Is it really Procrastination? Or something else?

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I'm not certain I even consider that to be procrastination at all. A lot of art or craft projects I do, I spend a lot of time visualizing the project beforehand, but almost never make a thumbnail sketch of it. Then when I make it happen, it happens in a flurry with much detail. But I consider the forethought to be the majority of the actual work, the physical activity is just going through the motions.

Procrastinating to me would be something more along the lines of being caught up in thinking "i really need to do this," instead of actually thinking constructively about the project.

I do almost everything that isn't instantly rewarding at the last minute. You sure do get good at improvising

Except that I wasn't consciously writing it my head in any organized way. It just felt like I was just worrying about it. Maybe I misspoke, maybe I was able to write it at the last moment because I had the focus then. I know that when I was finished I would be convinced that it was awful but the grades said otherwise.

Damn! That looks a LOT like my daily routine. Except that mine is Coffee, TV on, more coffee, cigarette, more coffee (still on my second large cup), bathroom (shouldn't have to detail that ), fire up computers, review emails, answer some, write (either here on WP or other forums ~ the conversation stimulates and prepares the brain for higher functions and more important tasks). By this time, anywhere from four to seven hours have passed.

If I'm lucky, I'm now at top form and there is actually time to complete a few tasks of higher importance. But this is where I hit some walls.

If the task is an important letter I have to write, the letter can take up to several hours. When I write, it's a flow of thoughts some refer to as mental diarrhea. I almost always have to edit what I've written, which often means waiting until the following day to do it.

This is a really serious problem. Many tasks take me a LOT longer to perform effectively than it does for the average person.

My mother used to say, "You have just as many minutes in a day as everyone else does." I've come to learn that simply is not true. When it takes several hours to accomplish something almost everyone else can do in less than an hour, I do not have the same amount of time as everyone else.

This is one strong reason why I now know that my real problem is not procrastination.

EDIT: I quick step into the kitchen just reminded me of something else. HOUSEWORK. Currently, I only work anywhere from 4 to 10 hours per week. My wife works about 20 hours. Some of the household tasks are mine. Dishes are piling up, as they do in a household of five. We are working on getting the kids to pitch in more, but they are all Autistic with ADHD as well so they aren't very good at even what little they do contribute. This is one of the many other things that pile up consistently on what needs to be done daily. It is though, one of the few things I can do rather quickly, but it's there adding to it all nonetheless.

Last edited by MrXxx on 15 Nov 2011, 1:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thought I'd post this just to give an idea of what I'm looking at daily:

Here's what my morning looks like today so far:

9:30 AM - Woke up, made coffee, turned on the TV.
10:00 AM - Drank first cup of coffee.
10:45 AM - Got dressed, made second coffee
11:00 AM - Stepped out for cigarette
11:15 AM - First bathroom break
11:30 AM - Fired up computers, found out I forgot to pay the internet bill
11:45 AM - Called to pay the bill, rebooted all my systems.
12:00 PM - Signed on to WP

It's now 12:54, and all I've managed to accomplish in three and a half hours is to make a few posts here.

In one hour I have to pick up my son from school (daily). I'll be home at 2:30. My wife will be home shorty after. At 3:00 my other two come home on the bus. House gets noisy, and hard to concentrate, making it take even longer to get any serious communication written. Important offices closing in just a couple of hours. This time of year, by around 4 PM, it's already pretty much dark. By 4 or 5, my brain is already sliding into slow to off mode (later in summer when there's more light).

I do often get up much earlier, and it helps, but not as much as you would think. When I do wake up earlier (anywhere from 5:30 to 7:00, it takes even longer to get into operational mode, so not much time gained there.

This is a fairly typical daily routine, when nothing else is going on. Start throwing in school functions, unexpected urgent family matters and stuff like that, and everything goes to hell in a hurry.

BTW: I've just changed the subject line of this thread to clarify what it's really about. It looks like some of you think I'm talking about my own problem with procrastination, but that's not it at all. I'm talking about something in my life that I've always been told was procrastination, but now realize really ISN'T procrastination at all.

I do not put things off deliberately just because I don't want to do them. I put them off because I can't do them effectively any earlier than I do. There's a gigantic difference between the two situations.

I am though, still trying to figure out if there are ways I have not tried already to improve my effectiveness.

I'll try to pop back in at some point and put in a list of what I have tried, what worked, and things I currently do. Can't right now, because there ARE some important things I must do right now, and I'm fired up for them!

Same here, I run on Moog time where one Moog minute = approximately 7 standard minutes

If I had to guess I would say that for me it's about double that. 1 MrXxx minute = approximately 15 standard minutes.