procrastination disease

[lobelia321]

As my several postings of today indicate, I have used this day to procrastinate. And as a result I feel like shit. Because I have a tonne of stuff to do, to finish, and somehow I never seem to finish anything. My book's not finished, the book review that was due in December 2005 (sic) isn't finished, the article I have to revise isn't finished, none of the fics I'm currently not-writing is finished -- and I haven't even prepared my teaching today. All I managed to do was the shopping, and that just makes me feel like a domestic drudge and intellectual failure.

What do people do out there to finish stuff?

I have the feeling that this disease has been haunting me for years now, the not-finishing disease. Is there some deep-down psychological motivation behind it? Am I afraid that finishing something means death? Or am I afraid of the success that comes with finishing? I finished football fics in the summer, and they made me feel fantastic. I also finished a handful of SGA fics, and especially the experimental ones made me feel really proud. But I somehow can't use that as a model. Instead of saying, 'look, I finished those, and I'll finish these, too!', I say, 'I'm crap, look at these zillion of unfinished things, they will be millstones around my neck forever'.

Comments

[birdgerhl.livejournal.com]

What do people do out there to finish stuff?

fucking hell, if you find out the answer to that one, then let me know.

b.x :(

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Likewise? :-)

xx

[giglet.livejournal.com]

I feel much the same about finishing stuff. I think part of the problem is that once I'm done, I have to give up the beautiful dream and deal with the reality of the final product.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Yes, I know exactly what you mean! The fear of imperfection is what, I think, sometimes makes me quail.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Oh, me too, me too! And yet some days I check things off the list, check, check, check -- it's a self-reinforcing activity, finishing things, because when you do it once, it fills you with energy and self-confidence!

(In fact, a while back Miss Snark linked to this blog entry on coping with failure and disappointment, and one of the things the author suggests is to find a way to have an immediate success, which he does by going to the gym -- fooling his brain by saying, "See? I planned to go to the gym, and I did!")

I've had to resign myself to the fact that for me, to a large extent, this is menstrual-cycle-related. This week I'm premenstrual, and I'll be crippled by fear of failure all week, so instead of trying to force myself to start new things (that someone might judge me for!) or finish anything my heart is in (because then I'd have to show it to someone, and they might not like it!), I have to spend the week doing things with no emotional load.

So this week I'll get a lot of errands run, a lot of laundry done, a lot of comments answered ... and next week I'll be hell on wheels as long as nobody wants me to write any smut. (That comes two weeks later.)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

List-making is a special art whose trick I have not yet quite mastered. I make lists all the time. I have a memory like a hoop. But the lists also depress me because, of course, I often don't get everything on the list done and then the non-struck-off items glare at me in guilt-inducing accusation. Today, I put only very few things on the list. I still didn't get them all done but I got the most important ones done: I feel much, much better! I also factored in fun (lunch with a friend). I am not pre- but post-menstrual; who knows, maybe that's part of the cycle, too? Bugger it all.

Thanks so much for caring. :-)

[helenish.livejournal.com]

I really struggle with this too, both on the micro level [oh god why haven't I deposited a check I got (at work) over two months ago? well, because it's at the bottom of the priority list, always - it's not a big check and there's always, always something (10 things) URGENT above it. On the other hand, it would take me five minutes. Five minutes I am cheerfully squandering writing this entry.) and on the more macro level of life in GENERAL--but I've decided that most of the time it doesn't really mean anything at all. That's just how humans are--put it down to an evolutionary bias towards avoiding squandering energy if you like.

And, yes, sometimes I put stuff off for I guess what you can term are psychological reasons, avoidance, and so on, but mostly I think that living is HARD, and I have a limited amount of motivation. Sometimes stuff sifts to the bottom of the stack.

But, OH, doesn't it feel good when you get something off the list that has been niggling at you for weeks? It's so fantastic it can be a motivator in and of itself.

I find the guiltier I feel about something, the more I avoid it, because to start thinking about doing it reminds me of all the guilt and self-loathing I have built up around it. The more I can just try to think about it in a value-neutral way, the more I can get started on making it go away. When I turn it into a fucking referendum on how I'm a USELESS person who CAN'T do ANYTHING on TIME, and look at that stupid story I didn't finish, I NEVER FINISH ANYTHING, remember that thing I didn't finish in 2004? If I were a more efficient worker, I would probably have a better job, and if I were better about working out, I'd be smaller, and if I weren't so fucking lazy we would have had a nice homecooked meal last night instead of turkey sandwiches and I DISGUST MYSELF--blah blah. It's pretty easy for me to turn having to remember to get some fucking stamps for some bills into a whole gross thing.

So it's like those perpetually dieting people who are all about how "good" or "bad." they were - it perpetuates a fucked-up pattern which never allows you to get free, even if you are being "good."

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

The thing about things that would 'only take five minutes' is that they can be worse than the really difficult things. Because these things make me feel even more inadequate because they make me think, am I so hopeless I can't even do this very simple thing? Can't I even tie my shoe laces? I also think that, as you say, life is hard and there will always be Stuff To Do but it's when I'm feeling down then I make this into an existential issue and use all these undone things to make myself feel a total failure.

