Also for the record, I’ve lately been attending a cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) group that has helped me realize something that I didn’t know at the time of writing this article: the fact that I have a very strong tendency to devalue the things I’ve accomplished, because they seem to be overshadowed by the things I haven’t done yet.

So, Tim, you were right that bullying myself into finishing things wasn’t going to help, but it wasn’t because of being bullied: it was because I wasn’t allowing myself the joy of accomplishment that was meant to draw me forward to accomplishing more.

This realization also means that I am now working on acknowledgng partial completion as a worthy accomplishment, because really, anything accomplished should be treated as valuable. Plus, it sure does take the pressure off, to know that every little bit of progress helps towards a goal!

I’m not good at fooling myself — for example, I’ve never been able to set a clock a few minutes fast to “encourage” me to be early for things. I just translate the time to the real time, and I’m still late.

Similarly, I’ve tried telling myself there are better ways of looking at unfinished things, but I still felt like the problem was there. So now I’ve realized: if I define tasks in small enough chunks, I should be able to finish them when I intend to do so. THESE are the things I am counting, and I’m trying to get better at this.

I’m not sure if I made this clear in the article above… but that’s what discussion and commenting is for, right? (Surely, I’ll write another article on this subject too.)

A thought about unfinished tasks – it occurs to me (CBT-style) that there are two ways to think of them. The negative one is “things I didnt. finish” …

I think my only remaining source of perfectionism occurs when I am contemplating whether NOW is the “perfect” time to work on something. The time will never be “perfect”, of course, and I know this. Knowledge is not quite half the battle though, because I still procrastinate!

I’ve decided to try working on my motivation, and one thing I am hoping to count on for this is the joy in actually completing things. I have so many things I’ve left unfinished over the past few years that they’re weighing me down. I even started doubting I was capable of finishing things!! These thoughts are the ones I’m tackling with this approach.

Notice, though, that I am also rewarding myself for cancelling something, so I’m not really bullying myself into completing things — just pushing myself to bring things to the point where I don’t have to think about them any more.

Unfinished tasks are like unnecessary baggage; I am still having dreams of dragging around too much stuff, and I think this new approach will help me get rid of some of that stress.

I use a cognitive behavioural approach to that kind of thing, using observable evidence to undermine the thinking that causes the blockage.
e.g. learning to replace “One imperfection means failure!” with “One imperfection is one imperfection and the rest of it’s very good” or “Even if it can’t be perfect it can still be good, and whatever I do on it is worth doing”.

My suggestion is to avoid any approaches which bully yourself into finishing things, and focus on ones which notice what thoughts are blocking you and undermine them.