Happy Tax Day, Procrastinators of the World!

What's wrong with this picture?  I'm not in it!  Thanks to my Turbo-Taxing second husband, I no longer join the throng of cars snaking past the post office at midnight on April 15th.  Of course, this image is from the Boston Globe's tax day gallery, and it's unlikely I ever would have driven across the country to file my taxes in Boston.  But still, these last-minute desperadoes are my fiscal brothers and sisters.


Don't get me wrong.  I'm no TEA party sympathizer.  I'm relatively okay with paying my taxes.  I'd be a lot happier if my money weren't being spent to maim and kill other citizens of the world.  I would gladly ante up at a higher rate to support more pro-social programs.  And I'd feel better about the whole thing if the IRS didn't expect me to put in all the work up front to figure out how much I owe.  It feels like being visited by a burglar who expects me to show him where all the good stuff is, to pack it neatly and load it into his truck, and give him gas money to drive it away.


And then there's the deadline, the bane of procrastinators everywhere.  The imperviousness with which they blithely delay, knowing there's plenty of time.  Continuing to find better things to do.  Then that cold gripping sensation on or about April 13th, when they finally realize how little time they have left, how much there is still to do.  The desperate searching for misplaced forms, "documentation," fugitive receipts and renegade numbers.  The calls to the IRS "tax help" line, crucial minutes ticking by on hold.  The dash to completion.  The breathless race to the post office.  The long line of revelers, some tired and relieved, some high on the thrill of having made it.  I was one of them.  But no more.  


According to Joseph Cox from Liberty Tax (the folks who brought us the green clad Statues of Liberty waving tirelessly to us wretched refuse from teeming street corners), more people are taking matters into their own hands in this recession year, unable to afford professional tax preparation.  And many of them will not file, either because they just can't get it done, or because they decide not to file because they owe money they can't pay.  Of course, they are leaving themselves open to deeper gouging down the road, what with penalties and all.


Apparently, even Canadians, so much better than we on so many levels, also procrastinate when it comes to paying taxes.  Their deadline is different--April 30--and they write their checks to the "Receiver General."  But H&R Block Canada Inc., in an attempt to admonish Canadians to do their duty--oh, and yes, to drum up business--identifies these "Top Five Reasons for Procrastinating on Your Taxes:"

- You know you owe: 

Just because you will be writing a cheque to the Receiver General on April 30th does not mean you should wait to prepare your return. Getting the documents together and your T1 Form completed early means no pressure when it comes to the deadline. You can even file your return early and then send payment later.

- Outstanding debt means no refund: 

If you fall behind on your student loan payments or child support payments, the debt can be registered with theCanada Revenue Agency. It means that any tax refund or benefits like the GST/HST payment are designated to pay off the loan. Just because you don't get the money doesn't mean you shouldn't file. You have to pay off your student debt eventually.

- Dog ate my slips: 

You moved two times during 2009 so your T4s slips and other information receipts have gone astray or you haven't found them in your new place. Or your employer did not send a T4. You can track down replacement slips or get duplicates from other sources. Under Canada's self assessment system, you are required to provide an accurate estimate of the income you earned in 2009. You need to find your paperwork.

- Don't owe money: 

Your tax refund is money you have already paid in taxes so not filing means you are letting the government keep your money interest free. If you want your money to work for you, it should be invested where it earns some interest at least at a better rate than the CRA offers...which is zero.

- Weather is too nice: 

For many parts of the country, it has been a beautiful spring but the deadline for filing remains April 30. Though taxes and rainy days seem to go well together, you still have to file when the weather is nice.

Kind of lecture-y for my taste.  But solid advice, I suppose.  

I feel a little guilty as I contemplate my fellow North American procrastinators struggling with this onerous annual task.  I have had this cup taken from me.  There but for the grace of the partner I appreciate especially on this day. . .

I plan to celebrate my good fortune today at Starbuck's Make a Difference event.  Bring in your reusable mug and get free coffee!  I'm going to treat my husband.  And without spending a penny of his hard-earned tax return. 

Leaving Room for Surprises

Last week, I suddenly went to Dallas.  Courtesy of American Airlines, who were doing their level best to keep me on my flying toes.  I'm not always the world's most comfortable flier, and I really only like good surprises.  So learning that my flight to O'Hare was delayed and I would thus miss my connecting flight to New Orleans, I reported to a young man in a baseball cap who had made the announcement.  He wasn't even at my gate, which had not been staffed, and at boarding time still had no display identifying the flight.  We passengers had assembled at the gate on the basis of the airport's departure board, since our boarding passes were gateless, as we were clueless.  Word of mouth kept us at this unmarked location until the dreaded announcement.


