Procrastination

procrastinationI am a serial procrastinator. I am terrible with deadlines. This is my Achilles heel.

Some, like Ellen DeGeneres , have argued that life is about procrastination, that we all need to stop, every once in a while, and smell the roses. That is how I justify my actions….I smear the non-procrastinators as robots with no souls, who can’t appreciate the roses as well as I can.

But I don’t really believe that.  I wish I were better at getting stuff done.

That said, once I start something I pursue its completion with insane intensity. I can work for hours on something that most people would only work on for 20 minutes.  For me, it’s rarely “good enough.” I combat this ridiculous perfectionism by waiting until the last minute to start things, thereby forcing myself to limit the amount of time that I spend.

There’s just something about a deadline that seems so arbitrary and controlling. I prefer intrinsic motivation, not false, externally imposed B.S.

Is there an ideal job/career for someone like me?

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This entry was written by Chris and posted on May 22, 2007 at and filed under Too Lazy To Cagegorize: Life. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

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    Boy, do I hear you on this--it's my Achilles heel, too. I always said I went into journalism so that I'd have permission to ask nosy questions and a career where procrastination was the norm and everything was deadline-driven.

    I guess that's the key for me, and something to think about re. careers. Having multiple strong deadlines is the only thing that can get me started--I never get going on things until the last possible minute, and then have to work incredibly hard to get everything done. But I could never, ever have a job where I had 6 months to work on a big project, with some ambiguous status checks but nothing really forcing me to make progress. Consulting seems to me that it will be pretty good for you (and I'm actually considering it myself): You're working on a set project, there are clear goals and a limited timeframe, and I feel like there must be very strong deadlines in place.
    I am jealous of people who plug away and never end up so stressed out, aren't you? They may be robots but they can be so calm! (I do see a strong correlation between creativity and procrastination, though. And there's also the clean desk/messy desk issue--did you read the articles a few months ago about how messy desk people are indeed the creative ones who tend to go further in life? HA!)
 
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