How To Not Procrastinate When Writing About Procrastination
I will not! I will do it now. I will not procrastinate about writing about procrastination!
There we go, that's how it is done. Have a good day everyone!
Okay, no, that's not everything. That would be too easy. So, let's talk about procrastination. Something I am amazing at! If I was going to do an article about how to procrastinate, you would be getting advice from a professional. That would help no one though, especially not myself.
This topic has been talked about by a lot of people, it isn't exactly an uncommon phenomena, but it is not a fully understood phenomena. Hell, I suffer from it and I often wonder why, but then I get distracted by whatever comes to mind that will distract me from having to figure out why I suffer from procrastination.
Where was I? Oh yeah, the subject has been discussed amazingly well on a few occasions, one such person that did that is a writer and speaker named Tim Urban on his website, Wait But Why. He talks about how the mind of a procrastinator works, how there is a monkey involved, how that monkey is a dick, and how that monkey fucked with his life quite a few times. It is great stuff and deserves the love it received and should continue to receive.
In my experience, getting distracted is easy, there are things I want to do and I want to do them more than anything else. I want to do them so badly, that my gut starts to bunch up and feel uncomfortable like I would have wasted my damn day unless I gave into it.
Mmm... that Youtube is looking enticing today. No! Stop it Youtube, no matter how much you do all that rubbing, I ain't coming. You can be all red and suggestive... Oooo, Redtube... NO! Wait a second, I might be on to something here, lets Youtube procrastination.
Dammit!
Good news though, I did watch videos primarily about procrastination, and even saw that Tim Urban (the monkey guy I mentioned earlier) had a TED talk about him procrastinating what he was going to talk about at the TED talk where he just ended up talking about procrastination. The world makes sense now for some reason.
It seems anxiety and coping is a common thread among people that have issues with procrastinating. We have this overly excitable pleasure center that devours instant gratification like a dog devours chocolate. It'll hurt you, it'll hurt you really bad, but its awesome, and most importantly, its awesome right now. What isn't awesome right now is that important thing you need to do. That kitchen you need to clean, that paper you need to write, that blog post about procrastination no one cares about.
Procrastination is an often disregarded topic as it has popularly been contributed to having self control issues, like someone who gambles away their mortgage, or someone who eats the whole cake, or someone who buys a Playstation 4 with a credit card they know they can't pay back. You know, those addictive and self-abusive behaviors that are now being contributed to mental disease.
If procrastination is a mental disease, or at the least a coping mechanism to a mental disease, does that make it okay?
No matter the root cause, be it anxiety over the task at hand or self control issues, the funny thing about getting over it is that you have to work at it. Right now I have no deadline for this post, none at all. Do you know how hard it is to finish something when you don't have a deadline and you're me?
The answer is, incredibly hard. I have so many unfinished novels and short stories. Actually, I have nothing but unfinished novels and short stories. However, I do have a website again, and a fucking finished post about getting over procrastination. So, how 'bout them apples?
