Even if they’re not difficult, they still feel like a burden, and I’m very worried that I won’t have time to do them or that I’ll forget about them. I either put them off but constantly think about them, or I try to get them done as quickly as possible and get very irritated when something prevents me from doing them. I can never relax if I have things to do, even if they’re not urgent; they’re still a pain in my ass. I don’t know why I feel this way, and I think this is the reason why I avoid difficulties and my life sucks so much.
One of the important things that you learn over time in a high stress situation is that you can only commit around 70% of your effort before you start burning yourself out.
As in, yes, you can definitely try harder and get more things done, but that can only be done in very short bursts. After a while, you would not be able to bring yourself to do anything. And so, the followup lesson is that you shouldn’t beat yourself up for only committing 70%. Take some time every once in a while to ask yourself: on a scale of 1-10, where 10 is the maximum conceivable amount of effort I can imagine myself giving, how would I rate the amount of effort that I am currently putting in to my work? If your score is 8 or above, then that’s your issue. You’re experiencing burnout.
If you have work piling up but you’re already committing 70%, then you just have to acknowledge that there is more work coming than you can reasonably handle. So what can you do? I don’t really know what your current career status is, so I can’t give solid advice. But you can consider either declining to take on more work or letting some tasks fall to the wayside.
If you are concerned that your 70% effort is noticeably lower than an average person’s 70%, then that’s a different issue altogether. You might just have depression. In which case, talk to a therapist.