Why do I procrastinate from doing work when I know it makes me feel like crap?

Force yourself to do it until it becomes a habit.

cause you’re lazy that day. you’re mindset just says, “yeah I should, but I’m fucking tired of this crap right now…”

Develop your will power.

Look at the work before you. Review in your mind what it is and why it is necessary to get it done. Tell yourself you will do just 5 min of the drudgery. Do it.

Next time, 6 mins, then 7, then 10, etc.

Develop your inner mental strength.

Hmmmmm. Could you be… human?

It’s ok to have those days ever now and then, we all have a bad day, or get tired of our jobs, it’s only a problem if these things happen more than once in a while.

if it is, and you can’t seem to get out of it, despite honest efforts, perhaps look for a new job, a change of scenery can do wonders for changing one’s lifestyle, and perhaps the reason for your procrastination could be that your job is actually the cause.

@ABoyNamedBoobs03 I do think it is happening more and more. Maybe a change of venue would help.

Buy a notebook. Use each page as a todo list for the day. Write down your major task for the day; which should be one concise thing. Nothing broad. One specific, achievable task. Then jot down a couple other minor tasks that you can slot in around that or if you finish your major task before the end of the day.

Reserve a space at the bottom of the page to write down whether or not you completed your major task, and how it went.

Cross through any minor tasks that you complete. If you didn’t complete a minor task, cross it through and then rewrite it on the next day. Always rewrite your todos from day to day; it means you think about them and it doesn’t just become a stupid list.

If you don’t complete the major task, think of something pleasant you like to do in the evenings when you get home from work, and ban yourself from doing it. It might be watching any TV, having a couple beers, or whatever. It sounds silly, and you don’t need to tell anyone you’re punishing yourself, but it genuinely helps provided you can stick to it.

I run a small three-man software development company. It’s super-easy for me to procrastinate because I have nobody to answer to and work from anywhere; usually not anywhere office-like. Following this plan is pretty much the only way I can keep up with everything; I used to procrastinate like crazy, especially during college, and it eventually carried over to my working style.

Coming up with this system helped quite a bit. If it doesn’t quite work for you, tweak it. Writing things down is better than using anything software-based I think; which is probably ironic considering what I do.

Anyway, good luck.

By the way – If you do decide to give my method a shot, seriously, don’t make your “major task” anything too major. Make it something manageable. It should still be a bit of a milestone in whatever you need to get done, but nothing big. You’ll find eventually that simply by encouraging yourself to do tasks, you’ll use your leftover time to start doing other productive things and you’ll get a lot more done simply in general.

I’ll let you know later.

Find a job you like.

You know I do the same thing (especially when I was at college) and I have never understood why I do it to myself all the time. Maybe it could be classed as a form of self harm? just a theory as self harm isn’t just pills and razors

Lists do help (if you don’t loose your list like I do) Because you feel better when you start scratching off the small stuff and see your list getting shorter.

@richardhenry Is that the AutoFocus system? Or am I confusing it with another one of the many self-help productivity systems out there?

I once learned that procrastination is caused by a fear of failure. You don’t see yourself doing something successful, or your current actions leading to something successful, so you don’t try at all. If you didn’t try, you didn’t fail.

Procrastination is something I struggle with on a daily basis. I try to remind myself that risk is necessary for success; if there was no chance of failing, then it’s likely it wasn’t worth being successful at anyways. Some days are harder than others, but I’ve found David Allen’s Getting Things Done system has helped me become more productive than I ever used to be.

short term satisfaction > long term satisfaction
human nature.
it sucks!
what do you think i’m doing now? i’ve got homework, but i’d rather put it off…

@drdoombot No idea. I’m sure it’s similar to a lot of things (it’s not a novel idea really) but I came up with it myself.

@drdoombot @richardhenry Autofocus is quite different really, you write down all of your task, scan them and do the one you feel like doing, scratch off, if it’s recurring add to the end of the list, rinse and repeat.

@richardhenry‘s system is more close to the zen to done system from Leo at Zenhabits.

dont’ know
i’m fluthering instead of having to do e-learning modules right now
but htat’s because they’re awfully boring