Procrastinators Anonymous

12 signs that you may be a compulsive procrastinator:

1. Disappointment is a way of life. You constantly disappoint others and yourselves by not keeping your promises.  

2. You have enormous difficulty getting started on new projects or transitioning from one project to another. 

3. You have a poor sense of time, chronically underestimating or overestimating how long a task will take you to complete. 

4. You have difficulty organizing projects; you don't know where to start, even when you're willing to start. 

5. You may be surrounded by clutter and disorganization in your home and workspaces. 

6. You are regularly late for appointments. 

7. You are acutely aware of what you should be doing (or rather think you should be doing), yet oddly out of touch with what you actually want and need. 

8. You feel uncomfortable saying "no" to requests from others. Instead, you express your resentment through the passive resistance of procrastination. 

9. You feel paralyzed, powerless to move forward though the task is critical and deadlines are looming. 

10. You are a short-term thinker, tending to focus on short-term pleasure while ignoring long-term well-being. 

11. You feel overwhelmed by the tasks before you and escape the bad feeling by doing something else. 

12. You do things in “least odious” order rather than priority order, so you run out of time for the most important tasks.

1. We admitted we were powerless over compulsive procrastination, that our lives had become unmanageable. 

2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to compulsive procrastinators, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

1. Reward Success: Acknowledge and celebrate your progress and accomplishments, no matter how small.

2. Bookend Tasks and Time: Use an accountability partner, the PA Community bookending chat, the PA Slack or WhatsApp group to check in throughout the day, or at the beginning or end of specific tasks you are dreading.

3. Keep a Time Log: Increase your awareness of time by logging what you are doing throughout the day. This is a great diagnostic tool for discovering where your time went, and an excellent way to become better at estimating how long tasks take.

4. Break It Down: Break down projects into specific action steps; include preparation tasks in the breakdown.

5. Develop Routines: Routines help structure your day, and make habits of tasks you always need to do like making the bed or handling mail. Develop routines for what you do when you wake up, regular tasks of your workday, and what you need to do before going to bed.

6. Avoid Time Bingeing: One reason procrastinators dread starting is that once they start they don't let themselves stop. Plan to work on a task for a defined period of time, then set a timer. When the timer goes off, you're done.

7. Avoid Perfectionism: Procrastinators have a tendency to spend more time on a task than it warrants, so tasks that should be quick to do take an agonizingly long time. Notice this tendency and stop yourself. Some things require completion, not perfection.

8. Recognize You Can’t Do Everything: All of us have infinite to-do lists, but limited time. We can’t do everything; we have to make choices. Procrastination is about making choices that are not in our best interest. Decide what to say yes to, and what to let go.

9. Ask Yourself Why: Visualize doing the task, and see if you can detect what about it feels odious to you, what uncomfortable feeling you are avoiding. Knowing what's behind the avoidance can help you get past it - for example, address real problems or ignore irrational fears.

10. Focus on Long-Term Consequences: Remind yourself why you want to do this task, how it will benefit you to complete it, how it aligns with your life goals and dreams.

11. Use Small Blocks of Time: Procrastinators often have trouble doing tasks in incremental steps, and wait for big blocks of time that never come. When you have small blocks of time, use them to work on the task at hand.

12. Do Highest Impact Tasks First: Procrastinators struggle with what to do first. If you prioritize tasks according to their value to your life and well-being, you won’t run out of time or energy for what matters most. Pray for help with feelings of anxiety, overwhelm, and indecision.

In honor of our 7th Tradition, there are no dues or fees to join the PA fellowship or to attend PA meetings. However, PA does have expenses. Donations are needed to maintain this fellowship for sufferers seeking support.

Procrastinators Anonymous is a spiritual program, not a religious program. We do not advocate any particular belief system.

The steps suggest a belief in a Power greater than ourselves. This can be human love, a force for good, the group, nature, the universe, God, or any entity a member chooses as a personal Higher Power.

No. The PA fellowship and meetings are closed (that is, open only to those who identify as compulsive procrastinators, or think they might be).

Procrastinator's Anonymous was established in December of 2005 by a fellow sufferer who formerly went by the pseudonym "Pro."

Yes. Here is a link to our Meeting Materials.

Yes. We have volunteers willing to answer additional questions you may have. Send an email to pa.12step@gmail.com.