Taking Out Each Other's Trash

Gretchen Rubin's latest happiness tweak is throwing away someone else's trash.  

I get the whole thing about doing something small for someone else.  And not just to "boost your self-esteem."  The application with which I am most familiar is related to stress reduction.  It is said, and I have experienced, that the act of slowing yourself down by letting someone go ahead of you in traffic, or in the checkout line--especially when you are feeling rushed and short on time--creates the perception of more time.  It works.  It really does.

Not incidental is the positive feedback that generally attends such public generosity--although occasionally the response is more like "What are you?  Nuts?"  And you can end up feeling a little sheepish.

But the kind of trash that troubles me most in my own environment, I think of as "life trash."  In this category are undone tasks, unfinished projects, and unfulfilled dreams.  It strikes me as a particularly appealing kindness--one I'd love to be on the receiving end of--to help another dispose of detritus of this sort. 

As a mom for more than half my life now, I am in a great position to help out in this way.  Living with two young adult men, I find myself frequently hip-deep in refuse, life- and plain old.  But as a mom, I have learned--not without pain and stumbling, on my part and theirs--that it isn't always a purely good thing to rush into the breach without summons.  

Yet another opportunity to practice that all-purpose virtue--BALANCE.  

But it does feel really good to magnanimously offer to move a load of wash to the dryer for one of my roomies.  Or to put gas in the car when they're running late.  Or to post a letter they forgot to send.  And helping them to experience life as a bit more doable helps me to believe that I can manage, too.  But it's not so much fun if they begin to rely on my rescue.  And if they ask, it had better be done nicely.  I don't do demands from this crew.

And just for the record, if someone offers to do the dishes I haven't gotten to, I'm taking it. 

Procrastination, On the Receiving End

Debt's not the only thing that gets kicked down the road

Today has flown by, and I have only a few minutes of consciousness left to attend to this post.  What most needs to be "put to bed" tonight is me.

What's keeping me up?  The procrastination of others.  Which has come back on me.

A large annual project, which I have handled for my community organization for the last couple of years--last year on a totally volunteer basis--is way past its bed time.  

Several months ago, I informed people that I would not be available to shepherd this major undertaking this year.  I was assured that others could, and would take care of it.  They couldn't.  And they didn't.

Not only did the team of individuals not have the requisite skills to handle it, but they didn't even know what those skills were.

So they didn't ask what needed to be done, or figure out what needed to be done.  And when they finally called me, in desperation, to pull it all together, we were looking at the deadline in the rearview mirror.  

I spent the better part of this evening, after working much of the day, retrieving vital files from email trash, and attempting to reconstruct the data needed to complete the work.  I will probably pull this one out of the fire (enough metaphors in the mix?), but it won't be pretty.

For those of us who are prone to putting things off, it is probably a fortuitous corrective that we ourselves occasionally end up holding the procrastination bag.  And the procrastinators who put us in that position are, by rights, entitled to our compassion--along with the irritation we can't completely suppress.

Procrastinating 101: What Am I, Nuts?

The penultimate chapter in Joseph Ferrari's book Still Procrastinating?  The No-Regrets Guide to Getting it Done is entitled "Procrastination and Personality Styles."  Given its content, a more apt title might have been "Procrastination and Comorbidity."

I was first exposed to this oh-so-charming term as the mother of a dyslexic learner, when I was made aware that individuals whose learning style is not text-friendly have a "high incidence" of comorbidity with other alphabetically named "dis"orders, such as ADD or ADHD, and with depression--especially if they, like my son, are "twice exceptional," meaning that they are "gifted" and "LD" ("learning disabled").  

In Chapter 12, Dr. Ferrari focuses on overlaps between procrastination and "some major yet common clinical disorders," such as impulsivity, self-handicapping, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and ADD/ADHD. He begins by informing us that

Many clinical psychologists and professionals in the helping occupations consider chronic, frequent procrastination to be a major symptom of many psychiatric disorders.

He goes on to report the findings of research conducted by himself and colleagues of his in an effort to tease out the relationships between procrastinating and these afflictions.  Among these findings:

• The more that people reported that they procrastinated, the more they also claimed to possess dysfunctional impulsivity.

  This seems to be partly an effect of poor planning--overestimating the time remaining to complete a task, referred to in the literature as the planning fallacy.  As the deadline approaches, the procrastinator behaves impulsively--at the last minute.

• [P]rocrastination is related to a number of self-defeating behaviors, namely, choosing disappointment in life, rejecting the help of others when it's needed, feeling guilty after unexpected positive events occur, rejecting participation in pleasurable situations, criticizing others and circumstances when failure occurs, rejecting others when positive events happen, and excessive self-sacrificing for others.

• Compulsions, but not obsessions, are related to procrastination.

