Comment by aaronbaugher
2 days ago
No, most people have never found themselves staring at a pile of unpaid bills and collection notices, while knowing there's work they should be doing that would pay those bills...and feeling physically and mentally incapable of starting that work. Not "I don't wanna" or "I'd rather play games right now," but "I know I should do that, I know it would make my life better and I want that so bad...but I just can't."
It's horrible, and definitely not something that applies to just about everyone.
I do need to push back because I think what you're describing here is an emotional dysfunction, not an executive dysfunction, and I think the former really is a nearly universal experience to some degree or another. Maybe not all the time but certainly some of the time.
I had never experienced this exact scenario before my thirties but I ran into an exceptionally busy period in my life where I found myself overwhelmed with tasks and accidentally ignored my credit cards for a couple months. I eventually realized this, but I put it off for at least another month, even though every other day I was thinking about it and I wanted to solve the problem, knowing it was an easy problem to fix and that I had the time to solve it despite being busy. The reason I didn't was because of fear, the dread of the unknown (how bad were the overage charges going to be?) but also a fear of being faced with such an obvious failure, even though objectively I knew the loss would be trivial.
I think this drives most forms of procrastination, certainly everyone I've talked to about it (parents, friends, coworkers) describe it in similar words, comparing it to the anticipation of touching a hot stove, etc.