TL;DR Emotions are somewhat studied in terms of how to deal with them, check Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
Check out Feeling Good by Burns[1], there are specific chapters addressing perfectionism. And his podcast on this topic "“I don’t feel like doing it!” Quick Cure for Procrastinators""[2] (suggest to find it on iTunes[3]/Spotify to listen with 1.5x speed, episode 053)
I'm going through a stage in my life when I don't enjoy doing things anymore. Obviously, if a task is considered somewhat hard and I know I will barely enjoy it, there is very little internal emotional support (motivation?) for doing it, thus procrastination.
I did an exercise from the book which was to list tasks I did during the day and mark a satisfaction rate as well as an efficiency rate. All the tasks are like 10% satisfaction, 99% efficiency. Seems like a mismatch. Then I asked myself a question "What would a person who does useful and efficient things tell himself to feel that miserable? What would he think about?".
I got the following, which goes really deep into my internal motivations and fears:
"All these tasks are worth nothing. I shouldn't be happy with them because I can forget that I don't grow and don't accomplish much in general. I may end up being a silly guy who only chills and has fun but in fact, has nothing meaningful going in his life. I shouldn't forget that things are not that good at the moment and it's too early to relax, to enjoy small accomplishments. A person becomes weak if he always enjoys what's going on around."
So if you experience a huge mismatch between satisfaction and efficiency (paradoxically I naturally have lots of fun doing things I am like 0% efficient in because I don't know yet how perfect result looks like), I suggest you to ask the same question "what thoughts could make a person that miserable?".
After listing advantages of believing the above and deep appreciation of my beliefs, it became clear that some of them are crazy self-sadistic. Even though they have the best intentions in the universe (making my life better) what they in fact achieved was getting me to the verge of having suicidal thoughts. And now I am doing exercises mentioned in the book and the podcast to give up these beliefs.
I'm going through a stage in my life when I don't enjoy doing things anymore. Obviously, if a task is considered somewhat hard and I know I will barely enjoy it, there is very little internal emotional support (motivation?) for doing it, thus procrastination.
I did an exercise from the book which was to list tasks I did during the day and mark a satisfaction rate as well as an efficiency rate. All the tasks are like 10% satisfaction, 99% efficiency. Seems like a mismatch. Then I asked myself a question "What would a person who does useful and efficient things tell himself to feel that miserable? What would he think about?".
I got the following, which goes really deep into my internal motivations and fears: "All these tasks are worth nothing. I shouldn't be happy with them because I can forget that I don't grow and don't accomplish much in general. I may end up being a silly guy who only chills and has fun but in fact, has nothing meaningful going in his life. I shouldn't forget that things are not that good at the moment and it's too early to relax, to enjoy small accomplishments. A person becomes weak if he always enjoys what's going on around."
So if you experience a huge mismatch between satisfaction and efficiency (paradoxically I naturally have lots of fun doing things I am like 0% efficient in because I don't know yet how perfect result looks like), I suggest you to ask the same question "what thoughts could make a person that miserable?".
After listing advantages of believing the above and deep appreciation of my beliefs, it became clear that some of them are crazy self-sadistic. Even though they have the best intentions in the universe (making my life better) what they in fact achieved was getting me to the verge of having suicidal thoughts. And now I am doing exercises mentioned in the book and the podcast to give up these beliefs.
[1] - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/03... [2] - https://feelinggood.com/2017/09/18/053-ask-david-i-dont-feel... [3] - https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/feeling-good-podcast-tea...