Procrastinating 101: Still Reading "Still Procrastinating?"

Today being Tuesday, it is time to consider Chapter 11 of Joseph Ferrari's Still Procrastinating?  The No-Regrets Guide to Getting it Done.  This chapter is entitled "Procrastinating at Work," something most employed procrastinators probably know a thing or two about.

To begin with, Dr. Ferrari could have benefitted from a writing instructor's feedback on his first few paragraphs.  And I know.  I used to perform such services for pay.  

He lost me the first time with his apparent assumption that interruptions reported by corporate employees in a 2008 New York Times article, amounting to "28% of the average workday," are evidence of procrastination, despite the employees' complaints that such interruptions are "unnecessary and not urgent."  If in fact these "interruptions" are self-initiated, then it would have helped convince this reader had Dr. Ferrari said so.  If they were a function of the environment or management structure--e.g., porous work areas, and frequent time-wasting meetings--then I am not persuaded that they constitute procrastination, though they may undermine employee focus and thus feed postponement.

My major quibble with the opening section of this chapter is with the befuddling contradiction in Ferrari's treatment of the growth of the American work week over the last several decades.  He says that labor saving devices have 

added  six-plus work weeks . . . to average U.S. workers' lives from 1965 to 2003

and then speculates that we have spent them watching TV!  Is he saying that we are doing this at work?

Then he asks if we are

still not convinced about the U.S. work ethic?

and cites Steven Greenhouse's The Big Squeeze, who

reports that productivity in America increased 60 percent since 1979.  Employees in the United States work 80 hours more per year than Canadians, 120 hours more per year than the British, and an unbelievable 340 hours more than the French.

He follows this by asserting that

Even so, workplace procrastination exists among U.S. employees and workers in other nations.

Huh?

Ferrari doesn't really address the loss of leisure and of work/home boundaries, or how much of the time and labor we've saved has been sucked up by the expansion of work responsibilities.  Nor does he consider that procrastination, under such circumstances, may be, at least in part, a survival strategy.  If some of us didn't put off the occasional work assignment, we'd have difficulty attending family celebrations and tending to personal hygiene!

In a less tortuous section, Ferrari illustrates the economic costs of procrastinating, to ourselves and to others.  He provides some sobering numbers, for example, of the nest eggs built by "procrastinating" retirement savers versus those who begin their savings earlier in life.  And he suggests that we find ways to more immediately "fine" ourselves for procrastinating, as a way of influencing our own behavior. 

Ferrari goes on to examine the demographics of workplace delay.  He informs us that white collar workers, both men and women, are more likely to procrastinate on the job than their blue collar counterparts.  Corporate white collar workers procrastinate more than noncorporate, and sales workers more than middle level management personnel.  (Ferrari believes that the technology that facilitates such work also provides distracting off-task opportunities.)  Curiously, workplace procrastination by business managers appears to be more common in the Northwest region of the country.

In a section that purports to deal with "Jobs Chosen by Procrastinators:  The Role of Creativity," Dr. Ferrari identifies only one occupation that appears to have more than its share of procrastinators, and that is "news reporters."  He doesn't discuss any of the other seventy-five occupations represented in the forty-three hundred surveys he and Dr. Piers Steel analyzed, so it isn't possible to assess the role of creativity, or the other factors that news reporters may have in common with other procrastinating workers.

Ferrari follows this revelation with a recommendation that we consider four "techniques," which we might use to avoid workplace delay.  They are:

• Confidence [Is the "technique" having some, or rating  ourselves on how much we have, as he advises?]
• Focus
• Brand [Understanding who we are, in order to "shift attention to what you offer others and gravitate toward the things you can control in your life.]
• Reward [Again, another "huh?"  What Ferrari says about this doesn't communicate anything about reward to me.]