Mr. Baseball Cap confirmed that I was going to miss my connecting flight, and suggested I jump on the flight for which he was boarding passengers, headed to Dallas.  The plane was already warming up and I had a minute to decide.  With hammering heart, I accepted the new boarding passes he was printing up for me and proceeded to the last seat on the plane.  Literally.  Last row, window seat.  Across from the bathroom which would be barfed in early in the two-plus-hours flight and never cleaned.  And next to a grumpy skinhead.


Several hours later, and only three hours after I was supposed to have arrived, I got where I was going.  In the meantime, I tried to relax.  With not much success, until I met a woman waiting for the connecting flight, also delayed.  We exchanged disgruntlement and abbreviated life stories while shuffling between Starbucks, the restroom, and our gate du jour, which kept changing to accommodate the vagaries of flight rescheduling.  We watched each other's luggage.  (Please don't tell anyone that "the interest of aviation safety" was less compelling than our need to close the door to the pre-9-11 bathroom stall unencumbered.)  Eventually, we boarded the plane we were directed to and parted company with wishes for a successfully concluded journey.  I had two seats to myself.  She was a few rows up, and I could hear her taking up with a new friend as the engines revved.


Four days later, I was back in the air.  And miracle of miracles, the boarding passes I printed before leaving my sister's house actually matched American's plans for my day.  Sort of.  In the crush of passengers trying to cram their swollen carry-on bags into the free, if inadequate overhead bins, I distractedly took a seat I thought was mine on the wrong side of the aisle.  By the time the woman assigned to that seat arrived, I had already begun a conversation with the person next to me.  The seat owner was happy to take my seat rather than wait for me to move my stuff, since our departure had been delayed by the carry-on crisis that should by now be predictable.  And I am happy to have come home with a new friend, the man I wasn't supposed to be sitting with.  


The point of all this, in addition to recounting the joys of air travel in the 21st century, is what I re-learned about serendipity on this trip.  My new friend who, except for a few key characteristics, could be the twin I lost track of at birth, offered this Einstein quote in remarking on the fortune of our meeting:  "Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous."  (And we all know I'm a sucker for an Einstein quote.)  A more secular version is Emma Bull's:  "Coincidence is the word we use when we can't see the levers and pulleys."


But regardless of whether coincidence is really coincidental or in fact directed, I gained new respect for the unplanned--despite holding an underused Master's degree in Urban and Regional Planning.  And I am thinking now about the need to leave some room in my newly rigorous schedule for surprises.  And not just on planes, where I confess I am often in need of distraction and thus perhaps more open to the moment.


In general, I seem to be heading in the "less is more" direction.  Procrastination recovery, at this stage in my process, appears to be more about prioritizing, pacing, and spontaneity.  (I really wanted a third "p" word, but pregnancy, proximity, portion-control, perversity and their alliterative sisters just didn't make it.)  And balance.  (And I flunked the balance beam unit in the commonly named "Basic Bod" requirement in college, when I was assigned to co-occupy my beam with a woman three times my weight!)  


All of this means that "conquering" procrastination doesn't involve indiscriminately doing everything I've been putting off, or being task-focused every minute in order to be "productive."  Like the bread my Grandma taught me to bake, my life needs a general idea of what I'm trying to make and not completely random addition of ingredients.  And it also needs air.  The space for surprises.

Procrastinating 101: Getting it Done in the Here and Now

This morning's post brings together two strong interests of mine--procrastinating and mindfulness meditation. 


These Procrastinating 101 posts are meant to share what I am culling from the procrastination "literature," as I pursue my standard bibliotherapy for the life problem that is the organizing principle of this blog.  The information I present and the frameworks I explore do not originate with me.  Today I return to the work of Dr. Timothy Pychyl and his team of procrastination researchers at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.  Dr. Pychyl, a self-identified recovered procrastinator, is a veritable fountain of findings and ideas about why we procrastinate and what we can do about it.


This week, I ran across Dr. Pychyl's post "Mindfulness Meditation: Thoughts on paying attention" in his Psychology Today blog Don't Delay.  As a practicing, and sometimes procrastinating meditator for the past few years, my interest was piqued by this juxtaposition.  I meditate for many reasons, but had never really thought of how meditating might relate to procrastination--beyond the difficulty I sometimes have in getting down to doing it.