• The link does exist between attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity and frequent, chronic procrastination.  . . . [but] only for people diagnosed with ADHD.  . . . [W]ith a larger sample of men and women drawn from individuals who were not formally diagnosed with ADHD, no relationship seems to exist between procrastination and attention deficit.

Ferrari sensibly concludes, however, that

Whether your procrastination is a coping mechanism that you learned, or you have been clinically diagnosed with a disorder and procrastinating accompanies this problem, sometimes a simple solution will work in both cases.

For example, his elucidation of helpful strategies for individuals with ADHD who experience difficulty with transitions from one situation to another is detailed and practical.

In general, I am not enamored of the approach that tends to pathologize procrastination, particularly when so many of us seem to "suffer" from this so-called malady.  It seems to me that any life condition that results in stress and overload might produce the troublesome behavior of putting off things that we are supposed to be doing.  Might those diagnosed with cancer be prone to procrastinating?  What about people with chronic fatigue syndrome?  Parents of multiples?  People living below the poverty level?

While postponement may be "dysfunctional," in terms of conforming to requirements, it may also help us to survive overwhelming circumstances.  Which is not to say that procrastination is to be encouraged, but more that its management may be supported by a compassionate understanding of its usefulness, at times.

Of Warriors, Humble and Otherwise

Sanskrit Name: Baddha Virabhadrasana
English Translation: Bound Warrior Pose
Also Called: Humble Warrior

I've been thinking today about the concept of the warrior in Shambhala Buddhism, and about the various warrior poses, or asanas in yoga.  One reason for this preoccupation, I'm sure, is the physical residue of this morning's yoga class--the muscle memory of not insignificant discomfort. 

In a 2002 article in Shambhala Sun, Cyndi Lee reveals 

one of the best kept secrets of the world--yoga asana practice is not necessarily relaxing. People who come to a retreat looking for a siesta-like yoga experience could be disappointed: folding yourself up like a pretzel may not be a mellow moment--and unfolding is not a piece of cake either.  The relationship between effort and outcome is clear, as opposed to the picture of the beach yogini, arms outstretched peacefully, as if the ends of her fingertips were plugged into a bliss-cloud of happiness. It appears as if she could stay there effortlessly and indefinitely. But the truth is, after only a few deep breaths holding that pose, most people’s arms and legs will begin to quiver involuntarily.

The various Warrior poses are not the highest hurdles in my own ascent.  Half-moon /Ardha Candrāsana and Fierce Pose (also Power or Chair Pose)/Utkatasana) are my personal bête noires--and only because my recently resurrected practice has not yet led me back to more strenuous undertakings.

But it is the Warrior posture, and mentality, that interest me here.  As a pacifist, I have been intrigued to encounter the Warrior within Buddhism, and in yoga--both practices that we generally associate with peacefulness.

Historically, we are told that the Buddha himself was born into the warrior class.  The US military's first Buddhist chaplain, Lieutenant (jg) Jeanette Shin, blogging for Wildmind, tells us that while

[t]he Buddha never advocated the killing or destruction of “infidels” of any religion or doctrine, and always recommended the path of nonviolence. . . .
Shakyamuni’s life and teachings reveal a person raised to be a heroic warrior invested in honor. While he renounced the life planned for him by his parents, as a secular warrior-king, he used the language of warriors to convey the Dharma, so he could stress that following the path of Dharma required similar virtues possessed by warriors.

Thus, we find that

[t]erms like charioteer, sword and shield, war elephants, banners, fortress, archers, arrows, poisoned arrows, are all used in expressing the struggle to overcome one’s delusions.

Pema Chödrön, an American Buddhist nun, has written and taught extensively within the tradition of Shambhala Buddhism, begun by her teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche.  In this tradition, the journey toward awakening is known as the "path of the warrior."  Shambhala teaching speaks of the

bodhisattva-warrior, one who is brave and confident enough to overcome self-centeredness in order to help others.

At the heart of this warrior practice is compassion.


And for the body, as well as the mind, Lee reminds us,

the practice of yoga becomes a training program for being centered, awake, confident and flexible within effortful situations.

Ms. Lee advises the practitioner, in assuming yoga warrior poses, to

try to notice when your body gets tired or your mind gets bored. Stick with it anyway. When it feels difficult, try not to overexert but instead apply “right action”--action composed of rhythm, movement, direction, energy and intention, but never aggression. This attitude is in line with the warrior's code, and engenders courage to face reality and relate to it appropriately, using the weapons of gentleness and awareness. 

In musing about this today, I am encouraged to think of myself building strength and equanimity, both mental and physical, in my practices of yoga and meditation.  I am certainly in need of both as I weave in and out among the obstacles placed in my path, as in all of ours, in the present day.

I aspire at least to introduce my inner chicken to the warrior I can become.  And to keep on training.

