when he needs to act, whether he wants to or not, he will.
In addition, many procrastinators find difficulty in keeping track of important future dates, like appointments, even when they may be charged for those missed appointments. Lazy people usually have their needs firmly planted in their mind’s eye and rarely, if ever, completely let things go. Lastly, generally speaking, procrastinators can be a glum lot because they constantly carry the burden of all the things they should have taken care of, and they don’t trust themselves to “do” any better in the future. In contrast, lazy people have more of a laid-back “I’ll get to it,” lifestyle. People who are just lazy aren’t terribly concerned with their chosen lifestyle because they know that in time they will eventually get to whatever it is, just as they’ve done many times before.
A Growing Problem
Before my problems with procrastination became habitual in nature, there were times when I delayed taking action and whatever opportunity may have been lost, the most significant and costly loss was the effect upon my self-esteem. Even if the task were relatively simple, such as mailing back a prepaid postcard within a time limit, I would misplace the card, forget about it, and then find the postcard after the offer it promoted had expired. Afterward, I would think, “No one else on earth could have goofed-up like I just did!” There were many such times when brilliant opportunities were lost—forever. One might think that after enough such occasions, I might have learned my lesson. Unfortunately for me, quite the opposite happened: my problem grew.
You may have some personal experiences involving the squandering of precious opportunities, and you may be wondering if your own procrastination has been more than just a bad habit. The short answer to this question is: If you believe that you have a problem with procrastination, then you probably do. However, should you want more of a quantitative measurement, then look for the combination of:
How frequently procrastination occurs.
How many areas that procrastination crops up in your life.
How strong your opposition to “do”-ing is.
It’s this across-the-board aspect that really determines how much impact procrastination can have, and the extent to which it plays a part in a person’s life.
We all have obligations of various types. Bills need to be paid, bank statements need to be reconciled against checkbooks, and even making time to watch television programs can be a balancing act. No matter how simple our tasks may initially appear, many, if not all of our tasks require thoughtful action; and it’s for that reason many people find procrastination to be a never-ending burden.
I usually had a variety of tasks that I simultaneously procrastinated on. Typically, it wasn’t that I procrastinated about certain things; rather, it was more that I procrastinated over just about everything. For example:
I put off visits to doctors and/or medical tests for months—all the while worrying about the condition of my health.
Before leaving home for work I would do a mad scramble searching high and low for my wallet, house keys, cell phone, and pen. I sometimes wondered if there was some special medical classification for persons like myself, who were unable to leave home because they couldn’t find their house keys? Was this actually agoraphobia, the fear of leaving home, in disguise? No, I thought. I was trying to leave home, not to remain in it.
Bank statements sat in their unopened envelopes on the kitchen table until I had accumulated several months of them. Supposedly, this prevented me from losing valuable free time to a mundane chore like balancing my checkbook. Unfortunately, while putting it off, I had to rely on the bank balances that I obtained from ATM receipts. Usually, it was the fear that the bank might have made an accounting error that would finally prompt me into action and it was then that I faced with the enormous job of having to deal with reconciling six months or more of bank statements and ATM receipts.
Utility bills awaited payment because of the drudgery involved in having to sit down, write checks, and deal with my unbalanced checkbook.
Clothing of all types was draped around my apartment in various and often-inventive places, while several days’ worth of socks lay scattered across the floor.
Like many habitual procrastinators, being a perpetual latecomer was virtually a lifestyle for me.
I recorded countless television programs but never made time to watch them. Making matters worse, instead of writing down what I had videotaped, I merely kept a vague notion in my head of what had been recorded. As one videocassette filled up, yet another one was started. One by one, the tapes would build-up and in my twisted logic and rationalization, I would begin deluding myself that the videocassettes contained only second-rate programs because they could not have been worth watching if I hadn’t done so when the programs first aired. It never seemed to occur to me that to have a chance to watch those programs, what I really needed was to begin structuring my time—even if it was my leisure time.
In short, by avoiding my tasks, I expended more mental effort and energy than those tasks would have taken had I only dealt with them in the first place. Unfortunately for me, like many procrastinators, I was still on the decline and still had a long way to go. I was now putting off so many different types of tasks that my problem with procrastination not only grew unchecked, but I also began feeling overwhelmed by my emotions. As a result, my inability to deal with my tasks led to another inability shared by many sufferers of habitual procrastination: that of feeling unable to cope with the enormous despair that I felt over my situation.
Being Carried Along by the Tides of Circumstance
A habitual procrastinator’s life is akin to the voyage of a rudderless boat, afloat and underway, yet without the ability to steer and command a course. In much the same way, the procrastinator aimlessly negotiates the waters of life, forever allowing the tides of circumstance to have their way with him.