The value-neutral way of thinking is a good trick of the mind! But how do you get to it? What trick do you use to make something that has already loomed out of rational control into a value-neutral thing?

Thank you for these thoughts. Simply reading them last night cheered me up a tiny bit (although I was too depressed actually to answer them).

[22by7.livejournal.com]

i'm a bit of a perfectionist. which, coupled with my tendency to procrastinate, means i get things done but barely on time and very scrappily indeed.

more specifically, how the bleep can one be a writer while being mortally terrified of the act itself?

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I realise that perfection is impossible and inhuman, and that it's perfectionism that stops me from doing stuff but realising it and then acting on it and actually deep-down believing in myself are two different things...

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

I know, it is a terrible curse.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Yes!

[ios-pillow-book.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, how do people finish stuff? They, and mind you, I'm certainly not one of them, don't talk or write about doing something, they actually do it.

Personally, I find that deadlines help a lot. I wouldn't do anything without deadlines and I always finish my stuff, especially the tricky stuff, the things I don't like doing, in the very last minute. Working under pressure does wonders for me in that respect.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, the doing and not the whining and the metaing... Alas. I think when I was at school and uni I worked best to deadlines and it was not a thing that prepared me well for the Real World. At least not My Real World. Because the things I need to do often don't have deadlines, e.g. a fic I want to write, a book I want to finish. Other things, of course, do but I let the deadline slide... And I'm trying to wean myself off the last-minute adrenaline, with mixed success.

[junalele.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean. I should have written that email to my teacher weeks ago (turned out to be okay, she was way busy anyway), I should contact my German Lit teacher, I should go to the Social Walfare thingie to get things sorted, I should really start research for my phd.......

A friend of mine did a class in time management and the teacher told them to keep a detalied to do-list and to write everything down there. She also said that if you stuck to that 6 weeks it would become habit. Don't really believe that but my friend is all active and doing things and what not.

Deadlines? Yes, they do wonders for me. I'm just better and actually more creative under stress. The weird things I even tend to procrastinate things like paying bills until it gets really ugly which puts me under a whole lot of negative stress - but do I learn from that? No. And of course, you feel great if you get something done but the good feeling is obviously not enough to motivate me... For me it clearly has something to do with fear of failure and the fact that I'm quickly bored with something (love the part where it's about the idea, hate the part where it's about making it happen).

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

All those shoulds and the guilt piling up, I hate it! But you know, it is even helpful to read that other people are going through the same thing because in a depressed / megalomanic state I tend to think that I am the only one, that everyone else is successful and only I am a completely hopeless failure.

I do hundreds of to-do lists! I do a new one every morning and stuff it into my jeans pocket! The depressing thing about lists is that I often don't complete everything on the list and then it depresses me even more with its guilt-inducing non-completed accusation. The trick is, I think, to learn how to craft a realistic list. Today I put only a very few things on the list, and even so didn't finish them all but I did finish the most important ones, so I feel much, much better!!

[junalele.livejournal.com]

Yes it does help although I thankfully *coughs* surrounded myself with friends who are exactly the same so I always know that I'm not the only one and we can mourn and bitch together. :)

The trick is, I think, to learn how to craft a realistic list.
You got a point there. I tend to do lists, too but only with things which are like really important and then I'm alternatively putting them on the top of my laptop and on my bed because these are the two places I'm guaranteed to look at everyday.
My friend (the one with the time management class) told me that she had to write down her goal in life (career-wise) and then pinpoint Zwischenziele to get there... The thing is I know what I want but not how to do it. And I'm a bit too lethargic to figure it out... *groans*

[andolinn.livejournal.com]

In the wayback, when I was at Cal, I had a friend named Steve. Both of Steve's parents were University professors. We were in this fascinating three quarter combination history/English course called Western Civilization in which we would learn about a culture, read books from the time and write essays about it. Now Steve was one of the most brilliant writers I have ever met - his first drafts were easily better than my finished papers. But, as the year went on, Steve began handing in fewer and fewer papers. Mike, our TA, would beg him to please turn them in and would finally wind up grading the rough drafts, just to give Steve some credit.

I finally came to realize that Steve's problem was that that finished paper would stand there, forever, a representation of him, of his abilities. It was something by which he could be judged and that terrified him. The truly sad thing is that he would have been judged to be pretty darned talented. *sigh*

Also, as an addendum and response to your subsequent post re depression: Do you take multi-vitamins? When we were trying to conceive - before the whole infertility debacle - I began taking pre-natal vitamins and, much to my surprise, I found myself having fewer and fewer days of depression. After we gave up on the kidlet concept, I continued taking multi-vitamins and rarely have days of depression anymore. I also added a B-complex vitamin to help reduce stress. That might help. It's pretty simple and inexpensive.

All Best.

[http://users.livejournal.com/ca_tharsis_/]

Hi,

I only know your LOTR-rps fics, but I'm perceptive enough to know that you're an exceptional writer. What I have to say, is meant in absolute kindness and sympathy for what you're going through.

