I think
that procrastination is one of the biggest challenges I face on a day-to-day
basis, and it’s been this way for as long as I can remember. In high school, I don’t think I ever started
an assignment or started studying for a test earlier than the night
before. I could never get myself to sit
still and focus long enough to be productive if there wasn’t the pressure of an
impending deadline forcing me to do so. I now know that this is largely because of ADHD, but at the time it
seemed like laziness or indifference. This also explains why I was able to focus for hours when I was
pressured into completing an assignment---ADHD can cause periods of hyperfocus
during which you can literally tune the entire world out and be concerned
solely with the task at hand (imagine how productive we’d be if we could bring
about this level of focus at will). Moving
on to university, I still could not get myself to start an assignment if it
wasn’t due the next day and trying to study for exams was a nightmare (I often
wonder whether I would have done better in school had I been diagnosed earlier,
not that I did badly per se). Unfortunately for me, this was compounded by my depressive episodes
during which I was completely apathetic and struggled to get out of bed.
And now I’m in grad school where
procrastination is not an option if you actually plan on completing your degree
in a respectable amount of time. Every
day I fight against my desire to put work off for “just another hour.” The only problem is that that extra hour
becomes two, and then three, and then it becomes tomorrow, or maybe the day
after that. Waiting until the last
minute to complete an assignment or study for an exam is not the best strategy,
but it is doable. Waiting until the last
minute to complete all your experiments? No amount of hyperfocus is going to get you out of that grind. You may as well just drop out and save
yourself the tuition, that is, if your advisor hasn’t sent you out on your ass
already. Procrastination is just not an
option at this point in my life and I’ve determined that I need to do something
about it. Maybe I’ll look into that
later today, no make it tomorrow, ok maybe next week.
My
therapist told me about this website, totallyadd.com, that’s all about living
with adult ADHD and there is a three-part blog posting that talks about
procrastination and how to start getting out of that habit. It talks about changing your mindset when it
comes to work, chores, etc. so that you no longer see these everyday tasks as
grueling, and also by thinking of what you get to do after (leisure activities)
as your reward for completing the tasks. In theory, this is a great idea, but how many of us are actually capable
of changing our own mindset without some sort of external praise, or maybe a
drill sergeant screaming at us. Although
these blog posts are always in my mind, I don’t seem to be able to actually do
what they’re suggesting. Instead I came
up with my own method: quitting cold turkey. I tried to become my own drill sergeant, telling myself to “DO IT NOW!”
rather than sit and watch TV or waste hours surfing the net. Unfortunately, quitting cold turkey requires
A LOT of willpower and my inevitable disaster of a method stopped working after
about a week. There are a number of
other strategies out there for people with ADHD such as making to-do lists,
learning time management skills, etc. but I’m not at a point where I’m willing
to put in the effort, partially because I can’t see myself ever overcoming my
inherent tendency to procrastinate. Hopefully I get past this stage soon, otherwise I’m toast.
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