I Am a Procrastinator
I admit it. I am not a procrastiworker. I am not a high-functioning procrastinator. I can be a perfectionist, but I won’t let that count as an excuse for today’s topic: That I am a procrastinator! Nothing fancy, no sugarcoating, that’s the word.
(Damn, it feels good to type that out loud.)
In my book that means that I handle important, urgent tasks poorly and defer them to the degree that I impede the people around me. It doesn’t happen often but the two occasions it has happened are reason enough for me to work on myself and minimize the risk of it happening again.
You see, since I have gone solo-freelancer my commitments to people and the quality of my work have become very intimate, almost sacred measures. What I commit to do and when I deliver on that promise is the result of careful research and empathetic negotiation and I sure as hell do not want to disappoint. I feel a new level of pride in my work, but also a new level of pressure. The layer between my work and its immediate consequences has become thinner and being a procrastinator has led to disappointment.
My usual methods of weaseling out of procrastination-induced situations—pulling an all-nighter, fakin’ it until makin’ it, finding ungodly amounts of motivation and perseverance in the face of ridicule and failure—are not failsafe anymore. Because I am solo, the excuse of doing something “for the team” is gone. There is also no manager to impress, no glory to be earned for doing the unimaginable on such last minute. Bravo, me. No, it is just me and the fact that I failed. And maybe I deserve questioning and punishment.
My next stage of responding to the situation is a self-imposed downward spiral of self-doubt, regret, and a deep, consuming sadness. Because what kind of person am I, if I fail my vocation?! Those lows are no comparison to the highs of finishing something last minute. I am very okay with trading that adrenaline rush with mental stability and peace. Doing stuff last minute and—oh, the hubris—decking myself out with my achievements seems childish now.
I am ready to change my modus operandi.
Before I formulate my research questions, I would like to collect the bits of self knowlegde that are topic-adjacent:
- I am a scanner personality, i.e. I enjoy fresh starts and I struggle with finishing things.
- I am a fast thinker.
- I can compensate for late starts with power of concentration, creative problem solving, and deep thinking.
- I took pride in my ability of delivering very good results on short notice. Lately, I enjoy the calm of having things done in advance of a deadline.
- I do not struggle with the usual suspects of procrastination: taxes, household chores, anything related with my friends and family. My procrastination is most dominant in the realm of wage labor.
- I do not shy away from project management: I do my due diligence, document everything, try to de-risk unknowns, and slice larger issues in manageable pieces.
- I have a hunch that my level of procrastination is inversely proportional to the amount of creativity involved in a task.
That leads me to the following research questions:
- How can I define and identify those situations that I face with paralyzing procrastination?
- What can I do to meet these situations with professional indifference and. Do. The. Work?
I will tackle these questions by working through the podcast Prokrastination — Der Podcast für Aufschieber by systemic coach Malte Leyhausen. You heard it right! No clever self-help book, no productivity guru/100x software developer on YouTube, no! This quest demands a coach whispering sweet, sweet wisdom into my ears.
OK, OK, this is all a bit the wrong way around. The trust is that I took a walk in the woods and searched for “procrastination” in my podcatcher. All of the above is the result of listening to the first episode that only spans 15 minutes.
I’m on to something!
Episode 1: Definition and Causes for Procrastination
What immediately stands out to me is Malte’s unagitated approach to the topic; it is pretty early in the episode that he outlines his general belief regarding procrastination: Being a procrastinator does not mean something is wrong with me that needs fixing. It means that I function in a certain way and I need to understand that way better. Procrastination is neither a bad thing, nor a good thing.
It’s just a thing.
And I need to write my own manual for that thing. Sounds a lot more achievable than changing my whole personality. Because I can tell you … I quite like some of the bullet points above. Phew! I like what I’m hearing so far.
Instead of obscuring what defines me as a person, I rather need to answer questions like: When it comes to my work routine, what can I omit? What do I need to add? What disturbances do I need to eliminate? How can I create an atmosphere that lets me feel good and be productive?
Malte promises to revisit these questions in future episodes. For now he goes through some of the latest research in the field:
- Willpower can be negotiated with and thereby trained.
- Treat high levels of resistance against a task as a freebie (early?) warning system that indicates that something has gone sideways earlier, e.g. gross misjudgement of scope, bad planning.
- Uhhhhhhhhh! That does ring a bell and might be a first clue for my first research question.
- These sound like the kind of situations I need to pay close attention to and learn from.
- Specific tasks can act like kryptonite and take us a lot of effort. What is the lever to grin and bear it?
- I appreciate that Malte helps debunking the myth of not having a choice: He always leaves “I will ignore the task, do nothing, and walk away.” on the table as an option. He does add potentially unbearable consequences for consideration, but presents it as an option nonetheless.
- Deadlines that are far away = no deadlines at all. Shorter sprints work a lot better with humans.
- Spoiler: That explains why the Pomodoro timer works exceptionally well for me to get over the first hump of work.