Long-term writing projects involve a draining emotional commitment. It's full of dense work where there's no real "payoff" in sight, unless it's the reward of having realized your vision come true. What you're going through is simply the pain of endurance. Because getting where you want with your writing can take years.

It's emotional pain that causes you to look at your chosen projects, the ones you had so much hope for, with exasperation and confusion, paralyzed to keep going with them. But let something new and intriguing appear, and energy comes from nowhere.

Procrastination on stories you truly wish to write, just means that you're emotionally tired of the long endurance process. It's normal. I don't know of any way around it. I know that sometimes it hurts more NOT to write, and only then do I seem to be able to push out of procrastination into a fresh spree of energy and progress.

But a lot of it has to do with a writer's use of her energy. Don't commit yourself to demanding, long-term projects unless you know you can make it fulfilling for yourself, because it's going to cost you big in emotional energy, not to mention time. Have fun with smaller projects, but don't let them take up more than a week of your time, not while you've got bigger irons in the fire.

Have fun, but don't keep your energy scattered in whimsical projects. At least, not if you want it for the bigger ones. You're going to need everything you've got to endure and stick with them until they're finished. You could have great success as a writer.

Take care, and please forgive my presumptuousness.

-Catharsis

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

You are very sweet for making this thoughtful comment. I am quite touched. You know, the quality of my fic and my work outside of fic has not been the issue for me. I've talked to others about this; a friend of mine gets very depressed about her mind and gets into states where she thinks she's not clever. I don't have that; I have no doubts about my intellectual ability (mostly); it's my ability to turn that into anything communicable, to finish anything, that I get depressed about. I then think things like, 'what's the use of being good at something if nobody will ever know because I can't get it out in the world? et cetera'.

You are so right when you say that long-term projects are draining. I have been working on my non-fiction book for, oh my, at least five years now, and sometimes I am convinced I will never finish it; I will be 60 and still be beavering away on chapter 3. And then I get into existential angst and let it spill out over everything else: I never finish fics, I never finish reviews I promise to write, I let everyone down, I can't keep deadlines... and so on.

And it is just as you say: 'emotional pain.' Are you working on a long-term thing yourself, then? And what tricks and strategems do you use to keep yourself going?

Don't commit yourself to demanding, long-term projects unless you know you can make it fulfilling for yourself, because it's going to cost you big in emotional energy, not to mention time.
Well, with the book I thought it was going to be fulfilling, and then often it wasn't, and isn't. And with the fic, which is supposed to be FUN (goddammit), half the time I don't know it's going to be long! Out of the fics that loom unfinished, all but one were started as little short fun one-offs of a few thousand words long. Hah! I never bloody 'committed' myself to anything long; these thinglets just spiralled out of control and took over my imaginative life. Which is a bit of a different story (you can maybe tell that I am already not quite as depressed as I was two days ago; I can be a bit jauntier).

but don't keep your energy scattered in whimsical projects This is sound advice but not always workable. With fic, for example, I had tremendous liberating fun with whimsical projects over the summer, writing experimental stuff, writing complete fun fluff in a completely new and frivolous fandom. But in rl, I do tend to do that. I get sidetracked and lose sight of the priority number one.

Thanks so much. Don't feel at all that you are presuming.

[http://users.livejournal.com/ca_tharsis_/]

Hey again,

What's your non-fiction book about? I'm curious.

>>>Are you working on a long-term thing yourself, then? And what tricks and strategems do you use to keep yourself going?<<<

Sonny Preyer - A Fairy Tale of a Different Kind (http://users.livejournal.com/ca_tharsis_/20499.html#cutid1) is what I've been working on for some time, but I only put it online this year. It's my baby. It focuses on a very special boy.

I don't know that I have much of a strategy, but I try to simplify my life as much as possible - neutralizing all potential strain and drama, from cooking to work, to family, in hopes of saving my emotional energy for my novel. I have to play it careful because I'm way too sensitve to other people and can become an emotional wreck over nothing. Then no writing gets done.

Fortunately, I have characters that live in my head and keep me inspired. I know that sounds strange, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I write about what fascinates and obsesses me in my most private, delicious moments, the things I can't get enough of, and so I've learned to turn that into story and character. When I finally caught onto this (after one failed novel), the story I'm working on now, Sonny, came so fast and so vividly that it overwhelmed me. The first eight months were heaven. But since 2003 I've hit major slumps and wept over procrastination again and again. So my strategy isn't exactly full-proof.

My private perception of what the project means to me is what keeps me going. Hopes of writing a story worth reading, and meeting with some success as a writer, is what keeps me getting back to it. That, and being in love with the story idea. If I wasn't in love with the idea of the story, then I'd never make it through the first draft.

The process of writing is such a private journey for every writer that I'm sure everyone has to figure out what's best for themselves. The key point is knowing that that's what you have to do, and catoring your life to that need as much as possible, however long it takes - as opposed to demanding that your writing Self get it right, right now! There's an emotional maturity involved, and it cannot be rushed no matter how much I pitch a fit about being more successful or productive.

I'm glad you found some comfort in my words, and I hope this further helps. I wish you the best in all your projects.

Take care,

Catharsis