Procrastination Support Group If you're struggling to cope with procrastination or a lack of motivation to do work, you don't have to go it alone. A support group can help. PSG is a fellowship of people who come together to solve their procrastination problem. PSG brings together people who are going through or have gone through similar experiences of procrastination. PSG provides an opportunity for people to share personal experiences and feelings, coping strategies, or firsthand information about procrastination. We support and motivate each other with the aim of helping everyone to reduce, stop, or continue to be free from procrastination. It doesn’t cost anything to join PSG. There are no age or education requirements to participate. Membership is open to anyone who wants to do something about their procrastination problem. This is a safe space, so please be respectful and understanding of each other.
I just wanna suggest going to a psychologist and/or a psychiatrist if you struggle enough with procrastination to the point it actively hinders you from clearing your goals. I tried working at home-office for 5 years. I only started seeing success after I started taking ADHD meds.
"We think productivity means to work. It doesn't. Productivity means to make intentional choices towards a goal. The choice could be to pause. The goal could be to replenish. Productivity could mean to replenish." - ShrinkRapping on Twitter. I hope this can help someone decide their goal for the day, instead of freaking out about one 5 days away.
I'm actually struggling with crippling procrastination, and I've always have, for years now. May be unrelated, may be not but I also have like, an intense fear of making calls. I'm 20, and I'm currently away for uni in another country, and you know how you have to call your parents and relatives and generally people close to you occasionally and catch up or tell them you're alive and stuff? Like, calls like that, esp Regular calls like on WhatsApp or whatever, absolutely terrify me for some reason. My parents and relatives are super angry at me but like, to make one phone call I gotta sometimes hype myself up days on end before I make that call that barely lasts 20 mins. And so obviously I put off taking them forever, sometimes like weeks or months on end out of some illogical fear or smth. Any advice?
Hi buddy, I feel like I have been in the same boat. I did my uni in a remote place, and now for my job, I stay in a different place. Many a times, I just don't want to call my parents or my siblings not because I don't have the time, but simply because I feel like I don't have anything to talk to them about. It's never really about time, because you always get those 10 minute windows, but we feel like we don't have any great news or big achievements to talk to them about. I mean, what do you even tell them? The one thing I have learnt is that you don't need to call everyday. Your priorities keep changing constantly. New friends, romance, classes and everything. Family may not always stay on the top. But it doesn't need to!! Just put it in the priority list. Eventually, it's turn will come. And as you repeat the cycle, things could change!! But do take note, you don't really need to stay in touch with all your extended relatives. This may not sound positive, but I personally felt like it's just too much to catch up with. Or maybe, I am still a work in progress? Now onto the meat. What to even talk? Simple things. How was the day? How are you doing? Did you eat well? How was the week? The weather at your place is xyz. You heard this news about your hometown or anything, this fucked up class and assignments and exams... Oftentimes, we talk about small nothings that we may not even remember, but the vibe will remain. That's the connection that everyone desires from family. And we have to try and protect it. What you say might feel nothing to you, but to your parents and such, it could be a new world entirely! And sure, there will be fights and all as you see the world differently from them. But that's the good part! You now have someone rocksolid to bounce your talks off, cuz they ain't leaving you. Many times, we feel like they are too conservative and so on, so they may not agree with what you are saying or get your issues. In my personal experience, they will eventually turn around. And the more time you spend explaining to them, the better equipped you are to deal with your issues. I hope that you keep the connection going, because you don't want to regret putting in the effort. It really stings, and I say this with experience. When you block someone on WhatsApp cuz they are "old and uncool", but oneday you hear they are no longer there and you see how you couldn't even see what they were hoping to do with you, it is a regret that I don't wish upon anyone. So just try to make those 10 minute slots everyday, one day for every family member (if you have that many). If you are lucky, you will find meaning in this, and extend the slots for longer!! Peace and Mangoes PS: Idk what your family is angry at you for, or whether you are as chatty(?) as me in real life or not. But I think that baby steps, as far as phone calls are concerned, go a long way. Just prepare to talk about nothings and if things go well, you will eventually open up a lot more. When i talked to my parents about seeing a therapist, they laughed and said that depression isn't a thing. But the next time I called, they were asking me how I was doing and if therapy was helping, and gave their own twisted ways of dealing with stuff. That positivity helps. And they do Google a lot after every call I make, looking for advice just like you, on how to better talk to me. So, baby steps!
Thanks! The part about what exactly to talk to them about really helps actually. But me talking to my fam (mom and dad) and relatives (an uncle and a great aunt and uncle of sorts, so not very many people) thing is like, weird. Kind of. So like, calling them in the sense, my mom esp wants me to call her 3 or 4 times a week. More or less same with my uncle (he's very close fam, and he has no kids so he raised me and my sis for a while when we were younger). I don't like, mind calling them tbh, but like, the whole anticipation is the problem. I'm like. Weirdly scared of it?? WhatsApp esp. I don't check my texts. At all. I'm scared of confrontation esp, and like, for some reason that bleeds into my social media. It's so weird. But like. Yeah. I'm afraid of calling people and reading texts, esp to fam, and I procrastinate alot, which sometimes leads to me not calling them one or two weeks at a time, and my parents get angry cause like, I'm in a new country (continent really) and they're rightly worried, they want to know how I'm doing, etc etc. so when I go 100% dark in social media they obv get worried. So when I eventually build up the guts to call them, they're rightfully angry. So yeah. It's just. Weird. This has always been a thing tbh, but this year it got really bad. So. Yeah. Ugh. Also some general advice on how to stop procrastinating would be great too. I f■cked up bad this year. I'm in my first year in uni, and I procrastinated a lot and didn't put enough effort into my work, which inevitably meant I failed my exams. I'm like. Utterly fucked. Idk wtf to do to get going. Sometimes for simple stuff like grocery shopping, I have to write down a 6 step plan from getting dressed to shoes to getting my phone, etc. Which is like, basically so much effort goes into doing really simple tasks. Dunno wtf to do. So shit like, sitting down and studying for 5+ hrs a day is an effort like none other. So yeah. Help?
