I can't cheer you on for the delay, but remember this procrastination thingy is something you're still working to get past. It's as if you've been habitually playing a chord wrong on the guitar for decades--it takes time to retrain your brain to eliminate a habit no matter how easy it would have been, in theory, to learn to do it right in the first place.
And sure, this new effort to retrain your brain is wasted effort if you compare it to an ideal world where you learned it right in the first place.
But that's not a fair comparison, and you know it. So cheer yourself for fighting the procrastination "bug" in your wetware, cheer yourself for accomplishing the overdue task, and make a policy of when the task doesn't feel rewarding, reward yourself in some other way. Do something else that you know makes you feel good.
That, too, is part of establishing the new behavior. Make sure you feel good afterward, even if you artificially insert playing music, or a walk in the park, or a hug from Colleen to get the good feeling at first. It should train your brain that accomplishments lead to feeling good, but at the very least you aren't reinforcing the pattern of doing something good and then feeling down about it.
So, yay you!
Oh, hey--I had another thought. Fighting old habits takes emotional energy. If you used up all your emotional energy doing the task (even though it was an intellectually easy task), you will feel tired. And feeling tired is remarkably similar to feeling down or depressed. Maybe it's as simple as you used up your spoons because emotionally the task was hard.
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Date: 2010-02-08 05:31 am (UTC)And sure, this new effort to retrain your brain is wasted effort if you compare it to an ideal world where you learned it right in the first place.
But that's not a fair comparison, and you know it. So cheer yourself for fighting the procrastination "bug" in your wetware, cheer yourself for accomplishing the overdue task, and make a policy of when the task doesn't feel rewarding, reward yourself in some other way. Do something else that you know makes you feel good.
That, too, is part of establishing the new behavior. Make sure you feel good afterward, even if you artificially insert playing music, or a walk in the park, or a hug from Colleen to get the good feeling at first. It should train your brain that accomplishments lead to feeling good, but at the very least you aren't reinforcing the pattern of doing something good and then feeling down about it.
So, yay you!
Oh, hey--I had another thought. Fighting old habits takes emotional energy. If you used up all your emotional energy doing the task (even though it was an intellectually easy task), you will feel tired. And feeling tired is remarkably similar to feeling down or depressed. Maybe it's as simple as you used up your spoons because emotionally the task was hard.