What makes you really want to play a video game and dislike doing the dishes? Is it something objective about the thing to be done, or does it have to do with your mental framing of the task at hand? I feel it is the latter. A friend of mine reviews video games professionally, and he procrastinates on playing games. I think it's because he is told to play games. An authority figure is pushing him to do something and he rebels by putting off playing.

Pushing ourselves only leads to ourselves pushing back.

Cheers, Edo

We must push ourselves if we want to improve. We must ask ourselves the hard questions. I have often called this 'throwing myself to the wolves' when I embark on a new endeavor...I know it will be hard. I know I will fail, badly. I know the established community will tear into me. But I will push myself and keep fighting and eventually, what was once hard will become easy.

Not my idea but it works for me 100% of the time.

That doesn't sound like a well examined state; go looking for why you fear "not knowing what to do", there's bound to be one or many things hiding behind that description.

When I play a video game, it's the game I want to play at the time I want to play it and with the goal that I picked for that session.

If I have to review a video game then I have all these choices largely made for me. The goal is to review the game rather than go for whatever I might want out of the game.

The reality of our lives force us to do things which don't always align with what we really want to do. That's when I procrastinate.

Which plays into the whole "authority figure" thing that OP is talking about.

My immediate reaction was to be skeptical, but I am starting to think OP makes quite a bit of sense.

But, then, there are times when I just decide to do it even if I'm missing ingredients or have not come across a recipe which makes sense to me. Powering thru.

I think for the video game tester, if I were them, I'd project difficulty onto it. Finding the bugs, etc. Feeling like I might not be up to finding anything interesting. It's a bit of a fear of failing, in a way, till I felt, "I'm up to the task now."

Need to... or else what? Instead of forcing onwards, ask yourself why you don't want to go forwards...

(I'm not asking so you can tell me, I'm prodding you to ask yourself. To think "hey, I don't really know the answer to that. I wonder why I do feel this way?)

I think its about the goal: doing the dishes stands in the way of the goal of having clean dishes. Playing video games, on the other hand, is the goal itself. Sure, there may be a goal within the game, the same as there will be obstacles and also boring things in the game, but playing the game itself is fun, and a goal in itself. Dishes are purely an obstacle to a goal.

I find I procrastinate a lot over the obstacles, but rarely over the goal itself.

Like gexla said (and like you said in the OP), its about being in control. I have little choice in doing the dishes - if I don't do them, they pile up and the place looks dirty, but I never really decide I want to do them. On the other hand, if I play video games, this is my choice and I'm in control. I can just as easily not play. Thats my choice. On the other hand, if, like gexla said, I had to review a game, then its out of my control and I could see myself potentially procrastinating over it (unless it happens to be a game I wanted to play anyway).

You ever practiced something like Tai Chi?

Both usually go, somewhat amusingly, hand in hand, but I think they should be linked to the "mastery" discussed in the topic. Fear of both failure and success are, in short, fear of change, fear of losing control, fear of not being a master anymore.

It is indeed quite common to trade a, sometimes illusory, feeling of easiness with the known current situation for the potential uneasiness of an unknown situation given as one the possible outcomes of the failure/success. Particularly in the last case, I have seen that it is not unusual to rationalize that we have already gained achieved should not be "gambled" against the changes that would result from the success of the activity we are procrastinating.

In short, the "I'll do it tomorrow" is usually a "I'll do it when I will feel confortable with outcomes I now consider most likely". I personally have discovered that focusing in the positive aspect of the outcomes I consider most likely, even in case of failure, is usually my best weapon against procrastination.

That thing is a lack of comfort with vulnerability. I believe this is because most of us hold onto dysfunctional value systems and we also live in reactionary state where we make decisions based on avoiding invalidation from our peers and authority figures, rather than striving to receive validation by becoming "better".

The only answers to procrastination are "are you motivated to do it?" and "is that overridden by a negative motivation against doing it"?

