Does anyone else have any advice on how to make yourself stuff that is kind of risky but you really want to do it? It's an endless cycle, I have something that is kind of difficult but I really want to do it, someone is expecting me to participate, nut instead of just getting down to it I spend literally the whole day putting it off and just getting more and more stressed out because I'm putting it off. The more stressed out I get, the harder it is to begin. I hate this so much, does anyone have advice on how to snap myself to this task? I spend so much time, energy and stress putting things off that it's ridiculous. I've thought about using hypnotisim, because nothing I try has worked. I just wish I could switch my focus at will. I can get myself to do craft projects by starting with a task that's easy and mindless, combined with listening to a podcast to distract myself from anxiety/impatience. My biggest problem is writing and rping or interacting with people on the phone / online.
I just lied to my rp partner why I'm not going to be posting because, I don't know, I've spend 20 years trying to hide my problems from everyone so why stop now.
there is an app that's like $2.99 that would probably help you, i think it's even called Stop Procrastinating! it's a to-do list app but it works with you on things you want to do and why you're procrastinating on them you see, procrastinating on something because it's hard is different from procrastinating on something because you want to be perfect, and other stuff (it has i think five or six options of "why"? maybe more?) it sounds like it would help you diagnose the why so you could work on it a little better
Thanks, I'm going to check that out. Edit: I couldn't find a checklist app with that name? I have android, is this a ios exclusive?
So this got really really long. A lot of it's information I, a fellow procrastinator, found useful to know, rather than advice. I'm including the whole shebang just in case any of it ends up being useful to you as well. Spoiler: stuff my dr said about stress and procrastination My doctor (psychiatrist, I should probably clarify) told me that the notion of "fight or flight" is incomplete. There's a third category of response, and it's freeze. These are all startle/stress reactions. He said they're pretty easy to see in animals. If you were to go scold a dog and your body language is aggressive, first it may freeze. You might see it physically shifting or wavering slightly. It is evaluating the situation and its options. This state last for as long as there is not enough information to decide. If you advance, it may decide to flee, running through the house to evade you. When you finally corner it and there's nowhere else to go, then it might begin to growl, fight being the remaining option. These things can be less obvious in humans. A lot of our stressors are more abstract, and our responses can also be pretty abstract. Freeze might manifest as a deep indecision. You're evaluating your options but you are unable to pick. This would usually mean you lack the information you need to make a decision. Even if you have a lot of information, for whatever reason you are not able to extract the data you feel is necessary to make a decision. Flight might be avoidance. This is straight up procrastination. It might also become bargaining, which is a more complicated twist on the same thing: you'll do the dishes after just one more episode of this show. Then it becomes one more and one more until you have watched a season and a half and the dishes are still in the sink. Or, you end up vacuuming the living room instead. The dishes aren't done but you still did something of roughly equal value, right? I don't really remember fight as well, but I think it had to do with misdirected aggression. Snapping at your sibling about putting the cheese in the wrong drawer in the fridge, again, when your stress really had nothing to do with cheese. My doctor told me that if you find yourself in one of these states, you are already overwhelmed. Procrastination is not laziness. It's one way you may react when stressed past the point that you can handle. He went on to explain that a certain amount of stress makes you think faster. Your thoughts and reactions come very quickly. More stress than that makes you think more precisely. You are focused and can see all the details. Even more stress and you surpass the maximum useful and motivational amount, and then you begin to fixate on, like, one detail, which you can probably have many quick and precise thoughts about, but at this point nothing is going to get done. It's too much. The detail is now the sole focus of your efforts and also an impossible sticking point. This way lies perfectionism. Going back to the dog once more, my doctor also pointed out that if a new person shows up, the dog will go haywire. Barking and running and whatnot. If that person continues to be around, the dog will start getting used to them. If the dog is resting and they walk by, it may raise its upper body and watch. Then it may just turn it's head. Eventually, when the person is familiar and the dog is very used to their presence, it may just twitch an ear. I wasn't really sure what to make of that bit at the time, but he brought it up for a reason. He's not one to go on a tangent about observations on canine behavior during an appointment without a good, relevant reason. I think he was trying to make a point about how it's normal for your brain to freak out over new stressors, but if you can introduce them gently in a way where they don't end being a series of terrible experiences, eventually your brain will probably figure out it's okay. Then maybe it won't have to drag you through the exhausting alarm song and dance every time. I don't have a good answer for what to do when you are already overwhelmed except maybe step back a little, because banging your head against that wall is more likely to trap you in a painful, unproductive pattern than get you results anytime soon. It's absolutely not a problem caused by not trying hard enough. Beating yourself up for being unable to function when overwhelmed seems unfair, and not very likely to produce results anyway. I don't think hypnosis is a bad idea at all, though I'd see it more as a potentially therapeutic activity than a direct way to confront your problems. Having tried both things many times, I find meditative and hypnotic trances to be identical. It seems like a matter of preference to me. I far prefer hypnotic induction methods myself, because I think meditative exercises are unbearably boring. I don't know if I would personally find it useful for trying to will myself to do a particular thing, but it would be good way to approach it more calmly or just work through stress thoughts from a more objective, pleasantly detached place. If nothing else, trances can be extremely relaxing, and that is far from useless. YMMV on all of this, of course. Overall, I suspect force is gonna be counterproductive here.
