Procrastination

Typology of procrastination, approaches.

Three types:

ADHD Procrastination

You want to do the task, but can’t because of distraction/hyperactivity. The easiest kind to address: pharmacological treatment + productivity system + tricks.

Anxious Procrastination

You know you have to do the task, but you don’t want to, because it triggers difficult emotions.

Short term: Do it scared. Accept the anxiety. Ask for help — sometimes you just need someone in the room with you when you hit send on the email. Use CBT to rationally challenge the source of anxiety.

Long term: Write down the things you procrastinate on due to anxiety and find the common through-line or common ancestor. By identifying the emotional root cause, you can work on fixing it.

Decision Paralysis Procrastination

The hardest kind. You don’t know cognitively what the right choice is, and you probably have a lot of anxiety around it. You have a set of choices, good arguments for/against each, and a lot of uncertainty. So you ruminate endlessly.

No perfect general solution. But:

• Talk to people — friends, therapists, Claude. Thinking by yourself has diminishing returns; you’ll quickly exhaust your thoughts and start going in circles. Others will bring up options you’d never have considered.
• Write it down — thinking in your head is inherently circular because of limited working memory. Treat the decision like an engineering problem. Sit down and write an essay about it. Name the arguments, number the points, refer back to things. Make the thoughts into real, manipulable entities.