Procrastination

Procrastination and Highlights Reel

This post was going to be called "Procrastination and Highlights Reel" but now it's just called "Procrastination" 

I mentally compose quite a number of Depressed Academics posts and never get round to posting them.

It's not that I think you are upset about this, and it's not as if there are that many readers of Depressed Academics posts.

But then, I'd still rather have written a Depressed Academics post than go round again my fairly endless loop of BBC News, Facebook, Twitter, Cracked, Youtube, and my current game du jour ...

... ... ... ...

Sorry for the delay, I'm back after going after a bit of Youtube and then googling one of the contestants from the Great British Bake Off.

I read a thing about procrastination the other day, which quoted this:

"It turns out procrastination is not typically a function of laziness, apathy or work ethic as it is often regarded to be. It’s a neurotic self-defense behavior that develops to protect a person’s sense of self-worth. 

You see, procrastinators tend to be people who have, for whatever reason, developed to perceive an unusually strong association between their performance and their value as a person. This makes failure or criticism disproportionately painful, which leads naturally to hesitancy when it comes to the prospect of doing anything that reflects their ability — which is pretty much everything. 

But in real life, you can’t avoid doing things. We have to earn a living, do our taxes, have difficult conversations sometimes. Human life requires confronting uncertainty and risk, so pressure mounts. Procrastination gives a person a temporary hit of relief from this pressure of “having to do” things, which is a self-rewarding behavior. So it continues and becomes the normal way to respond to these pressures."

David Cain, Procrastination is not Laziness

I don't know how true this is, but it rang true. Especially because I'm on jury duty.

Because I'm on jury duty, what?

I was on jury duty from today, and last night I had to ring up a recorded message which told me I wasn't needed. This was great as it meant I got a free day today. By free day I mean a day with no scheduled meetings (I knew I couldn't schedule anything) but I could work and get lots done. So it meant  I could give myself the night off last night, by which I mean the night off from feeling bad about not getting things done during the day, which I feel almost every day.

I did enjoy that hit. But then today, I didn't really get a lot done ... well maybe some admin stuff which did indeed need doing, and some of which I had procrastinated.  But not really making progress on any particular thing.

I did get enough into work to get back on one of the horses I have not been riding recently (sorry, wrong metaphor, live with it).

And also I discovered that I'd missed a work deadline.  And annoyingly this was something that was on my to-do list, I just hadn't got round to actually doing it, and then discovered today when I checked the deadline was yesterday.

Which I guess is what got me thinking about procrastination, since this is something that not too many rounds of youtube game ... etc would have been enough time to do.

At some point before I lay me down to nap I mentally started composing this post for depressed academics. But then I thought I had been mentally composing a post today about my highlights reel, and I thought, gosh I could just do one post with both in it.

So here it is.

Except it isn't because I've decided this post has grown too long.

So this is a double header.  I am going to write the other post not tomorrow but later tonight.

Honest.