I read an article this morning in the New York Times about procrastination that I found interesting to think about. I received the link to it from my LinkedIn email update and here is the link if you'd like to check out the article yourself. Why You Procrastinate (It Has Nothing to Do With Self-Control) Since I am a champion procrastinator, I definitely had to see what this was all about. It did inspire me to go and write this blog post about it, so it is definitely worth a read.
The basic premise of the article is that procrastination isn't about laziness or lack of self-control. Procrastinators often avoid doing tasks by doing something else instead. Something that is often detailed and time-consuming but much lower priority than whatever we were trying to avoid. Contrary to popular opinion, some psychologists have put forth the opinion that procrastination comes into being due to "an inability to manage negative moods around a task." Hmm. I'm with you so far. I can work hard at a task for hours on end but still have things that I put off indefinitely. The doctors in these studies target emotions and moods including boredom, anxiety, insecurity, frustration, resentment, and self-doubt among other less prevalent emotions. Procrastination, they say, is an emotion management problem not a time management problem. Well... yes and no, is my experience.
Part of my procrastination problem is indeed a time management issue. I have difficulty accurately predicting how long it will take to complete a task. All too often I only allow for ideal circumstances and the shortest amount of time and equally often, those ideal circumstances fail to appear. I'm sure none of you are surprised by that. To further compound the problem, by underestimating the time needed, I then schedule too many things to do before having to go somewhere and, also no surprise, run late trying to accomplish them all. This is when negative emotions come into play as I find myself frustrated and stressed, which results in irritation and resentment at all these things that need to be done and that thought leads straight down the road of procrastination.
There are times when negative emotions are the root cause for me as well. Boring tasks are much more likely to get delayed than interesting ones. I've always struggled with boredom and that has only gotten worse as I've gotten older. It's not that I don't have anything to do or any hobbies; it's that I've grown bored with them. If there's nothing challenging or intriguing about them anymore, I find it incredibly hard to follow through and finish a project. The other emotional cause is resentment. All too often I find myself in a situation where I agreed to do something a few days ago then other things came up in between then and now. Now I find myself with too much to do and not enough time to do it, angry and wondering "why do I do this to myself?" In an effort to meet the obligation of what I had agreed to do, the other tasks get pushed aside and all too often remain undone.
So what is a lifelong procrastinator to do? Well, the psychologists suggest becoming mindful of the emotions and how procrastinating makes you feel in the moment to try and steer yourself into a better space by recognizing how you feel when it comes time to pay the piper. Next suggestion is to visualize what steps you would take next if you were going to do the task, with the idea that this would lead to motivating you to actually do the task. For me... nope. No amount of visualizing steps will motivate me to do the piled up dishes. Their third suggestion has some merit and I've found can work to getting things started; make doing whatever you do as procrastination more inconvenient. Like moving my laptop into the office instead of lounging on the living room sofa with it. The other thing that works well with me is to become my own nag. Self-talk such as "don't sit down until you've switched the laundry loads," and "feed the dog right now before you work on that file." I can't stand my self-nagging but always find myself relieved and surprised at how little time the task took to complete when done on time. You'd think this would become a trend. One can always hope.
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