Here's your detailed report.
Your Main Procrastination Type is Distraction
What is it?
The way you tend to procrastinate is by distracting yourself from doing the thing that you most want to do. According to behavioral engineering expert Nir Eyal, a distraction is an action that takes us away from what we really want to do. If we know what we want to do, then why do we distract ourselves? Let’s find out below.
Why does it happen?
The answer lies somewhere in how we're wired to be as human beings. The root cause of human behaviour is pain-avoidance, meaning we act to escape discomfort. Even when we are looking for pleasurable activities, what we're really doing is relieving ourselves of the pain of wanting.
When we have goals that we don't know how to achieve, we feel psychological discomfort in the form of negative emotions. This discomfort can materialize as overwhelm, the feeling of 'not being good enough', the fear of failure, and having thoughts like "I can't do this", etc.
When we experience these negative emotions, our biological 'pain-avoidance' mechanism takes over and makes us seek short-term relief instead. This short-term relief often manifests itself in the form of excessive use of video games, social media, cell phones, binge-watching content, etc.
What does it feel like?
The paradox here is that the short-term relief will never make up for the lack of achievement of our goals. Because the longer we avoid or put off working on the things we really want to do, the heavier and stronger the psychological discomfort. Which further drives us deeper into distractions and seeking more and more short-term pleasure and instant gratification. It becomes a vicious cycle.
This brings us to a paralyzed physical state where we feel trapped, unable to move, knowing that we don't want to waste our lives playing video games or endlessly going down YouTube rabbit holes but we can't get ourselves to stop. We become stuck in an endless loop of:
Your Possible Root Cause is Perfectionism
What is it?
Perfectionism is a trait that turns life into an endless list of accomplishments. Healthy perfectionism can be self-motivating and drive you to overcome adversity and achieve success. But in its unhealthy form, it can be a root cause of unhappiness.
Why does it happen?
The primary motivation behind perfectionism is internal pressure. Pressure like the desire to avoid failure or harsh judgement. It is possible that there is a social component to perfectionism as well. Perfectionistic tendencies have increased substantially amongst younger people over the last 30 years, regardless of gender or culture.
Increased academic and professional competition is thought to play a part in this as well as the increased penetration of social media in our daily lives. Seeing other people living their best lives on social media forces us to compare our imperfect lives with theirs and increases our internal pressure to appear perfect.
What does it feel like?
Perfectionism — in its unhealthy or extreme form — is toxic because, although the perfectionist desires success, they are ultimately focused on avoiding failure. Perfectionists don't believe in unconditional love because they expect to receive love and affection only if they have given a flawless performance.
Perfectionists have unrealistically high expectations of themselves and others. They are quick to find faults and are extremely critical of mistakes. They procrastinate out of fear of failure and are unable to receive compliments and often don't celebrate their successes. Instead, they look to specific people for approval and validation.
Unhealthy perfectionism is often fuelled by fear of failure, feeling unworthy, having low self-esteem, and adverse childhood experiences. Perfection is an impossibility in reality. Striving for perfection can be very motivating and lead to excellent outcomes. But when this is taken too far, this striving can lead to negative consequences like procrastination, avoiding challenges, rigid 'all-or-nothing' thinking, toxic comparisons, and a lack of creativity.
Perfectionism, like any personality trait, exists on a spectrum and people usually lie somewhere in the middle of the two extremities. Like most traits, perfectionism has its pros and cons. On the positive side of things, perfectionism can push people to be their best and strive to give their maximum performance. On the negative side, it can lead to being overly critical, harsh, and judgemental of themselves and others.
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