As an adult procrastinator, I often felt like a child lost in a sea of adults. Similar to when I was a five-year-old in Macy’s department store and strayed too far from my mother and felt bewildered by the seemingly mountainous range of countertops and endless shopping aisles: “Mommy! Mommy!” I cried out in fear of abandonment. Adult procrastinators act in a somewhat similar fashion, but instead of crying out, we cry inwards by internalizing our feelings of inadequacy and bewilderment through a continuous stream of negative self-talk and self-admonishment.
Like many procrastinators, I carried my negative feelings with me, day in and day out, almost as if I were carrying the proverbial “weight of the world” on my shoulders. Here’s just a partial list of the sort of judgments I made against myself:
I felt as if “I didn’t have all my marbles.”
I not only lacked confidence and respect in myself, but was also convinced that other people “must have” seen the same in me.
Overly burdened by the matters I had put aside, as well as my inability to deal with them, I sometimes felt as if I were living in a dr
eam world, unattached to reality or other people.
Procrastination wore me down and felt akin to a bad cold. I often felt tired and sluggish, as though every task took all the energy in the world to complete.
Many times, when just the thought of dealing with an anxiety-provoking task came to mind, I would automatically associate that thought with a negative scenario. For example, just before sitting down to scour the on-line classified ads and job-hunt, my mind would conjure up the scenario of sitting in the dentist’s chair, or of dealing with an awful drudgery, like housecleaning.
I had no sense of the word priority: only crises, deadlines, and external demands prompted me into taking action.
Many, if not most of those crises, were of my own making in the first place. By waiting around for disaster to strike, there’d come a time when I simply had to act, and this gave me the perfect excuse to break through the shame that kept me immobilized. However, so far as I was concerned, I was only dealing with them because once again, the evil forces commonly known as “them” had forced my hand.
Focusing on only one task at a time was enormous task in and of itself. Whenever I tried to force myself to deal with one task, other tasks I had put off would come flooding back into my mind, as if everything was a priority and needed immediate attention.
I felt afraid most of the time. Overwhelmed, I avoided feeling fear and anxiety through various means, like television, food, alcohol and recreational drugs. However, by furthering my avoidance, I not only made my original problems worse, but created other problems as well.
It was as though I was waiting for “David” to come and do it. Still, who exactly was “David,” and where was he? And why wasn’t “David” taking care of “me”?
There almost seemed to be two of me … “Irresponsible Me” and the more rare, “Responsible Me.” A poet might have called it: “A life in such perfect conflict.”
Spinning hand in hand forming a psychological vortex were two of my worst attributes: an inability to select a single priority to work on, and difficulty focusing on just one task.
Memorial to an Unknown Adult
My difficulties in being able to focus on just one task led to all sorts of problems. One example of this was the piles of papers that grew in various places in my apartment. The largest of them sat on my kitchen table, while smaller piles on shelves resembled birds’ nests.
These piles were made of all sorts of things, but many of them consisted of items plucked from my wallet: store receipts, cash machine receipts, fast-food coupons, and names with telephone numbers jotted down on scraps of paper. Besides that, the piles also contained a good deal of unopened mail, like bills and bank statements, plus restaurant menus that had been slipped under my door and hastily scribbled notes that I hadn’t yet dealt with. It was those handwritten notes that were my greatest cause of frustration. How could I have so many of them, what should be done with them, and where should they go?
Where did they come from? What do I do with them all? Which do I keep and which should I toss into the trash? What if I threw out something I should have kept? All these questions, plus my lack of answers, caused terrible feelings, such as bewilderment, confusion, fear, frustration, and anger, within me. That last emotion, anger, was the one that bothered me most, because I wasn’t terribly certain if my anger was directed at those bothersome stacks of papers, or at myself.
Each time I glanced at them, they almost seemed to eerily communicate back, mocking me. Sometimes, I’d make a half-hearted attempt to take action upon them by combining the smaller piles into one large paper mountain of sorts. Of course, just one look at this staggering heap was too much, and I’d quickly walk away from it and do something sensible, like turning the television on. For me, this mountain awaiting action became something of a “Memorial to an Unknown Adult.”
One evening, full of self-loathing, I confessed this inability to function normally to a neighbor. He drew a breath and said, “You’re bigger than those stacks of papers, David. Just do it!” My neighbor’s words made me feel worse.
The two of us batted the topic back and forth like a tennis ball. He would say, “You have power over these things.” Then I’d reply, “But I don’t have power over them; that’s my problem.” Of course, the very next day my paper mountain grew a bit larger. As it grew, I lost even more faith in my abilities, and in myself. To be certain, I was up the creek—without a paddle or a guide.
