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Tuesday
Oct142008
Obligation a Cause of Procrastination
Tuesday, October 14, 2008 at 8:57 There’s an interesting article on the Wonder Women blog about a sense of obligation being one of the main causes of procrastination.
When I was in sixth grade, I took piano lessons. Each week, I would meet with my piano teacher and tried to fake my way through the assigned pieces that I had not practiced. I hated that I had to play certain songs for a certain period of time, even though I enjoyed the piano. Finally, I convinced my mom to let me quit. From that day on, I sat and played piano for about an hour a day.
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Reader Comments (3)
For example, I love studying and very curious about everything, so I can sit down and read with no problem any subject. But once that subject becomes an obligation (like an homework or a test), I automatically start procrastinating and avoiding everything related to that subject. I think this irrational and paradoxical attitude is because I feel that now I have to be perfect in that subject and I'm terrified of having a bad note. The problem is that I'm not learning anymore for love of knowledge and curiosity but to proof that I'm good cause I have the obligation to be good.
P.S.: I found your Blog through LiteMind and you have very interesting articles, that I hope will help cause my procrastination is really giving me serious problems at college, and I sometimes feel so unproductive that I even thought in quitting ("if it's not perfectly done, It's not worthy doing it").
But I intend to change those negative thoughts so I'll keep reading your posts Mark :) Thank you very much!
Laura, from Mexico
The cure for perfectionism is to ask how well does this need to be done? Answer: So it's good enough.
Commit to delivering a perfect 8 out of 10.