Done for the Week: Finally, First Things First

Once again, I am struggling to get this post up by my personal deadline.  Monday morning in the blogging world.  And too many others mornings of the week for me lately, as life continues to speed out of control.  And I continue to hang on for dear life.


While clinging to the handrails, here's what I got done last week.

Done for the Week:  Jan. 17-23

1. Continued off-season race training, while fighting a bad cold; biked twice; ran once
2. Succeeded in getting husband to gym with me once
3. Finished Find More Time: How to Get Things Done at Home, Organize Your Life, and Feel Great About It, by Laura Stack; Bleeding Kansas, by Sara Paretsky; Healing Depression the Mind-Body Way:  Creating Happiness with Meditation, Yoga, and Ayurveda, by Nancy Liebler and Sandra Moss
4. Continued providing minimal volunteer support to transitioning nonprofit
5. Worked my two part-time jobs, with continuing schedule changes
6. Published 5 blog posts
7. Wrote 7 Gratitude Journal entries
8. Wrote 3 Morning Pages
9. Meditated 6 times
10. Watched our two favorite basketball teams play 4 games, with son and husband
11. Foraged for food at the grocery store several times
12. Attended two yoga classes
13. Attended Transitional Jobs Collaborative meeting
14. Provided more TLC for sick son and grandson; eventually succumbed myself; took a sick day
15. Attended birthday brunch for friend
16. Babysat my grandson, holding Polar Express party reprise
17. Got back to work on novel, in midst of continuing schedule challenges
18. Finally took down Christmas tree
19. Communicated with fellow bloggers
20. Communicated with long-distance friends
21. Started to work on scheduling Ireland trip with my family 
22. Cooked more nutritious dinners than in recent past
23. Watched episode of Treme with my husband

My focus goal for last week was "meditating at least 15 minutes, on at least six days." I made it, as you can see in the green-highlighted item above--but only by cheating.  Although maybe I shouldn't call sitting twice in one day "cheating."  In fact, that almost certainly runs against the whole compassion-for-self-and-others grain, don't you think?  The urge to "cheat" reveals the strength of my desire to meet the goal, which is a good thing.  And the other good thing is that the "action trigger" I implemented midweek seems to be working.  I am beginning to associate the end of breakfast with reporting to the cushion, which means that the whole issue of meditation is becoming less of a stressor.  I am not spending whole days trying to figure out where to fit it in, and then either meditating grudgingly and groggily at the end of the evening, or crawling off to bed guilty for having skipped it altogether.  It also means that I experience the benefits of having meditated over the course of the day.  All good.

In my view, the most important thing I did last week--though far from perfectly--was to get back to writing my novel, in red text above.  Life isn't really cooperating with this enterprise.  I have had an endless stream of schedule disruptions which have broken the routine that supports my writing.  I realize now that I had effectively set up an action trigger for writing, which generally works well.  The problem is that this trigger--the time between dropping my grandson off at preschool and picking him up--is too frangible.  With every school holiday, conference week schedule change, change in my daughter's idiosyncratic work schedule, and childhood illness, my action trigger recedes.  But now that I have recognized its function, I can do some creative thinking about a backup.  This week should be a "normal" one, at least as far as I can ever tell ahead.  But it's a good time to come up with a plan for handling the departures.


My focus goal for this week, half of which will be spent traveling to and attending a leadership training event, is to practice serenity in the face of change and unfamiliarity.  That will mean getting laundry and packing done ahead, and finalizing travel arrangements, and managing the unexpected with equanimity--while remembering to breathe.  Oh, and remembering to enjoy what there is to enjoy.

From Me to Me: A "Gift" I Keep on Giving

Dr. Timothy Pychyl, whose credentials are much more impressive, and whose blog Don't Delay, for Psychology Today, is much headier than mine, recently wrote a post entitled "Is Your Future Self Getting a Bad Deal?"  In it, he considers questions raised by Christine Tappolet in her chapter "Procrastination and Personal Identity," in the edited collection of essays The Thief of Time:  Philosophical Essays on Procrastination.

Tappolet uses the example of leaving the dishes for our future selves to wash, and argues that to do so consistently is to demonstrate a lack of concern for that heir to the crusted, stuck-to-the-countertop messes. [1]

Pychyl counters, in part, that we may reasonably expect that our future selves will have a greater capacity to manage the task than our exhausted present selves.  He likens this kind of procrastination to being willing to accept help from another when we are overwhelmed.  And he suggests that one way to alter this habit, if it is proving excessively burdensome for future self, is to develop and act on empathy for that future self, much as we might for another person.  I recognized myself in his observation that many of us will burden ourselves (present and future) in ways we wouldn't think of doing to someone else.