Dr. Pychyl's post presents the research of his graduate student Ariel Rotblatt on the effects of mindfulness meditation on procrastination.  Rotblatt's study, of only six weeks duration, did not demonstrate the effect he was hoping to document--that mindfulness meditation decreased procrastination over the course of the experiment.  But he did find that students who scored higher on measures of mindfulness 

e.g., I am open to the experience of the present moment, I sense my body, whether eating, cooking, cleaning or talking, When I notice an absence of mind, I gently return to the experience of the here and now

also reported greater levels of "self-regulation."


Dr. Pychyl's post does a much better job than I can manage here of laying out the logic that led to Rotblatt's investigation.  (But that's probably why they pay him the big bucks to write about procrastination, while I toil away for free at this labor of love.)  The key concepts I take away from my reading are self-regulation and management of attention.  Dr. Pychyl tells us that researchers generally agree that "[p]rocrastination is a form of self-regulatory failure." He quotes a team of self-regulation researchers  in tying self-regulation to attention.

Over and over, we found that managing attention was the most common and often the most effective form of self-regulation and that attentional problems presaged a great many varieties of self-regulation failure. . . The effective management of attention was a powerful and decisive step, and self-regulatory failure ensued when attention could not be managed. 

On this foundation, and his own experience from years of meditating and attempting to train what meditators refer to as his "monkey mind," Rotblatt theorized that meditation could improve self-regulation and thus reduce procrastinating through the medium of improved attention management.


Since I am effectively conducting my own experiment with mindfulness meditation, I am in a position to learn more about its usefulness in taming the wild procrastinator within.  As with all "applications" of mindfulness "training,"--the list grows daily of "conditions" which are said to be improved by meditating, including depression, anxiety, chronic pain, hypertension, obesity and substance abuse--the "treatment effect" is likely to take some time to show up.  But I am prepared to continue sitting for as long as it takes.  If I can just make myself do it.

Done for the Week: A Change of Venue

Last week I took my act on the road.  Five days away from my usual environment and out of my comfort zone took their toll on my body.  Yesterday afternoon saw me falling asleep on the glider in my backyard while reading the last few pages of a well-written mystery.  

I learned a few important things on my trip.  First of all, I found that being with my Mom in the community where my Dad had died and is buried was stressful--which probably means I need to go more frequently to make some progress in accepting his death and my need to grieve.  (See earlier posts Grief Postponed:  Part I, and Grief Postponed:  Part II.)

Secondly, I discovered a need I have to spend more time with my Mom.  Thirdly, I realized how extremely bad I am at relaxing.  And fourthly, I reconnected with my constructed ability to endure and even enjoy air travel, which bodes well for a possible trip out of the country later this year.  All of this led to, and/or stemmed from the following list of activities:

Done List--Week of Apr.5-11

1. Completed Week 8 of Couch Potato to 5K training (again!)
2. Finished The Lighthouse, by P. D. James; The on-time, on-target manager:  how a "last-minute manager" conquered procrastination, by Ken Blanchard and Steve Gottry  
3. Took my blood pressure daily, while on "vacation"
4. Attended no meetings; scheduled none
5. Published 5 blog posts
6. Meditated 5 times
7. Succeeded in napping resistant 2 year-old once
8. Finished my part of large volunteer project in time to leave for New Orleans
9. Attended Wicked in New Orleans, with attendant dinner out
10. Took my Mom to a movie
11. Got through airport security twice, lived through two last-minute destination and schedule changes due to flight delays
12. Made new friend on one long flight
13. Helped Mom with paperwork, repairs
14. Worked on relaxing in sunshine with Mom and her dog, for the better part of three days
15. Rescinded an unwanted commitment 
16. Participated in 2 Women's Ensemble performances in church
17. Spent time talking with my youngest teenager

My progress on last week's focus goal--to meditate 5 times, while on vacation--is highlighted in green above.  As we can all clearly see, my goal was met.  Because I was traveling, and at the mercy of planes and relatives, I had to squeeze my meditating into any available crevice in the days, so this was something of a feat. I have decided to keep the same focus goal for at least another week, so that I can continue to establish a practice that will support my need for a more calm and mindful state.   This week, I hope to try to implement my plan to meditate regularly (most days) after lunch.  

In red above, I have identified my most important achievement of last week--in my opinion. I think it speaks for itself.  

Now to bring some of last week's lessons back home. . .