There are many different types of procrastinators: tall ones, short ones, chubby and skinny ones. In the paper „Rethinking Procrastination: Positive Effects of ‚Active‘ Procrastination Behavior on Attitudes and Performance“ by Angela Hsin Chun Chu and Jin Nam Choi two different types are especially distinguished.
They struggle with approaching tasks and often fail to accomplish them in a given time frame. They don’t have the intention to procrastinate. Nevertheless they do, because of their missing ability to make decisions. They are paralyzed by memories of failure in their past. This awareness paired with a pessimistic attitude leads into a spiral of reprehension. Often this ends up in low self-esteem and depression.
… who can be described as a positive genus of procrastinators. They like to work under pressure and defer tasks consciously. In contrast to the passive procrastinators, in the case of the active ones the pressure increases the motivation. They have control over their time and believe in their abilities and efficiency. Even though they fulfill tasks last minute, they often produce similar results as non-procrastinators.
Both types can procrastinate in a similar amount, nevertheless they differ in results and mental condition. In this occasion active procrastinators are almost equal to non-procrastinators and can clearly be separated from passive procrastinators.
The total opposite to a hardcore procrastinator who seems super lazy and lives into the day is someone who always looks very busy. On the surface they seem like they’ve got everything together. All of their things are organized and neat, they are working very hard on everything, spending more hours in the office than everyone else, they live in a nice house and have found the perfect partner. Appearances are deceiving. People who look like they would achieve everything they do effortlessly tend to be emotional procrastinators. They don’t work through emotional problems, rather they distract themselves with activity and constructive work. They mostly procrastinate when it comes to their mental wellbeing and psychological work.
Catching up with a friend, going to a museum will remain tasks on a To-Do list. The emotional procrastinator will never be able to ask themselves what this friendship really means to them and will never understand what could be the deeper meaning of the painting they looked at a couple minutes ago.
As in literature and film we are used to a plot. There has to be a certain narrative that leads us through the story. If we don’t get how everything is connected and leads to a final showdown, the whole thing seems quite boring and uninteresting. The same mindset can be applied in our day to day life. When we forget what our plot and therefore our goal is, we seem to be the most boring person on this planet, nothing is happening, we are just victims of our own existence. We lose sight of the things that matter to us in the first place and have no belief that our doing is contributing to any bigger mission. Sometimes it’s healthier for us to step back for one moment and question if the plot we are playing is still a thing worth chasing.
Sometimes our ambitions are so high we can’t even reach them in our minds. The fear of failing and stumbling through the process of creating is so dominant that we don’t even start. We are convinced that every output will be horrible. We are afraid to be an amateur in a field that brings up so many professional people who accomplished significantly greater things than we ever could, so why even bother. We are attracted by the idea, that everything constructive seems so easy and intuitive to produce that the thought of putting effort into a painting or a piece of writing discomforts us. The artist that we admire so deeply, looks like a master of his own intuition. The output just emerges like a light feather out of nowhere and is perfect at its first try. Our attempts in creating these kinds of work are in comparison a joke to us.
We should instead have a closer look at the work environments in which these artists are creating. The shiny surface cracks if we explore their messy studios, their unstructured daily timetables and countless drafts they discard to get the result they want, the frustration and the wasted attempts that will never be seeing the day of light. There is a big amount of imperfectness that the greatest count of human beings will never see, and the illusion of the great artist will stay alive.
