Your work seems to think that they're getting more than $130K of value for the $130K they pay you. Why does it matter if it takes you 3 hours to do that and not 8? Of course your employer would like you to believe you're defrauding them because they'd rather get $260K of value out of you instead of, say, $150K, but if you're not fired over it, the arrangement is working for them. Every employer in this country would like their employees to feel as guilty as you do, but you're not pulling a lever to make sprockets. The relationship between your time and your value to the company is not directly proportional to pressing keys in your editor. Our field is swamped with bad programmers that spend all day making codebases worse. Some days when I'm not productive, I have to remind myself that at least nothing got worse. The guy I replaced, most days when he did any work at all, things got worse as a result. So if I fail to accomplish anything, it's still better than an accomplishment from someone who shouldn't have been doing this job but inexplicably was (and got away with it for a year before being fired for reasons unrelated to performance!).
By the way, 8 + 3 = 11 hours of work a day. Is it possible you're simply burned out? I know you're 21 and probably don't feel like it can happen, but it can.
I usually am at the office for 80+ hours a week. It could be burn out, but even when I reduce down to 40 hours I basically cut everything I accomplish in half. Somehow my brain realizes what I'm doing and I procrastinate just as much.
I have realized some other effects from burnout, but I think this procrastination issue is something different entirely
I'm surprised by that, but obviously you know you better than I do. Burnout takes a long time to recover from.
If you get nothing else from my remarks, at least consider the possibility that the real problem isn't procrastination, it's that you're too hard on yourself.
I don't agree with that. I have programmers that come in and do a solid days work every single day. It might not be the best code, but I see them working on it all day long.
It sucks because even though I'm accomplishing as much work as they are, I can only do it for a few hours a day. I'm envious of their focus and ability to actually get shit done. If it wasn't for them, I probably would be fired. Although....even then, everyone else at this company loves me so much that I don't think they could fire me.
You're envious because you imagine that you could exceed them by a factor of three if you could focus like they do, but there's no real reason to believe that. Your peers with focus weren't like you, they didn't have a procrastination "problem" to conquer.
The real world is not logic-driven. You admit you wouldn't be fired because of your personality. Well, guess what: that's what keeps a lot of people employed. All you're getting for your high expectations of yourself is unnecessary pain.
Nobody complains about their coworkers being procrastinators. They complain about their coworkers not getting shit done. You're getting shit done, so they have nothing to complain about. Even better, they actually like you!
Your only real problem is that you aren't happy. There's no reason to assume being productive will make you happy, apart from freedom from the guilt. This should be liberating, because there are lots more solutions to the guilt problem than procrastination, and they're a lot less like snake oil.
By the way, 8 + 3 = 11 hours of work a day. Is it possible you're simply burned out? I know you're 21 and probably don't feel like it can happen, but it can.