When chronic procrastinators try to remedy their behavior, they constantly fail, because their natural behavior always resurfaces in the end. 

They end up seeing themselves as incapable, unreliable people and lose all their  self-confidence.  

To fully understand where these evils come from, it is necessary to grasp the mental schema of a chronic procrastinator.  

What are the Symptoms 

These are some usual symptoms

• Impatient and want ŕesults as soon as possible  
• too creative but very unproductive  
• set unrealistic goals possible in his mind 
• When they fail, they multiply their targets instead of reducing them,   
• Their natural tendency is to do juggle multiple things at the same time  
• Are comfortable in pressure situations  
• They don’t like being compartmentalized  , their hate restrictions
  
• Are bored to death when it comes to non-creative tasks   
• They waste too much time daydreaming to accomplish their goals.
• They are always living in the future with a lot of ” if-then, plan ” 
• Their minds are wandering a lot. 
• From outside they look like work alcoholic since there are always busy
• they like discoverig new things

What are the causes?  

Their consciousness is very creative

Chronic Procrastinators are ideas-generating machines.   

They constantly have several ones within  seconds.

This is an advantage when solving huge problems.

This creative nature always offers new angles to approach bigger problems.  

The bigger and more innovative the project is, the more effective the procrastinator will. Creating a path through the immensity of possibilities is  easy for them.

 However, It is difficult for them to turn off the light bulb system, to be able to focus. They are constantly being harassed by new ” what about this idea? And  this? ” . And it quickly becomes a great disadvantage since ir require too much energy  can’t commit to executing on anything up to the end. Especially if things get harder.

Their attention likes discovery/they don’t like to be compartmentalized. 

Instead of continuing to deepen a work they have started, they will naturally be more attracted to new projects, to evaluating new avenues.   

That’s why they start a lot of things but never finish anything. They always have several projects in progress, at different stages of development, but have nothing concrete and coherent to present.  

For example, assuming  an assignment are given to students, a Non- procrastinator will find it normal to focus on one topic – the introduction -. Then he will finish it to come up with a first draft after within  week . The teacher will provide feedback  before he proceed further.

A chronic procrastinator, on the other hand,  starts a piece of introduction, then a piece of conclusion, and finally a piece of the body . After a week he  still have nothing to show  to receive feedback.  From the other side, it looks like he didn’t progress.

Their attention is always spread . 

Chronic procrastinators are strong multitaskers by nature. 

They are  more effective with 3 projects  to  conduct the same period than  just one of them. 

If they are  stuck on one , they will always have ideas about  other ones. Overall they doesn’t fall behind.

Even if they chunk large projects into small pieces their thoughts are always drawn to the bigger picture. and vice versa. 

This behavior is good when starting , but bad when  finishing. 

 Moreover excessive creativity, attractivenes to discovery, natural attention spread, makes it very very hard for chronic procrastinators to stick and commit to any  their plan during execution phase.

Their attention is repelled by repetition 

Repetition is the mother of mastery. That’s why chronic procrastinators capitalize very little on what they already know. 

Rehearsing a speech, a presentation, rereading past notes, manipulating an excel sheet, writing a text, applying tips from a book you read are some examples of activities that require back and forth.

No matter which field you want to learn, you must regularly go back to your initial work to get to the next level.

However, because of their strong resistance to looking in the past, chronic procrastinators gather lots of information but  never use them wisely. 

This is what usually happens after hey took note and don’t review them:

• they forget where they’ve stored it
• they forget the ins and outs that allowed them to make intermediate choices. 
• They always have a feeling of perpetual restarting. 

This increases their task’s avoidance, and their performance ends up being mediocre. What a waste of energy? they regret later. 

Their consciousness has a biased perception of time flow. 

Chronic procrastinators always have a very optimistic time projection

They find it perfectly normal to program what they couldn’t do in a week over 2 days.  

• preparing a Toefl exam in two weeks where 3 months are required.  
• Planning 2 hours to write an assignment where 5 hours are required,  
• restarting running after  months and target 5 km on the first day
• booking two days to deliver when it took him 4 days in the past.

Even if they logically realize that their goal setting  is very unlikely, a part of them will say 

“I am special, special.  I can handle that if I put my  mind to it. I usuallly do it in last minute, so I can repeat the same performance”

As a result, they constantly feel busy, creating a feeling of permanent stress. The worst thing is the less they accomplish, the more try to composente with more unrealistic goals.

Their consciousness doesn’t like  criticim and judgment

When chronic procrastinators plan, their first natural target isn’t the  minimalist version, but the  ultimate version.   From outside it looks like perfectionism, but from inside itis drived by insecutities

Even if they are just starting to write articles,  they  won’t allow any mistakes.  

Even if they are starting a new job, they won’t accept to expose any lack of knowledge.  

• They prefer to keep their doubts to themselve, rather than asking a question in a meeting that could be perceived as a nonsense.  
• They will prefer to keep a project that is not progressing well, rather than sharing some weaknesses by asking for help
• They won’t dare to say NO to the boss even if they can’t handle the job on time
  

This increases the stress and slows down the delivery.   

Their consciouness does not like uncertainty  

Chronic procrastinators want to see the end of the tunnel before they start. They want to know all the ins and outs that will lead to the finish line.

“Is my idea theoretically designed to guarantee success” ?

“Will I manage to solve this part of the exercise in the next 2 book hours?” 

Not knowing if they will finish and how they will finish is enough to block them.

Even if it overwhelms more than it helps in the execution, even if there are some actions they can accomplish right away , they worry of the risks of not finishing.

Their consciousness has a very poor short-term memory…  

Ask procrastinators to remember the intention that pushed them to open their email box, they will not remember it a few seconds later.

Ask what they did the day before and they will have trouble remembering it. 

Their consciousness is rebellious 

They don’t like to be commanded. 

If their boss tells them to do something in a military way, they won’t say No verbally but non verbally.

They will consciously express their passive-aggressivity trough not delivering on time. Conscious procrastination becomes their tool to say  “hey I didn’t like the way you talked to me last time”. I don’t care if you are the boss. Be careful and  speak with respect when you want me to do something”.