Strong disagree. I procrastinate out of boredom, not insecurity.
When I'm engaged, even if it's new territory, I'm on fire.
When I'm bored, it's painful to get through certain things, and it makes doing the dishes or laundry look appealing!
For most people, procrastination is a lack of will power to do that which we do not wish to do even though we know we must.
As an side, for just about all people, drugs like adderall and friends WILL help you be more productive, though it comes with its own consequences (lack of creativity in some, jitters, easily agitated, loss of apetite, etc.). And I do mean it would help just about anyone who took it, not just those diagnosed with ADD.
Counterpoint: Player psychology in every video game, ever. If an overwhelming amount of features are presented all at once, most players quit before reaching the "good parts." Cognitive overload. I have watched players literally squawk in distress because an otherwise simple game gave them too much, too quickly.
Hence design strategies now tend towards ultra-gradual tutorialization with areas of instant gratification. Designs relying primarily on player discipline to master the content or make optimal decisions(notetaking, mapping, manual arithmetic) have all but disappeared, leaving those mechanics that allow success to feel intuitive and perpetually within reach.
Once basic mastery appears, something else happens: Players start willingly doing boring, tedious things in an effort to carve out the "last bits" of improvement. Micromanagement, speed-runs, grinding, statistical analysis, etc. The key thing is that these aspects only appear towards the back-end of the game's skill progression, after players already have confidence in prior technique.
And as it happens, the same is true of most technical endeavors - building on the fundamentals is how you grasp more complex stuff.
For me, there's usually a long period of "book study" where I nibble around the edges before I go in and attack a learning problem head-on with lots of practice. This process, though it has some caveats, lets me work from preexisting relationships more easily and adds "insurance" that I can retrieve value from all practice time.
Agreed, but what you describe and what you say you do are not procrastinating.
One observation is that procrastinators are rarely delusional about what they (are not) doing. It's a genuine lack of willpower or a feeling of apathy. Neither of which are symptoms of low skill.
Note that he said: "low skill levels cause procrastination". Not: "low skill levels are the only cause of procrastination".
Avoidance is a well known coping mechanism. The author's reasoning is valid in that a person whose responsibility it is to solve problems, when facing a task that is beyond their skill level, will feel anxiety about delivering. In that scenario, avoidance is common. That is not to say that it is the only cause of procrastination.
I think one of the main causes of procrastination is not knowing what the next step is. So, in a sense he is correct. You say you're on fire, even if it's new territory, but I think you're still referring to domains that you have knowledge in general, e.g. picking up a new programming language. You have an idea of your next step.
When I'm engaged, even if it's new territory, I'm on fire.
When I'm bored, it's painful to get through certain things, and it makes doing the dishes or laundry look appealing!
For most people, procrastination is a lack of will power to do that which we do not wish to do even though we know we must.
As an side, for just about all people, drugs like adderall and friends WILL help you be more productive, though it comes with its own consequences (lack of creativity in some, jitters, easily agitated, loss of apetite, etc.). And I do mean it would help just about anyone who took it, not just those diagnosed with ADD.