After ample research through several articles on the subject of Procrastinating (Ironically as an excuse to procrastinate on much more urgent academic work) I've finally settled on the fact that I loving procrastinate. A lot. Even if I don't think so.
Wikipedia was one of the last places I decided to read, but it pretty much hits the nail on the head in the Relaxed Procrastinaton section:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProcrastinationI tried several things to get out of it, even so far as deleting every game on my laptop, lending my DS to one of my colleagues telling him to seal it in a safe, not bothering to fix the PS2 and tucking the Wii in a box somewhere at my parents house hoping to forget it's exact location. This has helped a bit but I find myself often trying to re-fix all this stupid stuff whenever I have other urgent work to do.
Games are one thing, by far my worst enemy is the Internet. I can spend the entire day doing NOTHING on the internet, re-watching youtube videos and coming here to check up on things, going on somethingawful to check on things, rinse and repeat. There is absolutely no reason for not getting any work done, usually easy stuff I can finish in a flash. Sometimes I have very short reports due a few days in the week knowing full well it could take only 30 minutes to finish, but I procrastinate on it anyways and try to find other things to entertain myself with. The last time my internet bogged down on me I got more work done in a week then I could remember, until I got a hold of my DS anyways. Still, without the internet I actually became somewhat productive and proud of myself.
I've also tried beating myself up so-to-speak whenever I procrastinated on stupid stuff. That was the mindset I had for a good portion of the year but it only made me incredibly depressed and almost suicidal. I also noticed I secluded myself from others simply to avoid being judged. I then noticed this is reoccurring, because i also hate participating in any sport that requires some sort of assessment, not because I think people are dumb and can't judge right or anything, simply because I'm afraid of failing expectations.
My anxiety of failing is probably due to the fact that I make allot of inattentive mistakes in everything, I actually even have an error bar set to 25% of my mark on anything removed due to tiny stupid mistakes. I'm a last minute studier, but even then once the panick levels settle in I can get all of my studying done before a test. Most of my tests go very well and I never think I do anything wrong on them, sure one or two questions are shaky but the principle is correct. Obviously when I get my grades back with a C- I feel like utter stuff.
So there is a relation between the mistakes and the procrastination, where do my mistakes come from? forget if I know, I'm seeing a psychologist today about that and to get a complete assessment because it is apparent that I can't fix this alone. Procrastination simply overpowers me.
The reason I'm sharing this with you is to help you guys become aware of this. If you read that wikipedia article and you realize it's pointing out a stuffload of aspects about yourself, you might want to look into it. A good few people I know, especially my colleagues, are relaxed procrastinators. They don't hold off work because they're lazy, that's far from the truth. They are some of the most inspired people I know and most only want to partake in research professions rather then getting jobs for the money-hogs which are the industries (aka selling your souls to THE MAN!). Lazyness is the contrary to this, basically a lack of will to do things, like "what's the point of this?" line of thinking. With procrastination, you see it as important, you know it is in your absolute best interrests to do it, but still you simply hold it off for reasons you can't even explain.
Finally procrastination is common, and in many cases nowadays it's severe and needs to be looked after. I find that, academically, there is far from enough attention being put into it and that would need to change because your academic life really sucks when you procrastinate. If you procrastinate and you think it's getting out of hand then as I said, look into it.
PS while I wrote this I was procrastinating on working on an essay due tomorrow, just to let you know.