Thanks for sharing this. Have you got a prescription for ADHD? Or in general, for your anxiety, have you gone to your uni's psychologist or other mental health professional? I feel like looking at the level of anxiety you are having, and especially the procrastination aspect, there is a possibility that professional help can help you better, be it meds or CBT. As fo how to beat procrastination, honestly, I am a work in progress so I don't really got too much to say. I have found Google Calendar to be a useful tool to plan out what I absolutely need to do today. Even if I don't do it, that's ok. But hen I do stick to it, I get hit by dopamine that really puts in a cycle. Also try pomodoro? In my opinion, procrastination is not about how to manage your time but rather how to manage your prioritie. But I am not sure if I can help you with that as I myself am a mess in that. But I strongly recommend you talk to your uni's professional. Because I see some symptoms which I think they will look at and immediately say, yes. You need professional help.
I can somewhat relate to your situation, because I feel very disconnected with my mom that I just don't know what to say when we're having our rare video calls (which she usually initiates, because all her kids are huge introverts who don't contact her). 3-4x a week sounds a lot tho. Do you guys do video calls as well? How do your conversations usually go (ie do you need to "report" what you did that day with occasional input from them, or do your relatives lead the convo by asking questions?) As for your procrastination with tasks such as grocery shopping...I feel like you're burnt out and have no mental strength/willpower left after dealing with schoolwork. Are you living by yourself (and if yes, is it your first time)? I'm having serious procrastination issues too, to the point it's affecting my work. I keep on pushing deadlines by finding other stuff to do and using that as an excuse...which is troubling because I *used* to like the task before, to the point of doing it even on my rest days. If I had to guess the reason why, it's probably because I faced some problems later on and started to find the whole thing just troublesome instead of fun. The solution...should be to have a mental reset, set aside a period where there are no distractions, and work while focused on getting a hit of dopamine — by completing a sub-task. Having something "done", even if it's just a tiny part of the whole thing makes me feel a sense of achievement while going to sleep and should get me motivated to continue the next day.
Also, I love that this support group is a thing, if only to know that we're not alone, and that there are other people being hopeless potatoes T v T
Have you guys tried to search about neurotransmitters (dopamine, oxytocyn, serotonin...)? I've been dealing with procrastination for quite some years now, and recently I stumbled upon this, and it's really interesting how some minor, apparently harmless actions in our daily lives make such a huge difference on this I'm not saying that I'm "cured", because I'm not, I still forget to avoid the triggers quite a lot, but whenever I do avoid certain actions, at the end of the day, I look back and notice the difference Part of the problem is that the modern lifestyle (even more so for people with a stronger affinity to tech-related stuff) just leads us to a dopamine overload. Be it by scrolling our social media, watching some sports game, playing a videogame, even listening to music... Dopamine, being responsible for the "reward" feeling, is a key to motivation, and if you're already overloading, just like some drug-addict needs a higher dose (dopamine plays a part in that as well, by the way), you'll likely need an even higher stimullus, because those habbits of yours have already raised the bar that much A few days after first reading about this, I challenged myself to take a test: one "detoxing" day, if you want to see things that way. During that day, I didn't check social media nor played any games, among other things. Having chores to do also helped pass the time (however, I didn't listen to music while doing them, like I always do). The result was just out-of-this-world. By the time I finished lunch, I felt like I got hit by lightning and I only stopped about one hour before dinner time. Not only was I super energised, that focus was unlike anything I've ever felt before. But of course, one mustn't forget that motivation is just the initial trigger. If you want to fight procrastination, and this is where I fail a lot, you must use that motivation as a starting point and discipline yourself. Motivation starts it, but self-discipline keeps it going, and for that there's no magic formula of some sort What I try to do is minimize the dopamine-generating actions until I've done everything I need to do on that day, and only then I'm free to do whatever I feel like doing (as parents usually tell their kids, "playtime comes last") Hope this helps you, as it's been quite the eye-opening experience for me
Very interesting. I've seen a vid before where they recommended a dopamine detox to help with sleeping problems, but I've been too chicken to try before. Current situation: I can't focus on one thing but instead keep on switching stuff just for that "internal switch button" to light up — say, frequently jumping between Youtube, Netflix, novels, manga, music, and sometimes even social media, and ending up burning a good chunk of time without finding anything to do. All the while I feel too bored to sleep, until it's 6AM in the morning and there's only 6 hours left until work starts. Rinse and repeat. I think what I'll do is spend one day of the weekend doing a tech detox instead, and use the time to go through my hardbound books, cleaning, exercising and doing chores.
For sleeping problems, they usually recommend avoiding screentime after dinner, as the exposure to the screens' blue light counters the natural effects of the night's darkness in our brains. I read novels tho :/ Two chapters are usually enough As for the rest, yeah, I've been through that and a detox is probably the right thing to do to try and break free from that loop