After a Horse Race, Back on My Own Horse

I made up a new life rule this week:  

Anytime I 

1) put in a full day shift collecting recall signatures at a polling place for a "spring" election (that's what they call this chilly, needed-my-gloves-and-long-underwear season);  

2) then stay up way too late waiting to learn of my candidate's narrow (204 vote) victory (for whom I, of course, did not electioneer while collecting recall signatures); and 

3) do so while continuing to put in hours on my two paid jobs, I am allowed to put off blogging until I have recovered.

So invoking that new rule, I did not blog Tuesday or yesterday, when all my free time was spent glued to the horse race for Supreme Court Justice in Wisconsin.  

My obsessive self worries that, having broken my year-plus string of weekday blog posts, I will have weakened my commitment to being a serious blogger.   But even my two youngest kids, who take the usual young persons' stance toward adult preococupations, have exerted some energy to encourage me to slack off, and to lighten up about the possible downward slide.

I may attempt to make up the missing posts--and I may not.  Time, and personal energy, will tell.

This is not going to be a season of "business as usual," whatever that was.

Done for the Week: A Bad Cold Ate My Week

I am less than thrilled with the list that follows. But I should be okay with it.  If I learned anything from reading Mary Pipher's book, Seeking Peace:  Chronicles of the Worst Buddhist in the World, it is the importance of self-forgiveness.  And why should I even need to forgive myself for the hardly cardinal sin of being sick, or being human?  

I think my reaction is a residual of being raised as a doctor's daughter--the healthy one, at that.  Growing up, we chided each other that being sick was bad advertisement for Dad's medical skills.  And I secretly disliked the not-so-sick who called at all hours of the day and night, interrupting every family outing and celebration.  

As an adult, I have seldom done the kind of work where sick days were an option.   I have been blessed with darn good health overall, but when I do get sick, I generally try to work through it.  Succumbing to the need for rest and a reduced work schedule feels like malingering to me.  

This morning, after three days of  inactivity forced by fever, body aches and a racking cough, I awoke feeling slightly better.  Just in time to start another hectic week. And disappointed, mostly, about my inability to complete Week 9--what should have been the final week--of my 5K training.  My daughter/coach has been admonishing me not to resume training until I am well, and reminding me that even great athletes (whose ranks clearly do not include me) get sick, and injured, and have to rebuild.

Perhaps I am most troubled that my list for last week doesn't really look all that different from those of previous weeks.  

Done List--Week of Mar. 1-Mar. 7

1. Completed Day 1 of Week 9 of Couch Potato to 5K Training
2. Got sick, and then sicker
3. Finished Sold Down the River by Barbara Hambley; Seeking Peace:  Chronicles of the Worst Buddhist in the World, by Mary Pipher
4. Walked my semi-grateful dog one day, got family members to do it 2 others
5. Took my blood pressure daily
6. Survived two part-time jobs for another week, working while sick
7. Attended 2 meetings
8. Published 5 blog posts
9. Meditated once
10. Started letter to my dead father, as instructed by therapist

My plan for the coming week is to get over my illness, and get over myself.  As I cough my way into the first hours of Monday, I will try to ease into the resumption of routine, and to leave time for resting.  I look forward to getting my potato uncouched when my lungs clear. 

Procrastinating 101: Absolving Ourselves

Timothy Pychyl is something of a procrastination guru.  The Canadian psychology professor writes the procrastination blog Don't Delay for Psychology Today, provides weekly updates to his iProcrastinate Podcasts, co-creates an instructional, but nonetheless entertaining comic strip entitled Carpe Diem, and heads the Procrastination Research Group at Carleton University in Ottawa.  (He is also, apparently, a sled dog musher and "Mr. Mum," which, while interesting, is probably off-topic.)  

Pychyl and his team of researchers have much to teach us, including their recently published finding that "self-forgiveness" for procrastination significantly reduces subsequent procrastinating.[1]  In a study of 119 university freshman, using self-report measures of procrastination and self-forgiveness prior to each of two midterms exams, they learned that:

1. Forgiving oneself for procrastinating on a given task is related to less procrastination on a similar task in the future.
2. This relationship is mediated by negative affect, such that self-forgiveness reduces procrastination by reducing negative emotions.
3. The presence of this relationship depends on the extent to which the individual procrastinated on the first task. In our study, only at high levels of procrastination on the first exam was self-forgiveness negatively related to procrastination on the second exam.

Okay.  So what does it mean to forgive ourselves?  According to Pychyl,

There are three essential parts to self-forgiveness. First of all, one must acknowledge the commission of an objective wrong and accept responsibility for that wrong.

Been there, done that. 

Secondly, one must then experience feelings of guilt and regret.

Check, and check. 

Finally, one must overcome these feelings (i.e., self-forgiveness), and, in doing so, experience a motivational change away from self-punishment toward self-acceptance. 

Not so much, yet.

But why does it matter if we forgive ourselves for putting things off?  Pychyl articulates the reasoning behind his team's investigation in this way:

[W]e argue that self-forgiveness for procrastinating may play a role in helping people overcome the negative effects of procrastination and encourage a change in behavior. If procrastination is viewed as a transgression against the self and results in negative feelings such as guilt, forgiving oneself for procrastinating should reduce this feeling. By reducing emotional distress associated with procrastination, the individual becomes less likely to avoid the stimulus associated with the feelings in the first place (i.e., studying for an exam). Moreover, because self-forgiveness is typically accompanied by a vow to change one's behavior in the future, this encourages the individual to engage in approach behaviors rather than behaviors motivated by avoidance. Thus self-forgiving for procrastinating may make it less likely that the individual will be motivated to avoid unpleasant tasks like studying and more likely that he or she will approach success by procrastinating less in the future.

In a conversation on NPR's Talk of the Nation in June of 2008, Dr. Pychyl further indicated a gender component to the self-forgiveness/procrastination connection, discussed in more detail in an earlier Don't Delay blog.  Basically, females tended to feel worse about having procrastinated in the first instance; and the effect of self-forgiveness was strongest for those who reported moderate or high levels of procrastination.  Pychyl speculates about why this would be so:

Based on previous research we've done, we think it may be explained by self-worth. Procrastination is related to self-worth or self-esteem for females but not males. So, to the extent that procrastination threatens sense of self, there is more of a transgression against self, more need for self-forgiveness and more of what I'm loosely calling "redemption."

So, basically, I'm in good shape here.  I'm a woman.  I feel lousy about procrastinating.  I have procrastinated at least moderately, have admitted my sins and experienced guilt and regret.  Now all I have to do is  "get over it."  I'm working on it.  Without delay. 

[1] Wohl, M. J. A., Pychyl, T.A., & Bennett, S.H. (2010) I forgive myself, now I can study: How self-forgiveness for procrastinating can reduce future procrastination. Personality and Individual Differences (2010), doi:10.1016/j.paid.2010.01.029