I have a deadline this morning. It is now 12:31am and I am reading the forum, eating chips and doing anything to avoid working on something that is due in ten hours.

Do you wait until the last minute to do things even though you've known for a week you have a deadline approaching? Or are you one of those types who gets things done on the day it was assigned? Do you find your motivation and energy as the hours tick down and meet your deadlines in a frantic free for all? And do you kick yourself afterwards, swearing you'll never do it again and of course, doing it again? If so, does this make you mad and upset with yourself? Any suggestions for how to break out of this h

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2000

Answers

Heh. HA. Oh, hahahaha. That's a good one, Nina. Why ever would you ask this question, when my deadline is today and I'm ... oh, this is a good one. You wanted to make me laugh, right?

Yeah. Back to work now.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2000

Okay, I swear. Never again. Never, ever, ever again. At 1am, I decided to go to bed, wake up early, go to the coffee shop at 7am, work like a madwoman until 9am and turn in my outline, the outline I knew a week ago was due today. Ahem.

I got a burst of energy born of desperation. I finished at 9:30, rushed home, did a slight tweak and sent it in at 10:00am. Although I liked having my mind work in overdrive, are there any techniques anyone uses to avoid this scenario? I've tried imposing fake deadlines, but I always know they're fake. I've asked my writers group to take a look at things before I turn it in, forcing me to have it done a couple of days beforehand, but I always seem to beg off. I've also tried to imagine the worst consequences, but my mind seems to take the Daffy Duck approach: "Consequences, shmonsequences, as long as I'm rich."

Suggestions? Comments? Pharmaceutical drugs?* ;-)

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2000

I think of Hunter S. Thompson in Where the Buffalo Roam, siccing his Doberman on the Nixon dummy's crotch, firing his pistol off, stalking, shooting the mojo wire, or careening down the hill, typing as he drove, and saying, "I'm a total professional," as the deadline loomed.

In The Soul of a New Machine, the man who developed the code put it off, and put it off, and then got down to it, and wrote in one inspired burst.

Having a job writing, or developing code, is like being in college, with term papers due, or being a graduate student with a thesis due, a perpetual thesis, which you have to defend, to a committee, who view you as a pawn on the chessboard of their turf-war games.

And if you do your own writing on the side, it's much more compelling than the work you're being paid to do. It's an imposition, to be asked to interrupt your own work to do something involved with trade. A gentleman doesn't stoop to trade.

As Blake said, "When Adam delved, and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?"

They don't want tunas with good taste. They want tunas that taste good.

It's natural to resent it. But if you're not independently wealthy, and must accept their money, to pay your bills, to get to work, to earn your keep....

Imagine R. Crumb doing illustrations for greeting cards. In my experience, that is everybody's situation. That's why we can all relate to "City of the Future." We've been sold a bill of goods.

Do I feel guilty? Yes. Do I change my ways? No. Am I apprehensive? Yes. Do I beat up on myself? Yes. Does it do any good? No.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2000

I am a brutal procrastinator.

And it is all Beth Campbell's fault, really. This damned forum is where I end up every time I have a writing deadline. Except today, I don't have a writing deadline today, but I do have a business plan to complete, and my parents arrive in 48 hours and the house is beyond messy and on it's way to "Maybe we should just move, and not take ANY of this with us. Start Fresh".

But of course, here I am, reading this damned forum. I would be MUCH more organized and on top of things, you know, if it weren't for Beth.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2000

Yeah. Me too. Damn her. Painter will be here in 3 hours, and is my office clean? Nope.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2000

You know what the worst thing that can happen to a die-hard procrastinator is? It's getting a job where you are the person who sets a deadline, and the closest you get to a hand-slapping for missing it is a sigh and some passive-aggressive whinging.

I have spent the last two weeks ignoring three projects which were scheduled to be completed either yesterday, last Friday or last Wednesday. Today I managed 4 - well, 3.5 - paragraphs of a 2000 word article.

Now, what am I doing? Frantically checking every journal I read for updates, tidying my desktop and reading Beth's forum - waiting for 5 to come. Normally I just go all out at the last minute, as do most of us, but now that I can push the last minute farther and farther away that sword is no longer hanging over my head.

sigh.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2000

I'll have to get back to you later about that.

