Why do I always wait until the last minute to get things done?

Question

I swear I don’t mean to procrastinate. I’ll tell myself I’m going to get ahead, and then suddenly it’s the night before and I’m panicking. This keeps happening no matter how much I try to plan. What’s going on?

Answer 1

HI!

My name is Alora, and I specialize in helping people like you. Oftentimes, what a person who struggles with motivation needs is not more pressure, and especially not being forced to talk to someone who doesn't understand that struggle, and has no idea how to help. A lot of kids who fall behind on work and struggle to care about school get called lazy, but the fact of the matter is, Laziness is often a fictitious idea used to belittle people who are struggling with something else, like being overwhelmed, or anxious, perhaps burnt out, or depressed. Struggling is not a character flaw. And the best thing you can offer someone who is struggling is help and support. not judgment. I'm writing a book about all those weird neurodivergent feelings that we can't always explain.

 Procrastination is the word you are looking for, but I think that word focuses way too much on how your struggle impacts other people and not enough on what it feels like to you. I have given a name to this concept that a lot of adhd people live with. I call it “Crisis Momentum.” It's the weird thing where you can’t do laundry for two weeks, but you can write a 16-page grant proposal in the 4 hours before the deadline, while all the time sobbing and eating far, far, too many pickles. You don’t ever just have normal energy; to do things, you only get emergencies. It's kind of like a nuclear reaction, you are either still or you fundamentally shift shapes. When you finally collect enough energy for motion, by that point, you have too much energy, and the only thing to do is detonate. Spend four hours cleaning your room, and suddenly it's 1 AM. 

It's a fundamental feature of adhd that what motivates us is NOT the importance of the task but ICNU: Interest, Challenge, Novelty, or Urgency. If you want to get something done, it needs to be one of those four. Usually, urgency is the one that gets most tasks done, but as a tutor, I would teach you the skills necessary to not get so overwhelmed. To tackle that messy room with bravery and most importantly, a STRATEGY!

People like us are struggling because people are trying to force them to function in a world where they have no tools designed for THEIR brains. I design tools for these people. That is what I am getting my PHD in at Vanderbilt. If you are wandering blind and feel like nobody understands you, and feel you struggle too much and won't ever be good enough to even bother trying, you need me.

I used to be a struggling overwhelmed kid, and once I started developing my methods and strategies, I went on to be the 5th Youth Poet Laureate of the Southern United states, A Presidential Scholar of the Arts, A 2x TEDx Speaker, and a critically acclaimed poet and published author (Walking Gentry Home by Alora Young) with Penguin Random House, all before age 22. (I'm currently 22) I received a Davidson Fellows "Youth Genius Grant" in my senior year of high school and have been acclaimed as "profoundly gifted" by academics and professors all over the country. I am a professional public speaker with the Penguin Random Speakers Org, the most elite speakers organization in the country.

 But most importantly, I have autism and ADHD, and I struggle with stuff like this every single day. And I can offer you what none of these people can: actual tools based on neurodivergent brains, made by neurodivergent people, that actually help.  

I'm here to help!

Lastly, I write all my own answers and materials. No AI needed. It's not smarter than me yet!

Answer 2

Procrastination is a coping mechanism, not a character flaw!

In my experience, people that procrastinate consistently are "stuck" in some way and they don't know how to get unstuck. Sometimes, the area(s) where you are stuck are not even the areas where you are procrastinating.

To change the cycle of procrastination, you have to develop an awareness of the patterns related to the habit.

1. Do you procrastinate in all your classes, work projects, etc. or only with some of them? Which ones?
2. When you procrastinate and wait until the night before, what is the quality of the work you produce?
3. What does procrastination do to you physically? mentally?
4. How do you feel when you have procrastinated and then completed the assignment/project? Is that energizing or exhausting?
5. Do you procrastinate on purpose? Or do you find that "time gets away from you"?

Once you start noticing the details about your habit of procrastination, then you can identify specific skills to learn and systems to implement that will help you get unstuck.

And, as you learn and implement those skills, you'll be able to say that procrastination is not a problem anymore.

Answer 3

Yeah, this one’s familiar. A lot of people with ADHD deal with this. It’s not that you don’t care or that you’re bad at time management. The real issue is that your brain isn’t great at starting unless something feels urgent or there’s pressure on the line.

So even if you plan ahead, it still doesn’t feel real. The task just floats there in your head, and your brain shrugs at it. Then the deadline shows up, panic kicks in, and suddenly you’re working like your life depends on it. That pressure gives you the dopamine spike your brain was waiting for all along.

There are ways to build structure that help create urgency earlier without burning yourself out every time. You’re not broken. You just weren’t set up with the right tools.