As if the colonists were not already dumb enough

[LakeWobegon]

So after a 2 months break due to all the bugs like raiders walking over eachother and hardcore teleporting after they go into "drafted" mode I decided to give Rimworld another try. I saw that that was not fixed but now, to "compensate",  colonists without any psychic abilities when on recreation schedule meditate for hours on end (despite the recreation bar already being full). I did not tell them to meditate, in fact the entire schedule does not have a single hour assigned to meditation but since they can do it for joy... Work to be done? Near starvation? Who cares they will rather procrastinate ~5 hours for absolutely no reason. Wanna do that Ice sheet biome where you need to be near 100% effective to survive? Good luck with that unless you watch the pawns like a bloody hawk to draft/undraft every time they procastrinate.  Oh btw Allies with a massive map to land on often still land right on our face cutting necks of ppl and animals. I am gonna go play something else until these things get fixed, hopefully they will be fixed before I completely lose interest. Have a gr8 day.

[LWM]

Have you set their work schedule specifically to "work" and not to "anything"?

[LakeWobegon]

I never had to do that, forcing pawns to work via schedule is usually VERY stupid because its a sure fire way to make them break. Forcing them to work makes them go recreation starved and sleep deprived. The only thing needed is a poorly timed raid. Telling them to recreate ensures they will always be rested, will always have the +10 mood buff which makes them harder to break and they used to go work the moment they were done (rec bar at 100%). Now they are there doing absolutely nothing for hours on end. Ofc that is my fault (what did I expect by posting here?).

[LakeWobegon]

Hey I found a way to fix the stupid colonist procrastination bug; I followed Tynan's advice in other threads and tracked the problem to a poorly tested mod that was causing the issue. After disabling the "Royalty" mod pawns are back to normal and I can still enjoy RimWorld. Yay.

[Hilvon1984]

forcing pawns to work via schedule is usually VERY stupid

I respectfully disaggree.
Sure if you force your colonists to work 24 hours, this is going to be a problem, but what stops you from setting up the shedule that has work, sleep and recreationn accounted for?

My general guidelines are:
For sleeping shedule - set up 3 or 4 hours of "sleep" time followed by several hours of "anything" rather then having it all marked as sleep. This will aloow your pawns who don't actually need a full sleep get up early and do something usefull rather than just lying in bed with full Rest bar.
Have a 3 hour "Lunch" break recreation time in the middle of the day. This will let your colonists not get recreation starved through the day. And on top of this if all of them have dedicated rec time simultaneously, a lot of them will go for "Relaxing socially" and this will allow them to socialize and build positive opinions of each other.
If you are still worried about pawns working themselves into breaks, just use the same tactic as with sleep. Set only a couple hours of specifically work and them let them do anything, so the will keep working of go do recreation.

As for pawns meditating for extended time - never had this problem. Maybe you only have too few recreation options?

[LakeWobegon]

I had enough recreation options for them to not be "bored".
IDK where you got the idea that rested pawns will stay in bed if told to sleep. Pawns on sleep schedule when 100% rested will go work (if there is any available) until their rest bar goes below 76% and then straight to bed; if there is no work available they will recreate. Unless the pawns have a circadian half cycler (or are iron willed + sanguine and/or have a joiwire) I say it again it is VERY stupid to force them to "work" to do "anything" or even to "sleep" (the later can be used temporarly when expecting a raid in the very near future; like some raiders are "preparing" or there is a ship event going). More often than not they will at the very least not be fully recreated (so no +10 to the mood); in the rare instances where they will actually have "recreation fully satisfied" they are likely to drop to " recreation satisfied" (and only +5 mood) over the course of a single raid because recreation is not the main focus of the schedule. The only safe instruction for the pawns when it comes to the schedule is to tell them to recreate and this is because the colonist AI does not often check the schedule so if tasks take too long they can easily skip 2 hours of scheduled tasks (until they finish the current task or move). I guess some ppl enjoy seeing their pawns breaking, IDK. Like I said before this issue is, ofc, 100% my fault but disabling the "royalty" mod fixed "my" mistake and the pawns are safer and less dumb now. Ty for your input and have a gr8 day.