Procrastination mambo

[krytella]

I've read a lot of articles about dealing with procrastination and none of them have been very helpful. I also read Getting Things Done a few years ago, which my coworkers raved about but I didn't find helpful at the time. I've also sampled productivity blogs, but they usually seem to make it worse. The mindset that one has to be as useful and efficient with every minute as possible is guilt-inducing, and my procrastination is begun by perfectionism and social anxiety and then fueled by guilt.

I spent a bunch of unplanned time today socializing. S (housemate) and his girlfriend invited me to dinner, and then I got sucked into watching an episode of SG-1 with them (and I keep doing this although they're on season 10 and I'm on season 1 and it's all very confusing). But the rest of the time I've been in pretty high gear! Shit I actually did:

* Printed change of address form for internet service and last year's tax forms which I still need to mail in. Now need to fill in change of address and find the things I need to attach to taxes, which of course aren't with the rest of my tax records because I took them out to prepare those taxes three months ago.
* Ordered new hard drive for laptop. This is the end of a long chain that started with a problem installing a package required to run the ao3 site on my own computer, which I want to do to help me develop faster.
* Paid for Lubricus. On the last day for online registration /o\
* Registered for Foolscap, a local SF/F literature con.
* Looked at schedules for Geek Girl Con and the Seattle Lindy Exchange (a swing dance event) this weekend and put them on my calendar. Whether I'll actually dance til 5am AND make it to all con events is still a question.
* Got a price from my friend whose condo I'm using for the con and scheduled when I'm picking up the key. Actually replied to eternalsojourn's emails in a reasonable amount of time and worked out that she can stay there with me. Still bummed that adelaide_rain can't make it, and also filled with guilt over not replying to her emails in at all reasonable amount of time. Please don't hate me :(
* Deposited rent checks from roommates
* Emailed friend about dance event we're supposed to go to in Portland next month, in lieu of actually registering
* Gave away some craft supplies on the local Freecycle email list and promptly replied to everyone. Apparently everyone loves polymer clay, I had 6 emails in the half hour between the initial message and posting that it was taken. Person should pick up tomorrow morning, yay!

I've been trying to make sure I follow through on things, do things I can do rather than saying "I'd better do that soon." I remembered something from Getting Things Done about, while going through todos, just doing anything that's quick. I just looked it up and he says to do anything that takes "2 minutes or less." Well, I was doing anything that takes 15 minutes or less, but... my problem is not so much that I don't know the next steps to do on projects, but that I put off the things I know I need to do. And GTD is about getting things on paper so you can stop having to remember them, but that's not my problem either. I couldn't sleep for hours last night because I was stressing over the things I hadn't done, and planning the projects I haven't started on, which I never remember well in the morning anyway. I can write things down all I want but that doesn't stop me getting to bed and wondering "why didn't I just do that thing that would take 5 minutes instead of playing computer games for hours?" I have to read or play games or, at best, clean the house, to avoid thinking about the little stupid things I have hanging over my head.

I've gotten a bunch of them out of my head today and am already starting to feel better. Hope this is starting a trend. I still have about 10 starred emails I need to do something about, including from three recruiters from major companies I don't want to work for but don't want to burn bridges with, but it's a start.

I've made lots of resolutions to myself and I usually break them. I get too ambitious. Second new resolution today is that if I stay up after midnight, I have to be doing something productive, not distracting myself. When I finish this post I'm going to rotate my laundry and work on the little craft project I have out, so I can move it to the "done" pile on my Kanban board, which I finally put things on! So yay?

Comments

[anatsuno]

I never adopted (or tried to adopt) GTD but from what I understood, the one thing I found helpful is the idea that if you've written something down as a "next action" and you're still procrastinating on it, there's a good chance that you didn't REALLY write down the very next simplest action - and also that the anxiety connected to the task and/or project is what makes you push it back. So the goal then becomes to try and really break down what the next action should be, the smallest unit of action you can have wrt that project, and write THAT down instead - which is a way to combat the anxiety (at least for me it is).

Sometimes I write down "send tax form" because it's a simple task and I think it should work as a next action, but the truth is, as long as I haven't taken the time to look for my stamps and to get the box en envelopes out from under the dictionary, *it's not going to get done*. So I learned now to identify what the *real* next action is (find the stamps). Either I write that down, or, if I don't have too much to do, I do it right away. now that "send tax form" has become "find stamp" + "retrieve box of envelopes" + "fold form in envelope" + "locate the post-it with the address" + "address and stamp the envelope" + "drop the envelope in the mailbox", well, it looks REDONK on my todo list, but there IS actually a chance that slowly, it will get done - and I have banished some of my anxiety.

That's a lot of rambling that's probably irrelevant to you, and I4m sorry for that TMI-process shit, but that's what I really found helful hearing about the GTD approach. Breaking down even the small stuff to even smaller stuff, learning to identify what stops you - that is the BIG question, and it helps. What stops me often is logistics shit, like I describe, or deeper emotional stuff that needs to be worked through - working on both those aspects is good for me on the anxiety front, and having really short small steps for the stuff I need to do helps me getting it done.

er. I hope that was semi-interesting, heh. <333