Procrastination or "I Can't"?

I didn't want to write when I wrote this, but I wrote it anyway. I needed a post to upload and after procrastinating all day, I reached the point where I wasn't going to allow myself to keep avoiding it.

I did the dishes, cleaned and vacuumed the front two rooms of my house, read 30+ pages of a book, snuggled and trained my dog, ate two separate meals (breakfast and lunch), played games on my phone, walked around outside, listened to music, etc. I did all that I could to avoid it.

Truth is, it wasn't incapability that kept me from writing. Hence, I got something written. But it's from that realization that this topic came from.

I was procrastinating for the majority of a day, simply because I didn't want to look at the list of writing topics I had prepared. There was no need to research anything to write any of those pieces—they were topics I could list many things about off the top of my head—and all I needed to do was to sit down and try to write just a little bit.

I had plenty of time, plenty of stuff already set up to make it easy for me, but I still cast it aside.

We all know what this feels like—we've all procrastinated things to the point where other people are scolding us to do the work. And yet, we aren't doing a thing. It's not our mental capacity stopping us, it's not because we can't do the work, we just have no motivation to do it. No part of us is pushing to do the work. We just can't push anymore.

Do we have an external reason not to do the work? Probably not. We may look fine, so why aren't we doing the work? We might just need a break mentally, but we can still push through it, right? Maybe the only thing that's stopping us is "I don't want to."

I'm wondering, though, if there's also a different reason for procrastination. We need to do the work, yes, but we also need breaks. I haven't written in days, but does that mean I don't neat a break? No. Because I've been doing other things for those days and those things have left me exhausted. It doesn't have to be that one thing that's exhausting us.

Procrastination, in my mind, is almost like your brain forcing you to take a break. "No more trying, no more stressing over things, just flop and do whatever I tell you to do for hours straight and get nothing productive done."

We feel guilty by the end and that completely messes up the relaxation we could've felt by the end of it sometimes, but other times we come out of it feeling better.

I'm going to say this and you can disagree with me if you'd like, but I say, "procrastination isn't a bad thing unless there's something that you urgently need done or you get stuck procrastinating." One day of procrastinating isn't too bad, but when it becomes weeks, you have to be a bit less lenient with yourself because that work does need done.

People may say there's no excuse, but if your mind and body is asking for it, then there's a reason for it.

That said, though, not everything is your mental health stopping you. Sometimes it's flat out procrastination because you just don't want to do it. Putting off the task isn't going to get it done; if anything, it may make the task harder to get done later. The line between procrastinating for the sake of not doing the task and procrastinating because you need a break is thin, but there is a line.

Next time you catch yourself procrastinating, try finding that line and seeing which side you're swaying towards.