Thursday, August 29, 2002

You know what it's like when there's a job you really, really don't want to do, but you have to. You've been putting it off and putting off. You keep picking up the file, opening it, flicking through it. You open the Quark file and look at it for a bit, change some of the colours and the fonts, move chunks of text around, but nothing substantial. Then you go onto the next page and just stare at it for a bit. So you go off and read a few blogs. Check your e-mail, your stats, your voicemail. Reload your stats. Reload the recently-updated blogs page. Make yourself some coffee. Go for a pee. Chat to your colleagues. Then you mentally shout at yourself, telling yourself to shape up, to stop procrastinating. So you go back to the job and look at it for a bit, trying to work up some enthusiasm. Then you minimise it, and work on something else. Meanwhile, this dreadful guilt keeps building up and building up: "I really, really must finish that job", but soon it's the end of the day and you still haven't done anything on it. You think about it the next morning on your way into work, determined you will finish it today.

This carries on for weeks, and you keep avoiding the eye of the person who gave you the job. You really don't want her to come over and ask you how it's going, but in a way, you do, because that might scare you into actually doing it. You feel guilty and it's getting worse and worse, and you really, really, really really MUST just stop fucking around and do the bloody thing, OK?

[And writing blogs about it is just another procrastination technique, David.]

No comments: