severeannoyance:rhube:The one usually goes with the other.I worked closely with a university’s
severeannoyance:rhube:The one usually goes with the other.I worked closely with a university’s mental health team to improve self-care resources based on evidenced-based research. Procrastination is usually a symptom of perfectionism (and hence very common with university students, especially if they were a big fish in a small pond where they grew up and have placed a lot of their self-worth in academic achievement).For most people, the reason they procrastinate is because they don’t want to start something and do it badly. People often describe this as ‘you can’t fail if you don’t start’, and I think some of that is going on, but I also think it’s a little misleading. Part of the dread that makes it difficult to start comes from knowing that you have to start in order to finish, and start soon if you want to do whatever it is well. I reckon dread of doing it badly (present tense participle) is a lot of what procrastinators fear - not just a poor quality end product, but the experience of doing something, knowing it’s not going well.I had this a lot in the final years of my PhD. I knew the moment I opened a Word document I was going to be overwhelmed with memories of having fucked up (and other people perceiving me as doing badly even if they were wrong) and I had no confidence that anything I did in the document would bring me any clarity of thought. It wasn’t just failing I was afraid of, but the experience of working on my PhD itself.Unsurprising, post-grad students are some of the worst perfectionists, and therefore also the worst procrastinators, and the academic system (at least in my country) is unfortunately set up to create those feelings at the moment.O’course, this doesn’t just occur academically. I know the experience from writing fiction as well.Contrast with a sewing project. I cannot tell you how many sewing projects I have started without any idea what I was doing whatsoever. I threw myself into them happily, and was pleased with whatever came out as a result.Why is it different? Well, because I know I’m not very good at sewing. If I expected to be able to achieve perfection in a project I would approach it MUCH more cautiously, and the fear of failure would start to build and I’d put the project off.Same thing happens with art. As a kid, I was always feckin’ drawing. You couldn’t stop me. But though I was confident (in the way I was so much more confident about everything as a child) that one day I would be good, I didn’t EXPECT to be good yet. So I filled up art books. But now? I maybe complete two or three drawings a year (and forget about paintings) andd they take me hours and I start to put off returning to them. Why? Because I know I can do good work, but I don’t always do good work. So a lazy sketch just isn’t good enough for me anymore.I’m trying to unpick this mindset, but it’s hard. This is why it’s so, so important for me to have fanfic as an outlet where I don’t have to be perfect.I’ve been a professional writer, proofreader, and editor for fourteen years now. My daily job involves being critiqued constantly. And that’s a necessary part of the process because they’re paying me to do a good job. But stepping back from that mindset at home is crucial for creativity.Procrastination is the child of perfectionism and anxiety (who are themselves in an incestuous relationship). These things go together.Another (recently graduated) PhD here. I didn’t have nearly this much trouble with procrastination when I started the program, largely because I’d grown up in a family of scientists who very firmly emphasized that the important thing about science wasn’t not fucking up, it was being able to identify and remedy the fuckups and communicate them clearly so others could avoid them.And then I went to a grad student where any fuckup was a guaranteed really bad lab meeting and/or getting kicked out of the program. They made about one attempt a year to throw me out, and sometimes more. I stayed in through getting a really great advisor and a deep determination that, if they were going to show me the door, I was going to cling to every bit of furniture I could on the way there and be damned to my dignity. And since every small fuckup was so viciously punished, I started procrastinating. I’d look at blank word documents and be overcome with despair, because why the did I think this was going to be better than my last failed attempt?I’m digging back out of that, largely because my defense and revisions went well, but yeah, procrastination growing out of perfectionism is absolutely the case. -- source link