When I get around to it.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2000

I'm a middle-of-the-road person on procrastination. I may do a project the night before, but not the entire night before. Though I have this belief that I should never start writing a paper until the last class before it's due ends, because they might say something that I have to put in.

My boss said that she's a terrible procrastinator, and her job makes her not procrastinate. (Which is true about deadline, anyway...though how long she takes to hand out an assignment, this is dead on.)

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2000

My name is Jim, and I am procrastinater. I am in fact procrastinating by writing this. I am supposed to be working on an update to my Electoral College application, but I'm driving around here looking for liberals to flame instead.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2000

(toni waves to Nina) Hi! (and now has a clearer understanding why she never saw something she was supposed to read a while back. ;)

As for the procrastinating, I was the best, bar none. I was born three weeks late and my parents claimed that became my life's theme. (Both my kids were born three weeks late as well.) I was the college student who would have a final project due at 7:30 in the morning in graphic design (which was supposed to look like I put weeks worth of work into it), and I'd start working on coming up with the idea for it at, oh, around 4:30 on that same morning, and work like hell to get it turned in. (Which I usually did.)

I would kick myself, get totally frustrated, swear I was never going to do it again, make a zillion promises, outlines, bought calendars, organizers (only to never even crack 'em open until June of the following year). Making fake deadlines did the same for me -- I knew they were fake and would blow them off.

Two things helped. (Not that I'm cured, but I am a *whole* lot better.) One was realizing the "why" for me. (This may not apply to anyone else.) But for me, it was like a game / contest. See, if I pushed really hard to do it at the last minute and then succeeded, I could sort of glow knowing that it was something I just "threw together" and I got to feel all smart and clever. Or (as happened quite often), if I threw it together at the last minute and it *didn't* succeed (make the highest grade, sell to the producer, whatever), then I sort of had a built-in excuse that I "could have" done better if I'd spent more time on it like I should have. So... I didn't "really" fail -- I only ran out of time. Nice built-in back door and a great way to not have to face the truth. Because when I spend a lot of time working on something and put everything into it and it *still* doesn't succeed... well, that totally sucks rocks. And there's no way to hide there (from myself) because there's nothing to do but admit that gee, I wasn't a freaking genius after all. (Which, when you have to face this on a regular basis, is rather annoying.)

Realizing this helped a little, but I still loathe to do a lot of things I'm supposed to do on a timely basis. Hard habit to break.

The second major thing that helped me (mostly) break the habit is to promise myself a specific, craved-for reward if I do something in a timely way. The trick is to say this out loud to someone who will razz you if you blow it so that you're too humiliated to go ahead and get the reward even though you shouldn't. (Of course, I can rationalize around this, too, but I try not to.)

Good rewards are a must. No little namby pamby "I get to eat chocolate guilt-free" stuff either. Especially in the beginning. You got a huge deadline? You want that killer (dress, pair of shoes, sofa, laptop), set yourself a goal. It also helps to have mid-point rewards if it's a huge project. Remember, something fun / great / sexy / enticing. You'll feel good for having done the project in a more relaxing manner... and you get something cool.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2000

If any of you were true procrastinators, you would know that today (August 15 here on the West Coast still) is the deadline for filing your federal taxes after the automatic extension. Further, you would know the magic phrase for getting an additional two month extension to October 15. Finally, you would know the last time of day that the local post office will postmark a letter with today's date.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2000

I'm on a recovery programme. Now, instead of putting off all this work, I just let myself get swamped by it, and have harrassed dreams about work-related issues.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2000

I'm not nearly as bad as everyone else in my family, but I used to end up pulling all-nighters regularly. Now I really do usually start things ahead of time and finish without too much pain (or with a better result). I think it's because of something like Toni's point 1, and also I set myself fake deadlines.

Oh, and re point 1, something I read in Ceej's journal stuck with me. It was like, "Norm [therapist] says procrastination is about control: 'I'll fail in the way that I want to.'" Sometimes I wonder if Norm does long-distance consultations.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2000