Anxiety Aunt: Help! My procrastinating leads to too much unnecessary stress, how do I change my ways?

Dear Aunty, I am a terrible procrastinator. Recently I had a presentation due on Monday morning at 10am, which I had barely started by 5.30pm on Friday. As a result I spent the entire weekend stressing about it before getting to work at 7am on Monday to try to get the presentation done. Which I did, but if I hadn’t spent Thursday and Friday chatting to colleagues and scrolling social media then I wouldn’t have spent my weekend in a state of heightened stress. And yet it seems to happen every time. I was the same at university, burning the midnight candle, and consuming an unhealthy amount of coffee, in order to meet assignment deadlines. Do you have any tips to help me knuckle down and concentrate on the task at hand? Yours, Distracted Dear Distracted, Hello dear, One will get to your problem but first One is going to make a lovely pot of tea. Well, would you look at that, the plants need watering. One will be right back. Oh, there goes the washing machine alert, just a jiffy while One makes hay and hangs out the washing while the sun shines. Now, where were we? Oops, the tummy is growling, must be time for some freshly baked scones and jam. Oh bother, it’s already the afternoon and One simply must get the casserole in the slow cooker and then get those overdue books back to the library. Perhaps, tomorrow will be better. Nope, tomorrow was no better. Or the next day. Or the next day. What’s that? Deadline day has already crept up? How on earth did that happen? This is a week in the life of your Aunt, my dear. One has seven days to do one job and yet somehow it almost always comes down to the wire before One is able to actually put One’s mind to it. So you are certainly not the only one prone to procrastination, Distracted. One doesn’t know what it is about the power of the deadline to get the job done but all of a sudden, when the clock is ticking down, your Aunt is able to tune in to the task at hand and submit what most loyal readers would agree is sparkling life commentary interspersed with some fairly decent advice, even if One does say so Oneself. While One is sure there are ways to manage procrastinating — by better managing your time and allowing windows where you can allow your brain to unravel by doing all those less taxing things like chatting to friends and surfing the web — to be honest, in One’s own experience, they never really work. And One has learnt not to fight it, Distracted. Some might say we are lazy or unproductive, but your Aunt prefers to think of Oneself as someone who needs the looming threat of professional ruin to get the job done. After all, why do in five days what can be done in 45 minutes of blind, unbridled terror? Some of us are just fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants, thrill-of-the-chase kind of people, Distracted. And your Aunt is far too old to wage a war against One’s personality at this stage of life. Instead, One embraces it and makes sure to use the time when One is procrastinating wisely and then focus and knuckle down when it needs to happen. Perhaps this approach isn’t for everyone, but it seems to work for your Aunt, at least up until this point. If you are determined to get the better of your poor time-management skills, One would suggest starting small. Set your alarm for 30 minutes and aim to get as much done in that time frame as possible. Then take a 20-minute break before doing another 30 minutes of work. Over time, try to increase the 30-minute work periods to 45 minutes. But keep the break at 20 minutes. Once you get used to this flow, with a bit of luck it might become second nature. But if it does not, do not fret. Just accept you are a deadline thrillseeker. And let’s face it, you are in wonderful company!