Procrastination

I am a procrastinator. I procrastinate like it's my damn job sometimes. I started picking up these habits in high school and they stuck around because nothing bad ever really came from me procrastinating back then. I worked well under the pressure, and was able to turn in A+ assignments I was proud of that I did last minute. In fact, freshman year of college I would start writing papers a few hours before they were due and they would turn out better because I didn't give myself time to bog the paper down with extraneous details (which was a bad habit of mine at the time.)  However, that all changed sophomore year when I started taking multiple creative classes at once. I still remember sitting in a pile of papers and a puddle of tears, crying to anyone who would listen (aka my roommates and parents) that I wasn't going to get into the film program––that I would need to transfer schools––because I had turned in an unfinished, unedited final research paper for FST 205 that was 40% of my final grade. Procrastination had finally bitten me in the ass, when it mattered the most. I was bit a dramatic, and I ended up getting an A- in the class. (Which I just think proves that professors don't actually read through the entirety of our papers.) But it scarred me. Ever since then, not only do I try hard to avoid these situations, when they do arise, I can't pull of what I used to. A newfound anxiety started taking over, combining my hang up on small details and perfectionism, fear of evaluation, and an unhealthy dependence on adderall that led to the possibility of pulling an all-nighter and not even finishing the task. So that's where I am now. I try really hard not to procrastinate. I have a master calendar, multiple lists, and reminders set up on my computer to try to prevent procrastinating from happening. But because it really seems to be at the core of who I am sometimes, it happens. I've learned this semester, taking 18 credit hours of heavily-involved film classes, I really have no time to do much during the week except mindless busy assignments. So I try to plan the big projects that take a lot of creative energy on the weekends. When that doesn't happen, I end up doing things that I thought could be really cool in the beginning, last minute and rushed during the week. Some reasons that I still procrastinate even though I should know better now are:

Being Overextended: This is especially true of this semester. I've gone back and forth on whether what I'm doing this semester is really even humanly possible. Sometimes I really just don't have time in the week to get everything done that I need to. This is where it's been really important for me to plan everything out so it doesn't all fall on one week, or one day. Every week this semester has felt like Finals week, except with classes during the day that don't get out until 8:30 on some nights. Organization has been key this semester.

Lack of Training: This is only relevant sometimes, and for only some classes. But I can often be intimidated by the ambiguity of a project where I don't know what's expected of me. This also links to fear of evaluation. What if I just go for it, and I'm wrong? This is probably the biggest source of procrastination for me (not in that it happens the most, but I procrastinate to the highest degree when this happens) as it leads to general uneasiness and anxiety when I don't know where to start, so I don't.

Faulty assumptions: I'm never right about how long something will take me, so I've started just saying that I need to block off the whole night for this. But that's because I fail to break it down into smaller tasks. If I did that, like the article suggests, it wouldn't be one big ambiguous task, but little ones that I could do at different times, so I can manage my time better. For instance, I should download all the found footage I need for my editing project on Saturday. This will probably take around 3 hours. Then, when I'm editing it the day before it's due because I have no other time, I'll have already done all the little tasks, and I'll have a better idea of how long the polishing edit will take (which will be far less time than if I left the whole thing to the night before!)

Perfectionism/Fear of Evaluation: These two are combined for me, but a huge reason why I procrastinate, or at least why tasks take me a lot longer than they should. I have always cared what people and teachers thought of me. Not in the weird insecure sense that reeks of middle schoolers seeking validation, but in the sense that I wanted them to see me how I saw me--who I believed I really was. If they didn't like it, that was fine. But I wanted the idea to be accurate, or at least what I thought was accurate. Even in the third grade, I remember taking a test to evaluate our intelligence. The teacher kept saying not to stress out, that this was not for a grade. I cared sooo much more about the evaluation of my intelligence than some lousy grade. Obviously now I've learned that bad papers/projects happen and not every one has to be a test of my character. When the project really matters to me, though, especially in things like writing, my inherent need to be perfect kicks in which is a deadly combination with my obsessive attention to detail. My need for perfection growing up led me to be really bossy at times. I was always the person that would just take over the group project because I thought my standards were higher than others, but what I later learned was that the collaboration was often more important than the project itself. Learning from your peers can have some really cool outcomes, and I need to start realizing that the standards I hold myself to can be highly unrealistic at times. It's more important to get the task done.

Avoidance of negative experience: These are what I have started doing on the weekends. I get them out of the way and feel such a sense of relief for the rest of the week!