In her pre-vacation post this week, Gretchen Rubin (For anyone still living under a media blackout, she is the author of The Happiness Project, and the blog that gave birth to the book.) mentioned writer Anne Lamott's practice of referring to herself in the third person as a means of self-protection.  She cited this example:  “I’m sorry, Anne Lamott can’t accept that invitation to speak; she’s finishing a book so needs to keep her schedule clear.”

In a similar vein, I'm thinking it may help me to negotiate my procrastination tendencies to, well, actually negotiate with my future self.  Bringing the transaction into consciousness would force me to consider the impact of the implicit shifting of tasks from Today Me to Tomorrow Me, to weigh the relative capacities of each of these entities, and to exercise compassion toward both.  It would also promote a better accounting, and a fairer overall distribution of work to each party.  

There is, of course, the issue of progressive selves, and of determining whether my Tuesday Self or my February of 2011 Self should be recruited to deal with the chore I postpone today.  The calculus might become prohibitively complicated.  It might also cause a fracturing of self, ala Sybil.  

But it is an idea I intend to explore further, waking as I do this morning to some hangover items on my rolling to-do list, passed on to me without consultation by the selves of yesteryear.  (In my mind's eye--or the eye of the mind "I" occupy today--I have a vision of a bucket brigade, stretching into infinity, passing the bucket/buck from hand to hand, but never addressing the fire. . . .)

---

[1] I should note here that when I leave the dishes for another day, I sometimes delude myself as to the likelihood that another family member’s future self might step up to do them.  It happens with just enough frequency that blind hope enters into my calculations, to an extent dependant on my mood on any given day.  So I am reimagining Tappolet’s dishes as a work task that only I can do—but one that, like the dishes, becomes more irksome and requires more labor the longer it is left.

Procrastinating 101: The Care and Feeding of Procrastinators

[Click here to hear my song!]

The past couple of days, this seemingly befuddled, and somewhat self-destructive creature has been trying to penetrate my study via its corner window.  I learned, by consulting my husband's copy of National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds, Eastern Region, that he is an Indigo Bunting.  I have always thought the name charming, and imagined its carrier to be rare and beautiful.  Beautiful, yes, as it turns out, and not so rare as I thought.  This particular specimen appears determined to make my acquaintance, though the Birders' Magazine site tells me it is more likely that he is enamored of his own reflection.  Apparently, my windows, last given a cursory swipe a couple of years ago, are too clean!


But why are we talking about birds here?  Well, if Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Project videos have their own little bluebird of happiness, then this counterproductive little blue guy may just be the mascot for me.  He is lovely, he is energetic, he is persistent, he sings beautifully--but I identify with his frustrated state. 


I am going to do what I can to educate myself about how to lure him away from what looks like a painful campaign, and in the direction of  a more rewarding feeding station.  In the meantime, this sweet vulnerable being is also teaching me about the need for gentleness in dealing with ourselves and others when we are working against ourselves.  As with procrastination.


And that brings me to Dr. Neil Fiore's final chapter in The Now Habit:  A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play--"The Procrastinator in Your Life."  Since most of us in this particular conversation are the procrastinator in someone's life--be that someone boss or partner--we are in need of the special treatment Dr. Fiore advises.  I am summarizing here his suggestions, so that we might use them in dealing with ourselves--since we are perhaps our most important "bosses"--and to use in helping those others in whose lives we are to deal with us. 


Like our little blue friend, we procrastinators need gentle dissuasion from our dysfunctional ways.  Because we are already telling ourselves 

I have to finish something important and do it perfectly while enduring long periods of isolation from the people and things I love. 

Therefore, those (including ourselves) wishing to coax a timely and effective product from us need to refrain from increasing the pressure we are already under, and adding to our fears of failure and success, our resentment or desire for revenge.  

Successful leaders and managers address these problem areas by communicating in terms that elicit commitment rather than compliance, by focusing on manageable objectives rather than on overwhelming expectations, and by providing praise for steps taken in the right direction rather than just criticizing mistakes.  Their management style creates a pull toward the goal, focuses on starting each step, and provides adequate safety and rewards.   

Think "What can you get to me in rough form by noon?," not ""You'd better be finished by noon."  "When can you start on a very rough draft?" rather than "When will you finish this project?"  And when there is need for improvement, starting with praise, as in

I really liked what you did with the Jones account.  And I think you can achieve even better results--and avoid some tension on your next project--if you follow the usual deadlines for informing the central office.

Additionally, Fiore recommends that those working with procrastinators 

• State priorities clearly
• Be decisive
• Be fair and frequent in giving rewards
• Give constructive feedback 

And he warns against the use of nagging, which can worsen the procrastinator's anxiety and resistance, thus making the problem more entrenched.  

Gretchen Rubin's bluebird would agree, as she has identified nagging as interfering with happiness.  And my frantic indigo bunting only becomes more agitated when I repeatedly try to chase him away from the beckoning window.  So let's be careful out there!  Apparently, things could be worse!