I have a Wednesday afternoon meeting with my boss every week where we review my active projects, which usually turns into a session where I tell him what I did, he tells me everything I did wrong, and then he gives me a list of things to do. Last time we had this meeting, I had eight action items to take care of. 

Wednesday is my last in-office day of the week, in most cases; I work Thursday and Friday from home. Usually after getting a shitload of action items dropped on my head, I feel useless and terrible at my job and I don’t want to do anything, so I spend most of Thursday morning searching for new jobs, cleaning the house, and petting the dog. The list of tasks just sits there, and sits there, and sits there, until I get back to work on Monday morning. 

It took me about 20 minutes to clear those action items off my plate on Monday. They were mostly follow-up items, where I had to send a message to someone about something, and that person would give me the answers that I could then report back to my boss. 

I spent two days hemming and hawing over these tasks, and they took 20 minutes to complete. Why did I put them off if they were so easy to do? 

I don’t have ADHD — I’ve been tested. At least, when I was tested back in 2015 I didn’t have it; I suppose that could have changed. But task paralysis like this is something a lot of ADHD people have to deal with. In my case, it’s more like procrastination, which is something I’ve always had an issue with. I put things off, and put them off, and put them off, and then I find out that it was actually an easy task, and I wonder why I put it off in the first place. It’s not like I had something else that had to be done, something more important (although petting the dog is certainly important).

This isn’t really a function of me not liking my job, either; even when I have jobs I like, I put things off. And even when it’s something personal and simple, like putting away my clothes (which, while not fun, can be satisfying because I can actually watch the pile get smaller the more work I do), I still put it off. In fact, there’s a basket of clean clothes in my bedroom right now that I could have put away last night when I took them out of the dryer. I just… didn’t. 

I have lots of things that I could be doing, both personally and professionally. I just keep putting them off. I guess it’s just who I am.