Adult ADHD and Procrastination (Or Not)

Procrastination, for my money, is the biggest problem for most adults with ADHD. Recent research pinpointing escape avoidance as the common coping response for adults with ADHD lends credence to this observation.

Despite the importance of dealing with procrastination, you still devote a lot of time to not doing important tasks. This does not necessarily constitute procrastination, even if you are an adult with ADHD. So, what gives?

Examples of Non-Procrastination

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Here are some examples of things you might find yourself doing that are not procrastination but might seem like it at the time (though there is an important caveat at the end of the list):

• First off, let’s give special dispensation to “self-care tasks.” These are activities such as exercise, meals, sleep, and quality family, social, and recreation time, such as reading or hobbies, or good, old-fashioned downtime when you putter around and do with your free time as you see fit. These “tasks” are priorities to reset and restore yourself, and they deserve slots in your schedule alongside any other duties.
• You may have a cluster of behaviors that serve as a launch sequence for getting into “work” mode, like arriving at the office and getting your coffee, answering a few e-mails, and engaging in chit-chat before diving into your work. This chain of steps is like arriving at the gym and stretching before your workout or practice swings for a golfer, homing in on and readying for a task.
• Time spent planning, prioritizing, or pondering a task, such as outlining a paper or thinking through materials needed for a project, is a necessary phase for many endeavors. Such preparatory steps are often lost due to procrastination and waiting until the last minute to start a project.
• You will look like you are procrastinating when you simply have too much to do, are pulled in multiple directions, have too little time to get to everything, or are overscheduled from the get-go. People vary in how much they can do in a day, but you have a breaking point.
• You might be able to advocate for rescheduling deadlines in the example above of being overscheduled, but when you are juggling competing tasks and face unyielding deadlines, you must decide how to divvy up your time, effort, and energy to adequately address each one. Such concessions require making sacrifices that are not necessarily from procrastination. This deadline gridlock might be a downstream effect of poor planning, but not always. Sometimes it is unavoidable.
• Despite well-organized plans, “life happens” in the form of unanticipated, unforeseen, and often unimagined emergencies requiring immediate attention regardless of looming deadlines. Tending to those events is not procrastination.
• Among such “life happenings” are a personal illness or emotional health issue, such as an episodic mood, anxiety, or medical issue (such as irritable bowel syndrome), which merit self-focus and tending to your well-being. You might be in a support role for someone else facing such upsets, which would not constitute procrastination.
• In the spirit of informed decisions about dealing with procrastination, there are occasions when you bow to what could be considered self-indulgent avoidance. These are times when you prioritize what you want to do over a work obligation, such as attending a special concert or sporting event. In some cases, however, you face a competing priority, such as dinner with your old college roommate you’ve not seen in a decade, who’s only available and in town now because of a canceled flight. You may pay the price by waking up early tomorrow to catch up on work you missed to have dinner with your old roomie, but it is an informed decision based on special circumstances.

Now for the promised qualification and being on the lookout for procrastination.

For all these possible non-procrastination examples, you are on an honor system. Procrastination is devious and will allow you to use these examples as justifications, Trojan horses to hitch a ride and sneakily undermine your best intentions any chance it gets.

For example, your adaptive procrastination routines for getting started at your job expand to include online shopping, reading news updates, and taking longer and longer to get started on your work duties to the point you fall behind.

Your well-intentioned time and effort devoted to organizing a task end up being an exercise in procrastination, such as a student downloading 50 PDF articles for a paper that only requires three references – the student feels productive but is really avoiding switching to the writing (and when are they going to review all 50 articles adequately?).

You may have a lot of tasks to do, but you decide to take a break, switch gears to take care of a personal errand, or pay a bill, but this ends up derailing you from more urgent priorities to deal with matters that could have waited.

Some typical inconveniences, such as getting a late start due to driving a child to school when they miss the bus, might require you to reconfigure your day’s plan but not necessarily totally abandon it. Procrastination takes advantage of such minor hassles and blows them out of proportion.

Lastly, beware of a low bar for hedonistic delays and procrastination. A one-off chance to see an old roommate for the first time since graduation twenty years ago is one thing. There might be better trade-offs than watching a mid-season, televised sporting event, even one involving your favorite team, when facing priority tasks for school or work. You can record and watch the game later or simply miss it without much sacrifice.

Summary

It is important to practice self-compassion and cut some slack when it seems you procrastinate due to the non-procrastination examples illustrated above. Be mindful and honest with yourself, though, because procrastination can allow you to use these examples against you unless you are aware of the differences.