I see you self-sabotaging, and I know why you do it.

You’re self sabotaging yourself by procrastinating tasks that need to get done. In fact, you have such a broken relationship with procrastination, that you need these things to get done, or else you’ll take it out on yourself even more.

That’s an aggressive way to put it–but the truth is, I was there. I still am sometimes. I have been a chronic procrastinator for as long as I can remember. Not only that, but I’m genetically predisposed to procrastinate in relation to other mental health conditions like depression and anxiety, and physical ones like chronic fatigue syndrome. My identity was hinged on my productivity for a long time, and it just kept the cycle spinning.

That’s why I’m writing to you now. I want to show you exactly what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and how you can start to rework this mindset to make a positive change in your behavior. 

I will mention this disclaimer to no end–that procrastination is a symptom of an underlying illness unique to everyone’s predisposition, habits, childhood, and so much more. This may not be the mainframe of your struggles, yet it may be to someone else. But if it gets you to think, and to start breaking down the walls of how to move forward, then I’ve done my job well. 

But first, why is there such a toxic relationship between procrastination and self-worth? The answer lies in nature and nurture, the two components that made up our childhoods. Perhaps we were praised as children only when we scored perfect marks or received harsh criticism when our creative works didn’t reach the standard. Either way, our past has left stubborn stains and affects the way we show up to the world as adults. 

I had really unusual relationships with adults when I was a child. Many of them, without even knowing it, treated me as an adult myself–layering on weights of adult dilemmas, pain, and trauma on shoulders that didn’t know how to hold them. At the age when I should have been concerned about growing up, I was worried about being more mature than the other adults around me. 

When I created my own schooling, I faced this daily. It manifested in the form of perfectionism, where I couldn’t bear to begin my tasks unless I knew I could guarantee their perfection and my satisfaction.

Sometimes, we procrastinate because we don’t know exactly what our satisfaction entails. Some only need to identify what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and how/when it will be done–and the problem is solved. On the other side of the coin, I knew exactly what my standards were. I wrote meticulous to-do lists and planned out my day in ten-minute increments. I structured my morning routine, the hours I deemed as my “self-schooling,” my lessons, my commutes, my work, and the time I had after work. I had created the perfect schedule to create my ideal life that I believed would finally make me proud of myself.

Now, something of that magnitude requires an environment just as meticulous. But I didn't have much money in my early New York days. I shared an apartment with four people who rarely took up their share of cleaning duties, had windows that didn’t get direct sunlight ever, and had about a half-shelf amount of space in the fridge for my food items. Add in the fact that I was far away from all friends and family for the first time in nineteen years, was working the most intense job I think I could’ve possibly landed… and you’ve got a pretty messy chance at doing much at all. 

Without even realizing it, I was setting myself up for failure. My chronic fatigue syndrome had a field day with my crammed schedule. I think I had one day in six months where I achieved everything I planned, but I didn’t get to it all the next day, and that victory vanished from my mind. This is around the time I became obsessed with procrastination and why it exists in the first place. Writing from a much healthier environment and working from a place I love makes me realize that the whole thing was essentially nuts. But the research led me here, so I suppose it’s worth it. 

I didn’t understand why I couldn’t do it, though. For one, I ensured I got six or more hours of sleep (mind you, my body is used to nine, but the internet said I should be able to function off of six). For two, in my mind, this is exactly what normal college would’ve been like, and exactly what I did in high school. I went to high school from the hours of 7 AM to 2 PM for four years, worked a part-time job after that, was a vocal captain of a show choir, and so much more… So what was the big deal?

I think it’s kind of obvious that there is a big difference between a schedule crafted and delivered to you, where all you have to do is show up, versus the thing I had going on. I worked forty hours a week in one of the most intense restaurants in the United States. I was living alone in New York City–yet despite that, I was never alone. There was noise and people everywhere. And I had just started a long-distance relationship, which hurt in an entirely different way. 

All of that to say, I put myself through the wringer for “productivity.” I had bound my self-worth to my results and checked to-do list items so tightly that I didn’t think one could exist without the other. I dug my heels deep into my faith at the time, and honestly, I was the most devoted I had been in a really long time. But even then, it never felt like enough. I was never doing enough. 

