Specific Distraction

Here's something that happens to me sometimes: I'm not busy—I have some small, unimportant things to do, and one specific big important task. It might not necessarily be that difficult or complicated, but it does have a deadline. Then I leave it and leave it and eventually it gets near the deadline and I've not done it. Then I speak to whoever it is the work is for and they don't ask me about it, or they do and it's clear that they didn't really expect it in by this deadline, and I feel like I understood that on some level, and I won't respond to the deadline unless it's really real.

I wouldn't usually say I respond super-well to high pressure from clients—I don't like being chased with emails—but I need to know that that the expectation I'll do stuff is there. If things are too low-pressure that just seems to... stop me from being able to focus, somehow? Not on everything, just on some things, occasionally. Every day this week I have set out with the intention of doing this task—that would probably actually be pretty quick, that wouldn't take that much time, but my whole brain will shift away from it, more than the kind of thing I'm talking about here.

Is it because there's not much else on—is it fear of not having anything else to do after? The terror of freedom? At least when I'm putting stuff off in the way I described before I feel like it's stuff that I'm somehow scared of (even though I have no reason to be). If it's something I know I don't want to do or is boring I can usually pop on some music and just crank through it. But this is something else. I've realised recently that I definitely have a hard time not having anything 'on'; it might be an extension of that. I'm really not sure, but whatever it is it really gets on my nerves.