I realize I have a serious problem, which looks like procrastination mixed with chronic depression, but I can’t help feeling that I’m just a normal person who’s too lazy to do anything, and the pressure is making me more and more depressed and unable to start. Don’t let this happen to you is the only sad advice I can give – that and counseling.

If you are after my own take on beating procrastination, you can read my guide.

Here’s the issue, it’s not the procrastinating on the things that don’t matter that’s the problem – it’s that what I’m usually procrastinating on is the thing I most need to get done. The more important it is, the more it seems to get… repressed from my mind.

I don’t get the assignment done – in fact, I might not start it till after it’s due! I’ll probably be late going out in the evening, because I’ll run round trying to do the things I was supposed to do that day. I don’t procrastinate by doing the more enjoyable thing – I procrastinate by merely doing a different thing. In fact, usually mindless things that I can’t stand when I’ve got nothing to procrastinate over.

I’ll know that the book is on half-price all this week, and only to the end of this week, and the course started two weeks ago, and still fail to get down there to get it.

Sometimes I manage to stagger it by lining up the other things I could be doing, to procrastinate on those instead of the thing I should be doing. Sadly, that still means the biggest and most important thing gets screwed up, and many other things seem to get taken out in it’s wake. But, oh well.

Why? Well, if I knew that, I wouldn’t be reading articles on procrastination. And well, your article is obviously not actually so helpful for me. But, I think you could improve it for other people, with just a little change in focus – it’s an article on how to tell when you don’t have a problem with procrastination, and why a healthy amount might be good.