The Dangerous Line Between Procrastination and Self-Sabotage

How procrastinating with media consumption turned into self-sabotaging my dreams of success...

One thing I envy about my parents and their generation is their ability to get ready for bed and fall asleep without spending hours lying there, doom scrolling on their phones.

What once started as harmless procrastination in my youth has grown into rampant self-sabotage. As a pre-teen, I used to lie awake on my iPod Touch, playing makeover apps or watching funny YouTube videos. Then, as social media entered my life, my evenings were often spent scrolling. As I grew older, I often found myself falling asleep watching TV shows or movies, constantly sleep-procrastinating. When I downloaded TikTok during the pandemic, I unknowingly began to self-sabotage my future self.

My procrastination bled into my everyday life. I began to procrastinate getting out of bed, getting ready, doing basic chores. I would distract myself with my phone. It didn’t really become a problem until recently, when I found myself spend less time writing and more time on social media or watching television ( telling myself - just one more episode, then I’ll write).

I started to spiral, pushing things back repeatedly until the day was over and I hadn’t completed any of the tasks I had wanted to—tasks I spent a lot of time thinking about in my head, but still not giving up the dopamine hit.

My fear of failure and of being perceived crept in too, fuelling my procrastination even more. Then, I saw a video on TikTok where someone said, this is the one life you are living—get off your phone and chase your dreams.

I should mention that for the past eight weeks, I’ve also been participating in The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, which initially raised my concerns about my self-sabotaging ways. One thing we artists love to do is procrastinate creation.

So why, if I so badly wanted to write more, was I not allowing myself to do it?

According to the Cambridge online dictionary, there isn’t a definition for self-sabotage, but there is for sabotage: "to intentionally prevent the success of a plan or action."
Therefore, I am intentionally preventing my own action—and consequently, any success that could come from that action.

Self-sabotage comes from deep-rooted fears: fear of not living up to our expectations or those of others, fear of actually achieving what we want, deep-rooted self-doubt—what if we try for what we have always wanted and still don’t achieve it?

Although, if you never try for what you want, you are never going to get it—so the power really is in your hands. And we learn through failure. We can try again, or just keep trying and learning as we go along, eventually being happy with the end result.

All these thoughts spinning around my head led me to create a plan to wean myself off social media and set writing targets to keep myself on track.

It’s starting to work. Thankfully, even though I still want to pick up my phone (even as I’m writing this, I can feel the pull to scroll), I feel incredibly bored on social media nowadays. The thrill isn’t the same as it was when I was younger—I feel mentally numb to the videos I see. Some videos are helpful and inspiring, but TikTok now feels overwhelmingly noisy. My Instagram feed seems more about the perfect picture of a fake life than an authentic one. I wonder if, the less I use it, the more I’ll enjoy it when I do eventually check in on things in the online realm.

My current aim is to practise and maintain this restraint and self-trust. When I stick to something, I usually go all in. I’ve set timers on my social media apps, listed my goals, made an action plan, and I’m vowing to stick to it. I’m not diving all in at once—I’m taking one small step at a time to build up the trust and courage to keep going. I know I’ll have to fight the urge to pick up my phone at times, and I will gladly do it.

Because no one is going to do it for me - other than me. Ultimately, my future self will thank me.

Livia x

---