There were two competing things here. On one hand, there is the fact that I pushed myself to a place of self-hatred when I didn’t accomplish the things I planned for myself. I kept up my job (for six months, but still), but my schoolwork fell flat. I attended my lessons not to waste my teachers’ time, but I could barely get out of bed to do anything else. On the surface, I suppose it does look productive. But every day, I was mortified, and every day, I put more and more pressure on myself.

On the other hand, I pushed tasks off till the last minute and procrastinated. I was actively self-sabotaging my efforts, even knowing how painful the aftermath would be. But the truth was, if I didn’t even give myself the chance to begin, then I wasn’t giving myself the chance to fail.

That’s the secret. Sometimes, we use procrastination as a safety net for our own ego because if we don’t give ourselves the chance to perform at our fullest potential, then there’s no chance that we can possibly let ourselves down. If we fail when we barely even tried, there’s still a chance that we would’ve done exceptionally well under the right circumstances.

It’s pretty twisted logic–even if we failed to the fullest extent, that’s the most beautiful scenario. You actively give yourself something to learn from and something to change for the next day. If you continuously recreate the same twisted scenario of not letting yourself succeed, then you aren’t giving yourself anything to take note of and improve upon. What I should have done was take my (less than ideal) environment with a grain of salt and prioritize the intentions of the task over the aesthetics of the task. I was probably way too exhausted to be achieving two hours of vocal practice, twenty minutes of Italian, twenty minutes of French, an hour of piano, and a lesson before going to an intense job for eight hours and logging 20,000 steps. But, had I prioritized the real mission (developing my voice), things might have been different. 

Instead of giving myself a safe environment to fail often and to create reliable systems to improve (that is, in my schoolwork, work, and personal endeavors like my writing), I created a cage—a cage gilded with aesthetics, to-do lists, responsibilities, and high expectations, but a cage nonetheless. 

How beautiful would it be to fully set yourself up–not for success or failure, but just to perform at your absolute best? And I don’t just mean on a day when you feel great. I mean on the days when you’re sick and when you’re too exhausted to move. Just because your 100% effort on those days doesn’t match the 100% effort of your biggest achievements doesn’t mean it’s any less than 100%. What if you took stock of what you had to give, set up a plan to move forward, and went full throttle without any expectations on what it would look like?

Things started shifting for me when I placed more emphasis on producing the highest quality effort I could have on a given pursuit, instead of the most time worked or the most things accomplished. Instead of, “I need to sing for an hour,” no matter how I’m feeling that day, it would be more like, “I’m going to spend some time singing, and I’m going to fully commit to whatever that looks like for as long as I can manage.”

There’s a very nuanced detail here that I’ll do my best to articulate. It’s not that we don’t want to do our work well–of course we do. Let’s take an essay you have to do for a class in college. There is a rubric you have to adhere to, and that rubric will determine your grade. But if you are entirely obsessed in making sure that you’ll fulfill this rubric to the very last detail, then you may very well procrastinate so that you don’t give yourself the chance to fall short.

I want to note here that there are two types of students, and only one of them will understand this analogy. One of them just wants to get the work done and submitted, generally a laid back individual, and the other is typically creative, ambitious, and neurotic. Certainly perfectionistic. You will find in my research that these seemingly unrelated details could not be more deeply intertwined–from how many dopamine receptors they have, to how they respond to stress, and interact with others. 

Those who lean toward neuroticism and perfectionism may benefit from putting energy into working to the best of their ability for as long as is needed or until the task is completed, and it will lose some of the stress of perfection. Yes, the rubric is important. But at some point, you have to just start writing. Give yourself every chance to write that essay to the best of your ability. And when the professor comes back with a B-, then you’ll realize exactly where you can improve. 

That’s the danger of self-study, when you don’t necessarily have an outside critic other than yourself, but we can discuss that another time. Today, I want you to see how you’ve been working yourself up over things you put off–like chores, or a work project. For example, I really enjoy having one day a week to focus on cleaning the house. But if I don’t feel well that day, does that mean the chores don’t get done? Or if I end up splitting it up throughout the week, does it mean that the entire effort was a waste? Certainly not. 

My expectations held me back from improvement for so long because I was desperate for the approval of others, and eventually, desperate for my own approval. If I can come back from that, then you certainly can too.