overcoming procrastination and self-handicapping

Last night I was browsing the web and came along a post about not having the drive or motivation to get anywhere. I started at this interesting post and ended 3 hours later having a deep understanding of myself.

The original post seemed alot like where I am at. I've been searching for what's wrong for a long time. I'm fine, but there always seems like something is missing and I don't really understand myself. Someone linked to the wikipedia page on self-handicapping, which talked about limiting yourself by giving yourself an excuse if things don't work out the way you want. As interesting as it was, I couldn't find a link to it in myself.

I spent some time looking around google and ended up on the wikipedia procrastination page. I was amazed at how it linked procrastination more to a psychological problem, then to just standard laziness. The whole text was just everything about me. I fit all descriptions, but it wasn't surprising. I know I procrastinate alot and I know that it affects parts of my life. I opened up a few more pages, and then I found it. I found the link and everything made sense.

Learning Commons had a short list of ways to deal with procrastination, and it said "Students for whom nothing less than an A will do may procrastinate on an assignment so that when their mark is not up to their standard, they can blame it on the fact that they did the assignment in a hurry. They create an emotional "out" - the low mark does not reflect their true ability, so there is no loss of self esteem."

Immediately it all clicked and was so very clear. The type of self-handicapping I use is procrastination and lack of effort. If something doesn't work out for me, I can almost always tell myself "well if I'd have given it my all I could have done it." As sad as that phrase it, I've used it before.

I started to think back to when I first started procrastinating alot, and couldn't put a date or time on it. My best guess would be sometime in late elementary school. I was only able to figure this out because it was the last time I can legitimately remember giving something my all; Not sitting around and putting it off, but giving it my full effort and attention.

I was pretty upset at myself. I honestly could not think of something I gave my full effort and attention to since elementary school. I'd tried many times to get my life focus on track and stop procrastinating, but I have never been able to do it. Further reading gave me an idea why I was never able to break out of this cycle. It was an addiction. My brain craved the anti-anxiety drug that was this cycle. It protected my self-esteem from getting hurt, but also removed the chance for my self-esteem to grow and be healthy.

How am I to gain self-esteem if my brain is working to make myself fail? Not only does it hurt my self-esteem, it hurts my self-image and holds me back from the greatest things I could accomplish.

I'm working on a plan to set my life straight. Now that I understand the factors at work, I can take the right steps to fix the problem. With the help of some guides, I've created a simple beginning plan that will be as follows:

1) Never put something off til later. No matter how small it is, I won't allow my brain to feel the 'drug'. Easing down might work for smoking, but it has been terrible for my procrastination.

2) Do as planned. If I plan on getting up at 11am and then going to the gym to work out, then I'll do it no matter how tired I am in the morning or how much I'd rather be doing something else.

3) Play time ONLY after work. Instead of playing games or watching TV before poker, these will come only after I've spent time being productive.

Just last night I understood how strong of a hold this has on my brain. The very first thing that I was going to do, take my bed time vitamins, I didn't think of until I was laying down. My mind immediately said 'oh I'm already laying down', and I had to really kick myself to roll over 3 feet to grab my vitamin and some water.

I realize how hard this will be, but this is probably the single greatest self improvement project I could ever give myself. I may even go as far as to get professional help to help break my addiction.