I would like to contribute my own bit of information to help spread awareness of the well-being of mental health. Every day for me is Mental Health Awareness Day, and I know as a minor sufferer of OCD that even the slightest things in our lives come out with a large impact.
Today in my English lesson I was writing a Gothic Narrative. I had write up about 100 drafts in the process of getting it to where I want it to be, and it still isn’t yet there. I found some really interesting information about how procrastination isn’t actually linked to perfectionism, but to a grudge of an emotional ‘waterfall’. I can say myself that I am very restraint of procrastination and hold a strong shield before it. Yet, it isn’t the same for all of us…
Chronic procrastinators often hold misconceptions about why they procrastinate and what it means, psychologists have discovered. Many chronic procrastinators believe they can’t get started on a task because they want to do it perfectly. Yet studies show chronic procrastination isn’t actually linked to perfectionism, but rather to impulsiveness, which is a tendency to act immediately on urges.
People may assume anxiety is what prevents them from getting started, yet data from many studies show that for people low in impulsiveness, anxiety is the cue to get going. Highly impulsive people, on the other hand, shut down when they feel anxiety. Impulsive people are believed to have a harder time dealing with strong emotion and want to do something else to get rid of the bad feeling.
Some people claim they purposely leave things to the last minute because they work better under stress, but true procrastinators get stressed out by the delay. It’s arguable whether the quality of their work is actually better than if they had started earlier.
I can’t leave possibly leave things a day after the activity has been set, and this is why often my mind is like a roasted peanut. I get told off for being such a ‘perfectionist’.
And clearly I may be a procrastinator?
The Ecolytical 
I find I can be quite perfectionist and I’m a chronic over-thinker (my childhood OCD tendencies seemed to transfer from physical to mental apparently) and I find that procrastination is a tricky one because I wonder whether it’s partly due to feeling so exhausted with poor health. Then again, I struggle more perhaps with indecision, so maybe that’s part of it. An interesting one, and the point of impulsiveness certainly adds a new layer to the issue! xx
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I can DEFINITELY relate to this! Wanting to get things absolutely right can often lead to procrastination. A lot of the time I won’t get something done because I’m not happy with how it’s turned out. Sometimes that’s a good thing – to keep working on something until it’s the best you can do – but sometimes our desire for perfection can be a negative.
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I procrastinate way too much and being a perfectionist probably has something to do with it too.
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I am not a perfectionist, nor a procrastinator. Just some sort of standard human! Thank you for your comment.
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Lol I guess we’re all just humans trying to do our best!
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OCD ….exactly what is this ? What do you go through ?
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It’s a liking to excessive orderliness, I always like things organized and scheduled. OCD stands for Obsessive Complusive Disorder x
I hope I educated you 😊
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