Procrastination, binge-working and guilt

I am a procrastinator. Always have been. And not just with my thesis – with just about everything. I’ve been reading “The Procrastinators Guide to Getting Things Done”, which describes different kinds of procrastinators. It turns out I’m not a pleasure procrastinator or a disorganised procrastinator. I’m a self-doubt procrastinator and a binge worker.

Pleasure procrastinators apparently put off doing things and just can just relax. I can’t do that. No matter what I’m doing, I feel constantly guilty about all the things I should be doing instead. And I don’t usually relax when I’m procrastinating. Instead, I put off important work to do things that are much less important, or often, don’t even need to be done at all (especially by me). And I’m not a disorganised procrastinator, I don’t put things off because I wrongly estimate how long it will take. And I always do manage to get everything done in time – I don’t miss deadlines. In fact, I’m pretty good at knowing exactly when I have to stop procrastinating in order to get something done by the deadline.

The self-doubt procrastination come in whenever I’m not sure exactly what to do or how to do it. It’s easiest to just put things like that off and work on things that I do know how to do. This is particularly true with big projects – it’s hard to know where to start. That’s how come I end up working on trivial things instead of important things. They’re concrete and well defined and don’t require any difficult thinking.

I tend to be a binge worker. I’ll work with full effort for months on end, 7 days a week, 12+ hours a day until I just burn out and can’t do anything. Usually I get sick at the end of every semester and spend an entire week at home not doing anything except lying in bed or on the couch. I don’t have the energy to get out of my dressing gown, let alone check my email or do anything productive. And then as soon as I am better, I have to catch up on what I missed when I was sick. I don’t actually get to properly rest and recharge ever. The last time I went on holiday was when I went to Texas a few years ago, and even then, I couldn’t stop feeling guilty that I wasn’t working on my thesis.

I have this feeling that I don’t deserve to take a break until I’m finished everything that I need to do. So I can never relax properly because I’m constantly guilty about not working. I worked 10 hours every day this week, and 14 hours one day. I worked 8 hours yesterday (Saturday). I went into work for half an hour this afternoon (Sunday). And now I’m sitting here watching the boats on the harbour and typing this with a guilty feeling that I should be working right now instead. Like I’m slacking off. I know it’s not rational – the University does not expect me to work 7 days a week. And there will never be a time when I’m finished all my work – there’s always more to do. But I just can’t get rid of this constant guilt.