Healthy procrastination

Things don’t like to do, but must, I procrastinate and then do as quickly as possible. Things I do like to do, I linger. I’ll be the late for the next appointment. I’ll be the last one to leave. Another kind of procrastination, perhaps 🙂

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ockhamdesign Reply:
April 13th, 2010 at 12:54 am

I do that too sometimes. If I have an hour to something that takes 15 minutes, I can spend the entire hour making up stuff to do make it better. It’s especially bad if I’m working on a website I really like. I spend extra time tweaking stuff that the client isn’t really paying me for.

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I could really relate to that. I also have this problem at work, I tend to spend too much time doing tasks that I like to fill up those long eight working hours, then I do the repetitive boring tasks (which happen to be the core of my job) at the last hour or so…

I guess, as people get older they learn to eat their veggies and clean up after themselves regularly, and that is true for the INFPs, as we get older we learn what’s important in order to maintain our balance in life.

and I like the new look of the site … it’s more sleek

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I operate the same way with procrastination. I’m an INFP as well. I’m not completely with you on the junk food thing (I’m nearly a vegetarian nowadays), but I LOVE sweets and reward myself often enough. At least I can bake…….otherwise, I’d be broke. Oh, wait. I was broke before I got married while living in my apartment. I’d spend most of my money being a foodie and going out to eat. Good times. : )

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Thanks for this post.
For some reason, people laugh when I say that I’m an aspiring introvert. But I am! Meyers-Briggs typers tend to think I’m a flaming ENFP. With age I have cultivated the ability to be more inward and, hopefully, inner-directed. Hah!

you write:
“When INFPs procrastinate, we go into avoidance mode. We seek comfort in the Not-Important activities. It’s our reward first for our short burst of frenzied work later. Meanwhile the Not-Urgent/Important stuff that’s time sensitive starts creeping into the Urgent/Important category. So it feels like were always stressed from going from one crisis to another. Those repeated short bursts of stress-filled activity starts wearing us down day after day until we shut down.”

I’ve been tortured in the last few weeks about (not) doing a freelance project that is hanging over my head in a conspicuous neon sign with marquis lights. Anxiety, city

Today, my procrastination included googling “procrastination personality type”. Thus my visit to your site.

“Filling the pantry of our time means having goals we feel are worth accomplishing. It means having goals we can act upon now. Without these goals, what’s left is television and Googling . . .”

Is it possible that insight facilitates transformation? Does productivity loom?

I am in some despair about the degree to which I put things off. I was under the impression that you wrote somewhere about the need for resonance. . . may be not. I think there is some connection between my being on my own and procrastination. I don’t have people to answer to in the same way that one does in an office. No one is looking at my productivity levels with genuine interest.

Of course my client is feeling a little abandoned — but he’s getting a pretty good deal for my services. I use that to rationalize the delays. This is taking the sort of risk that seems unwise.

I think I’ll take your personality test now.
; )

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Corin Reply:
January 20th, 2011 at 10:45 am

I think I procrastinate for two reason:

1. It feels good. Even if it’s work I like doing it’s still work. And doing not-work feels much better than doing work.

2. For some stupid reason, I feel that it’s more fulfilling to challenge myself doing work at the last second than using all the time I alotted.

I’ve had that insight about myself for years. However, insight in itself doesn’t produce behavior changes. It really takes a habit change and some habits are very hard to break.

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For clarity’s sake: you say that in order to complete a goal we’ve set we must put high value on it? If so… how do we do that? How do we make ourselves value something that seems tedious, like… well, you used the example about veggies. I can know logically that broccoli is healthy for me and that I’d like to be healthy. However, I can still look at broccoli and feel absolutely nothing.

Or, perhaps I misinterpret, and you mean that instead of avoiding broccoli and the metaphorical tedium it represents, we should seek out foods for the soul which are both healthy and tasty to us? Like squash (for me :P) or fighting for a cause?

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Corin Reply:
September 1st, 2011 at 7:55 am

We rarely value the action. Instead, we value the result that those actions achieve. We don’t value eating broccoli. We value the result of eating broccoli and having a better diet which is health. If we don’t value the result than why bother doing any of the actions? Also, most people don’t recognize that their goal isn’t what they really value. Health isn’t the real value but what they think health will bring like feeling better about themselves or confidence or getting a significant other now that they’ve lost all this weight. It’s not better health that was end value, but the result of better health. Better health was us the means value and not the ends value.

Same with getting a college degree. A degree isn’t the ends value. It’s what the person think the degree will get them, i.e. a job, respect, etc. Same with fighting for a cause, it’s not the cause but what the fighting for a cause will bring–a sense of self-worth, significance, direction.

Once you figure out why you want something then it’s all about methodology. There’s always multiple methods to get to various goals. You end up finding the one that reflects your Creative Self-Expression. You choose the method that says, this way of doing it reflects who I am as a person.

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I am recently reading articles on procrastination and how to do the things you don’t feel like doing and I remembered your blog. That’s because there is an idea in some articles that some people mistakenly wait for the time to feel good about an activity, else they don’t do it. Some suggest that maybe we should try to act even on things that we don’t feel like doing at the time and maybe after the struggle that is against ourselves, we start liking them.

Anyway, this reminded me one of the INFP characteristics, acting based on feelings. I mean, my logic tells me that some of the todo things might never feel good, so I just have to ignore my feelings and just do them. But my emotions put such a negative force against doing these things when I attempt to act upon them. This negative force I feel, even when I plan to sit in my desk and do the undesirable work, drives me away into procrastination. That negative feeling might make me weary and so I think at the time that doing a fun activity like gaming will calm me down and later I can start with better mood. But of course avoiding the hard work and falling into likable activities can make you more bored against the real challenges.

So, yeah. I think there are people who are less acting on emotion and more on logic and manage to work frequently on things that logically have to be done, regardless what they feel. And then there INFPs struggling with this, cause an action Has to feel Right before they start to do it.

Only trick I am trying right now is the “persuade yourself to do the undesired but important activity for just 5 minutes”. Tell him “Just do it for 5 minutes. What is 5 minutes? Just do it for so little and then I let you do whatever you want”. This way, the ice breaks, you start doing something and sometimes you start liking it more, you see it’s not so hard, you break that negative feeling, and you end up working on it for half an hour or more. It’s a good trick I am currently trying to play with. But not always perfect. Sometimes, I feel like I cheat on myself. I know that I am doing the 5 minutes trick but with real purpose to do the full work for half an hour or more. And so sometimes, I even avoid doing the 5 minutes, in order to avoid more lengthy work. Cause I know it doesn’t resonate with what I feel and I want to cheat on myself making him like it. But anyway, is not a bad start for a trick, and if it doesn’t work I just resort to the other trick, do some other life activities not urgent/important, urgent/not important, like washing the house and stuff.

But I accept as a reality now, there are things that I won’t easily like (I might like the completion of them, but not the process) and at times I have to not always go with the “Must like to do” mantra, but find tricks to persuade me into being more productive with the “not like to do but have to” things. Also, far sought motivation (if I do this, will be healthy in few years) is hard to me. I always focus on the feeling I have right now.

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Wow, this is a great interpretation of what procrastination is and how it relates to INFPs. Your analogies and perspective gave me great insight. Although your wording was a bit abstract, you were really helpful in providing practical advice, suggestions, and recommendations.

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