Avoiding invalidation is much more of a strong and personal negative override than I ever thought years ago. It can hit you as the OP implies - fear that if I'm not in control of my life people will think I'm a weak and submissive person, or if I'm not in control thats like my childhood and makes menfeel invalidated by comparison to a helpless child - or like other people in this thread are replying - fears about doing something well (will people think me a swot?) or doing badly (my spouse will scorn me?) or all sorts.

The most common factor among the replies here is stopping asking he question "what bad thing am I avoiding by procrastination" far far too soon, and/or accepting far too vague and unhelpful 'answers' as soon as they are thought of without realising they are unhelpful.

The energy enters you, you transform it and then you use the transformed energy to suit your needs.

In this chain, something is broken. People tend simplify this by calling it laziness when they need to put a tag on someone they don't like.

But the real reason for you inability to accomplish tasks at hand is that something in the chain I have described earlier - is broken.

You either struggle to get enough energy (food, sleep, emotion), or you struggle to transform it (usually abundance of low-quality energy sources and inability to improve their quality)

The only way out of this state (which is not permanent) is to revise your routines and methods. Improve and rationalize everything you do, so it won't call to those 'woeful' associations when you start working on something.

What you're really doing, if you stop and think about it, is making a deliberate choice - between the cost/benefit of sleeping in and taking it easy, and the cost/benefit of employment/income/future of your children. You may not think of it as a choice, but it is. Plenty of people decide its not worth it, and don't take their kids to school or hold a job. For you, the inconvenience of your morning is offset by the value of a more secure future.

So when you say you "have to" do these things, that's false. I wouldn't even call it "pushing" yourself. You actually want to do it, because you value it on some level. The fact that its not pleasurable or emotionally exciting doesn't even enter into the equation of deciding.

One of the tactics is to simplify exercises, the other involves rationalization. When I feel in control - I do not need to force myself to do something, I just do it because fills the structure of my life and because I understand how consequences of my actions build this structure by relying upon each other.

So I do not respect the success in combating laziness only through sheer will, I prefer to divide big tasks and find meaning in small ones.

I can't speak to what's going on inside your head, but I think people trick themselves into playing those few extra minutes all the time. I know I do:

- "I've got plenty of time. A few extra minutes won't hurt."

- "I didn't really need to get that done today anyway."

- "If I stay focused I can catch up."

- "If I blow off some steam now I'll be able to focus better later."

- "I can do this and watch the big game at the same time."

The OP had an original and insightful point about motivation and the process of getting things done. OTOH, you're contradicting him without, I feel, adding anything to the discussion.

I think you've dismissed his point without showing that you actually considered it. Your conclusion that you're lazy and need prodding is exactly the thing Edo is talking about. He laid out a passionate account of procrastination and self-talk, and compelled his readers to consider that it's not productive to berate one's self for failing to accomplish goals in a timely manner. That perhaps there are better ways to relate to yourself and your goals.

And your response is essentially, "Nope, I'm lazy -- period, full-stop."

I believe the type of "trick" he's referring to is exemplified by this statement: "just think of working out as a game and try to beat your old score." While I generally like the benefits of working out, it's not something I'm in the mood to do every day when I come home from work. I have to push myself through that invisible barrier sometimes, i.e. I have to 'trick' myself into doing it, even if just for a few minutes.

After a long day at work, the first thing I want to do is play a video game when I get home. I only time I've had to trick myself into playing video games was when training in a fighter game, trying to grind out my reaction times so I could beat my friends.

Einstein's sister, Maja, recalled "...even when there was a lot of noise, he could lie down on the sofa, pick up a pen and paper, precariously balance an inkwell on the backrest and engross himself in a problem so much that the background noise stimulated rather than disturbed him."

Source;http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2005/23...

Not that it really matters, but it is useful to look at the situation in both lights. There have certainly been situations where I stopped procrastinating on one task because a newer, more unpleasant task presented itself. "Boy, I bet I should clean my room instead of deal with these taxes!"

It's far easier for me to sit here and dream about a perfect future than it is to execute with less than perfect results.

I wouldn't say that I am scared of failure, I'm not, but I believe that if I didn't do something correctly that I will have wished that I never tried it at all.

Attributing one's own procrastination to mere laziness could also be a way to avoid facing the real issues.