Trying to figure things out...

As a graduate student, procrastination is really killing me this semester. I have a vague idea of how long a given assignment is going to take, and I won't start on it until there is no open time left before the deadline. I always make a schedule that sets reasonable hours to work on it, distributed nicely over the course of the assignment, but I never end up following my schedule. I know that no one is perfect and I probably shouldn't expect to meet my goals, but I think that my performance is so bad that it's just off the charts. This semester I've done good work, when I've worked, but it's the getting to work that's the hard part. I've come up with some good schedules to keep me from the undue stress (and sheer panic) that comes from procrastination. But I've finally realized that schedules just don't work for me. Not at all. Not even a little bit. And I have years of data to support this. Maybe this is some psychological defect. If I have a long term deadline and I'm not particularly interested in the material, there's basically no way that I'm going to start on it early. Rewards, punishments, nagging, bribes, threats; nothing works.

So I live my life constantly being upset and disappointed with myself. I unnecessarily maintain a high level of stress knowing that I'm behind my schedule. And when I finally do catch up with my schedule (often at the end of a semester) I am annoyed by how easy things could have been if I would have even an ounce of discipline.

I'm kind of like that annoying hero that we have so often in sci-fi/fantasy stories. He discovers some special ability/magic power that he could use, but is afraid to use. There are all these situations where you hope he'll use his powers to make things right, but he doesn't unless he's forced into doing so (usually because someone's life is at stake). That kind of hero annoys me. I always think, "Gosh, if I had that super power, I'd use it all the time to make things better for everyone." So now I wonder if I am like these guys that I despise so much. All this potential, but they just waste it (or at least use it inefficiently).

I know you're probably thinking that my expectations for myself are too high. I really don't think that they are high at all. I think I've lowered them down to what I would consider "average person" level.

I suspect that there are many people in the world that can follow a schedule, not perfectly, but approximately. Is there something different about those people. Can we do DNA tests to find out what it is? Or am I just lazy?