Fed up with the papers, as much as with myself, I would occasionally take an action, of sorts. I would briskly sift through the mountain, combing through it and plucking out anything that had no purpose whatsoever. These were usually things like fast-food restaurant coupons that had already expired, and store receipts from the most insignificant of purchases. Then I would begin segregating what was left over, sometimes by subject matter, other times by size. Finally, I’d re-stack the items neatly until they resembled more of a neat and well-proportioned pyramid than a craggy and old paper mountain. My work done, I would once again retire to my television set.
What does this tell us? For one thing, it tells us that when a procrastinator has ample time to deal with a task that he’s put off for a while, he will often choose lower-priority wants over higher-priority needs. For example: in the scenario above, the priority I chose was to half-heartedly deal with that paper mountain as quickly as possible, a want; rather than doing what I truly needed to “do,” which would have been to actually deal with it until I had essentially eliminated it.
Unfortunately, nothing that actually required effort was dealt with, and of course, the next day I would stare at the stack again and think, “Why didn’t I take care of that when I had the time? What’s wrong with me?” This self-doubt and shame at my perceived inadequacies led to an even greater lack of confidence in my decision-making ability, which then led to even lower self-esteem, and to even more task avoidance. With all of this against me, should I have been surprised to find myself falling into depression every now and then?
Habitual Procrastinators Can’t Afford the Luxury of Free Time
I can recall an occasion when a two-week vacation from work was approaching, and I eagerly looked forward to using the entire time to clean and organize my apartment. Anticipating abundant time and energy to mount an all-out assault on untidiness, I began formulating my strategy:
Day One: Remove everything from the smaller closet, throw out what I don’t want or need any longer, mop it down to remove the dust, stick a fan in there to air it out, go out for pizza, then return to put what’s left back in, and enjoy the extra space!
Day Two: Tear apart the larger closet, do the same as day one, get pizza from a different place and make mental notes on who made better pizza while basking in the glow of another clean closet!
Day Three, etc.: More elaborate plans involving cleaning and pizza!
Need I tell you what I accomplished during that vacation? I’ll give you one guess … are you ready? Absolutely nothing!
So what did I do with my precious time off? Well, an awful lot of it was consumed by watching television, and by counting the days I had left in my vacation. Not surprisingly, I returned to work feeling tired and emotionally bogged down by this defeat at my own hands.
Today, not only do I find myself amazed by what I put myself through, but I’ve also been surprised and humbled by many individuals who have related similar tales. Habitual procrastinators often have difficulty in managing our free time, and when we do a poor job of it, we tend to suffer emotionally. Conversely, we often flourish when we’re placed under rigid conditions, like final deadlines, which helps explain why some of us do well in the workplace while we do poorly at home.
Complex Conundrums
If you began a weight-lifting program and continued your new regimen over time, would you be surprised if you noticed increased muscle mass and strength? Of course you wouldn’t. This is merely a common example of the positive relationship that exists between exercise and fitness. In muc
h the same way that exercise strengthens muscles, every time we delay taking action, we are simultaneously developing a mental muscle of sorts, we could think of it as our “procrastination muscle.”
Imagine for a moment, a person visiting his doctor and complaining about feeling listless, or lacking the energy to deal with his chores. He then goes on to mention that procrastination has become an annoying part of the lackluster period that he finds himself in. Generally speaking, the medical community often sees procrastination as one of a number of symptoms that relate to the condition of mental depression, and rightly so because procrastination is a symptom of depression.
However, if a person procrastinated for a very long time, what levels of happiness and self-satisfaction would you expect to see in that person? Do you think you would see such a person as having high self-esteem or low self-esteem? Although I am not a health professional, as someone who has suffered first-hand with procrastination as a long-term debilitating condition, I believe procrastination is not merely a symptom of depression, but it can also be a direct cause of depression in some individuals. For a person like myself, whose last name is not followed by “M.D.,” the most scientific name that I can come up with for the kind of immobilizing procrastination that I and other procrastinators have suffered from, is a “conundrum.” Simply put, it is my belief that there is a relationship between the conditions of procrastination and mental depression. In other words, as the habit of procrastination becomes pronounced and grows stronger, the sufferer’s self-esteem can weaken to the point where he feels hopeless, helpless, and terribly depressed.
If this weren’t bad enough, there is yet another conundrum where procrastination can be observed, and that is through its similarities to the condition known as Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). It has only been in the last few decades that OCD was at last recognized as a disabling condition in its own right. Today, it is generally defined as a psychiatric disorder characterized by obsessive thoughts and compulsive actions. For our purposes of defining OCD, we can think of obsessions as recurrent and persistent thoughts, while compulsions are repetitive behaviors and mental acts.
