Thank you. That was a good article with good insights.
I want to cite another source of procrastination that I personally experienced that you haven't mentioned in the hopes it might be valuable to someone else. Although I have also procrastinated for all the reasons that you mention in your article, at one particular point in my career, the reason for the procrastination was something physiological: depression/anxiety.
About 11 years ago, I found myself sitting at my desk, staring at my computer screen, completely frozen. I couldn't get myself to "lift a finger" to start coding. I couldn't figure out what was going on. I genuinely liked my job. I liked the programming I was doing. I liked the company. I liked my colleagues. And I had a good amount of autonomy in how I ordered my day. There was really nothing negative about the job or the particular task that needed to get done.
So, what was the problem? I'm not sure how I arrived at the conclusion, but I determined it was a case of depression/anxiety. Mind you, it wasn't severe. I wasn't going to jump off of a tall building. But it was severe enough that I decided to make an appointment with my doctor.
To make a long story short, my doctor also gave me a diagnosis of mild depression/anxiety. (I write "depression/anxiety" because it is difficult sometimes to separate the two.) His solution for me was a prescription for a low dosage of Sertraline HCl (aka Zoloft), an SSRI anti-depressant.
I'm happy to say that after being on the anti-depressant for a couple of weeks, much of the procrastination became a non-issue and I've been on the same low dosage ever since. It has been invaluable for me. There are side-effects associated with most anti-depressants, so sometimes it takes some trial and error to find an anti-depressant that has the fewest side-effects, if any, for you.
Thank you. That was a good article with good insights.
I want to cite another source of procrastination that I personally experienced that you haven't mentioned in the hopes it might be valuable to someone else. Although I have also procrastinated for all the reasons that you mention in your article, at one particular point in my career, the reason for the procrastination was something physiological: depression/anxiety.
About 11 years ago, I found myself sitting at my desk, staring at my computer screen, completely frozen. I couldn't get myself to "lift a finger" to start coding. I couldn't figure out what was going on. I genuinely liked my job. I liked the programming I was doing. I liked the company. I liked my colleagues. And I had a good amount of autonomy in how I ordered my day. There was really nothing negative about the job or the particular task that needed to get done.
So, what was the problem? I'm not sure how I arrived at the conclusion, but I determined it was a case of depression/anxiety. Mind you, it wasn't severe. I wasn't going to jump off of a tall building. But it was severe enough that I decided to make an appointment with my doctor.
To make a long story short, my doctor also gave me a diagnosis of mild depression/anxiety. (I write "depression/anxiety" because it is difficult sometimes to separate the two.) His solution for me was a prescription for a low dosage of Sertraline HCl (aka Zoloft), an SSRI anti-depressant.
I'm happy to say that after being on the anti-depressant for a couple of weeks, much of the procrastination became a non-issue and I've been on the same low dosage ever since. It has been invaluable for me. There are side-effects associated with most anti-depressants, so sometimes it takes some trial and error to find an anti-depressant that has the fewest side-effects, if any, for you.
Excellent point. And thank you for sharing that.