After this (to me) baffling list, Ferrari launches into the discussion of creativity I was looking for in the earlier section, though he doesn't relate it to occupations.  But, as in Chapter 3, he expresses skepticism about the claim that taking more time with a project enhances quality, and ultimate productivity.  He concedes that this can be the case, but holds that it is generally just a dodge, and one that employers should see for what it is. 

In the rest of the chapter, we learn that Tuesdays are our most productive days, according to a study of "150 senior executives from a thousand [sic] of the largest U.S. companies," and then are presented with several lists of improvements we can make to confront out procrastination at work, which include:

• Purchase software with back-ups, tech support, and easy-to-find files.
• Print and read an e-mail message once, then file it.
• Check your e-mail only once per hour. [I'd have to increase mine quite a bit to reach this standard.]
• Identify very needy clients and give them more time [Really?]
• Make a decision and keep it, but develop back-up plans.
• Recognize the differences between tasks you must do and those you want to do.
• Prioritize tasks.
• Distinguish between what the team considers essential and what can wait.
• Recognize trends of the future.
• Maintain social ties within and outside the company.  [Is he telling us to have a Facebook page?]
• Minimize interruptions and distractions.
• Maximize organization.
• Figure out what is causing you to procrastinate to find a solution; you need to know what is motivating your tendency to delay.
• Conquer your fears.
• Make a list of what needs to get done, and then organize a plan to complete each step.
• Why not do the worst tasks first?
• Set realistic goals for what you need to accomplish.
• Keep a to-do list.
• Allocate time.
• Set and respect deadlines.
• Use your time wisely.
• Stay on task.
• Collaborate and cooperate.
• Avoid unnecessary follow-ups.
• Cancel routine meetings.
• Pick your projects carefully.
• Keep busy.
• Don't put off layoffs.
• Enforce punctuality.

And there you have it.  Ending work procrastination in 29 easy steps.  What have we been waiting for?

A Cast of Thousands, Each One Significant

Some of us are old enough to remember the heart-stopping daffodil scene from Dr. Zhivago;  spring, and life, returning after the ravages of the Siberian winter and war.  The artful cinematography drew the eye into the multitudes of blossoms, the profusion of glorious yellow, to a symphonic backdrop.  After what Yuri and his loves and his countrymen had been through, only this surfeit of daffodils would suffice.  


The scene came back to me this morning as I contemplated my fear of redundancy, and of being derivative.  This fear overtakes me especially in bookstores, and libraries, where I am surrounded by the words of others.  I encounter it, too, when confronted with the zillions of blogs dealing with issues of procrastination and productivity.  I know that I am not alone in the feeling that my little creations don't much matter against the scale of all that has been written.   


But if I look to the daffodils, I see that there is room for all that each of us can be, and make. We don't ask each individual flower to justify its blooming.  And we rejoice that when each one fades, there will eventually be others to gladden us.  


So if others write, and have written, and will write, it means nothing to the value of my work.  And I am not off the hook, after all.  My particular life can only be nurtured or neglected by me, for my own reasons.  And it is worth what it is worth.


In this season of underground regeneration, I will work on trusting that we are heading toward the light, that growth will occur, and that our individual beauty is enough. 

Procrastinating 101: Making Breakthroughs, and Keeping My Clothes On

Chapter 16, and the second last chapter, in Marshall Cook's Slow Down. . .and Get More Done is entitled "Running Naked in the Streets."  Really.


So what does streaking have to do with productivity and the good life?


Well, apparently not too much, beyond contributing an intriguing chapter lead-in.  Cook is discussing creativity in this penultimate section of his book.  The streaking phrase comes from the story of Archimedes who lit upon the theory of displacement while in his bath, shouted "Eureka!" and headed for the streets to announce his discovery, not stopping to put on his clothes.  Cook takes off from this tale to discuss the thrill of creativity, and of novel ideas and inventions and solutions to problems.


As in other chapters, there is much material that, while quite enjoyable to read, does not seem to pertain directly to Cook's overall subject.  But he does eventually come around to the recommendation that we employ creativity to look at the metaphors for life and for ourselves that underpin the way we approach our efforts and our days.  The exercises he prescribes for accomplishing this examination ask us to, first of all, complete the statement "Life is _____" in as many ways as we can think of in three minutes.  Following that, we are to determine which of the statements we agree with, and then which seems to best capture our view of life.  Similarly, we are instructed to complete the statement "I am _____," again  jotting down as many ideas as we can in three minutes, and then performing the same sorting process to come up with that statement that best expresses how we see ourselves.  


At the conclusion of this exercise, Cook would have us "embrace our opposite," finding the statements about life and ourselves that are most unlike the ones we generally operate from.  And finally, we are to write a statement about ourselves as we would like to be, and then carry it around with us for a week, reading it often--as a way of pushing our reset.  Cook says

You won't become the reality simply by chanting the statement several times a day, but you can mentally and emotionally prepare yourself for the necessary changes.  You can begin calling forth from your Big Mind the wisdom and the will you need to become the person you want to be.  

I haven't completed my lists yet, but I am generally inclined to accept Cook's premise.  I do believe that the way we think about things, and ourselves, has a lot to do with how we act, and how we experience our lives.  And I accept that changing our categories and our assumptions can take us in new, and perhaps more satisfying directions.


When I do figure out my new "controlling metaphors," however, don't look for me to take to the streets, or the rooftops, with or without garments, to announce them.  Whatever I am, or might wish to be, I'm pretty sure "a streaker" isn't it.  Especially not at my latitude, and in this season.

Procrastinating 101: Practicing for Flow

This morning, I flunked yoga.  Too tense.  Striving too much.  Moving away from ease and into stress and distress.  And, clearly, I should not be grading myself in that arena, which reveals how little I know about relaxation.  


So Dr. Neil Fiore, whose book The Now Habit:  A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play we have been "studying" in Procrastination 101, has much to teach me in his 7th chapter, entitled "Working in the Flow State."  Dr. Fiore refers us to the work of Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in his book Flow:  The Psychology of Optimal Experience for background on the flow state, and research on its benefits.  But for our purposes here, the important ideas concern procrastination, as Dr. Fiore applies the theory.


Fiore tells us that the "critical, logical left-brain faculty," working in concert with our reptilian, fight-or-flight stress response, feeds procrastination.  Especially for those of us who rely on creativity for our chosen work, that linear thought process that is the hallmark of the left brain must be suspended if we are to begin, and proceed through the first draft of a project. 

Trying to cram all the emotion and experience of spontaneous creative idea into a linear form is one of the major causes of creative blocks and procrastination.  That’s why it’s important to know how to use more of your brain, and how to shift into the flow state.

Once we have managed to get out of our own way enough to produce something, only then does it make sense to recruit the "inner editor" feared by so many writers, and have her/him take up the task of bringing order and polish to what has been created.


How do we go about "protecting" the "early renderings of a project. . .from overly critical comparison with the ideal and ultimate goal?"  Here's where the flow state comes in, providing "a magical bridge from anxiety to tranquility and safety," and "replac[ing] guilt and stress with stress-free focus on the present."  In order to learn to focus, and to achieve this desired creativity-friendly state, Dr. Fiore advises two weeks of daily practice of a 1 to 2 minute mini-relaxation exercise, which we can then use before beginning work, after finishing our commute, before and/or after stressful phone calls or meetings, or at any time when stress arises in our working lives.  He also suggests, for those who are not adept or experienced at relaxation (Could he be talking about me?), a lengthier relaxation exercise to strengthen the habit.  Both exercises can be downloaded from Dr. Fiore's website, as part of a Reference Guide PDF (under the advertisement for the audiobook verson of The Now Habit), for recording in the user's own voice.  


Everything lately is leading me in this direction.  Can calmness have a "siren call?"