Procrastinating 101: Harnessing the Power of Negative Thinking

Goal Conversion.  Since I loathe football (Oh-oh.  There goes half of my single-digit readership!), I'm not sure whether that's really a football term, or just sounds like one.  Anyway, the subject is procrastination, not large men threatening to snap each other's spinal cords.  


Goal Conversion in our context appears in "Chapter 8:  Change and Procrastination," in William Knaus's clearly titled The Procrastination Workbook.  (No frogs or other clever references--it is what it is.)  This approach, one of several recommended by Knaus in this practical chapter, is tailor-made for the Eeyores among us.  Got negative thoughts?  (Knaus's examples are:  "I hate my job;" "My brother and I don't speak;" "I have no mate or date;" and "I have a cobwebbed room.")  Knaus observes that

Embedded in this misery, you can find opportunities.  By converting complaints to goals, your perspective changes. . . .Converting bothersome conditions into opportunities and challenges helps shake defeatist thinking.  Each time you turn an emotional "crisis" or loss into a goal, you've shifted from thinking negatively to setting a positive objective.

Obviously, not rocket science, but then not much about procrastination involves astrophysics.  Knaus's conversions of the aforementioned negative thoughts are simple but profound ("Find a job I like;" "Open communications;" "Make social contacts;" and "Clean out the cobwebs."), specific versions of the old Nike slogan "Just do it."


This is something I can work with.  Negative thoughts.  Check.  Ability to "reflect and reason."  Check.  Presto-changeo!  Stuff to aim for.  A path forward.


This morning, some of my negative thoughts are: 

1. I'm afraid of flying.  
2. The fear-induced spike in my blood pressure means I'm going to have a stroke. 
3. I'm a failure as a mother because my soon-to-leave-home teenager is lost in the computer gaming world. 
4. The couple of pounds I've gained while on my illness-induced running hiatus make me feel fat. 
5. I can't stand the trashed state of my house at the conclusion of an all-consuming volunteer project and my usual assortment of excessive commitments. 
6. I'm a hopeless slob.  

To name a few.


I'm hunting for my wand in my disordered rooms, and I have no clue what the spell is.  (Convertio?  Goaliarmus?)  But a nonmagical effort at this wee hour produces these reformulations.  

1. Get on the plane and let the pilot fly it.  
2. Meditate.
3. Love him and trust the messy process of maturing.  Know that I've done my best.
4. Eat healthily and continue to exercise.  (And pack my loosest clothes.)
5. Straighten up one small area.  (And be more compassionate with myself.)
6. Continue to work on getting others in the household to pick up and clean, and on leaving time in my own schedule for the self-nurturance of maintaining a pleasant environment.

Okay.  Negative thoughts converted.  Goals identified.  That wasn't so hard.  And now for the alchemy of putting as much energy into the positive directives as I so easily muster for their evil twins.  

Done for the Week: Time to Tweak this Feature

It's the kind of morning we live for in my neck of the woods.  Sunny, almost shorts weather.  I've already slept two full hours past my alarm, on a day jam packed with tasks and obligations.  A day all too likely to be "filled with surprises."  


At 5:30, my face in my pillow, I made a deliberate choice to turn off the bleating of my now old-fashioned clock radio.  I'm not sure I should be trusted with such decisions at that hour, but it seemed at the time that facing the day with a bit more rest was a good idea.  


I'm moving towards thinking more long haul with the changes I'm trying to make.  I am looking at how to deal with old bad habits in a way that will stick.  And my recent frenetic pace is probably not going to get me there.  


Reading M. J. Ryan's book This Year I Will. . . has given me some new ideas about using this weekly Done List to get where I'm trying to go.   Last week, I introduced a goal for the coming week.  Starting this week, I am going to assess my progress on the previous week's focus goal; renew or replace that focus goal for the coming week; and identify in the done list my most important accomplishment of the previous week (in red below).

Done List--Week of Mar. 29-Apr. 4

1. Finished This Year I Will. . . :  How to Finally Change a Habit, Keep a Resolution, or Make a Dream Come True, by M. J. Ryan; Remembering the Wilderness:  Poems by Sara Rath
2. Took my blood pressure daily
3. Survived two part-time jobs for another week
4. Attended 2 meetings; scheduled 1 more
5. Published 5 blog posts
6. Meditated 2 times
7. Succeeded in napping resistant 2 year-old twice
8. Returned to running after 5 weeks off with mega-virus; surprised to learn I am still closer to 5K than to couch potato--I'm going to call it Week 7 (again)
9. Committed to 5K race in 3 weeks
10. Finished my part of long-term pain-in-the-neck project in time to leave for New Orleans on Tuesday
11. Played teenage son in basketball, lost 3-2 with handicaps
12. Attended interesting Tenebrae service on Good Friday as part of brave new spiritual exploration
13. Improved relationship with husband 
14. Went toe-to-toe with frustrated boss, and held my own
15. Determined that it's time to retrench, and commit less time to volunteer work
16. Experienced lightening of depression

In my completely subjective opinion--and no other opinion is needed for this purpose--the most important "done" thing on this list is item 8, returned to running.   Its significance lies in the incredible lift it gave me to fight through the fear and discouragement, to lace up my shoes and get back on track.  Literally.  This breaks a cycle of abandoning goals when circumstances conspire to mar the perfection of their accomplishment.  Since all goals are similarly vulnerable, changing this pattern is big.  

Last week's focus goal was to meditate 5 times.  My progress toward that goal is highlighted in green in item 6 above.  Clearly, 2 is not 5.  But neither is it 0.  I confess that I considered trying to cram in three more meditation sessions yesterday, or modifying my definition of meditation to include some trance-like states I did "achieve."  But M. J. Ryan persuaded me that there is merit in tracking my real behavior, and learning from it--without judgement.  

In comparing some of the things I have been able to do more consistently to my spotty record on meditation, I see two things:  first, that meditation is more subtle than, for example posting a blog, or running, or reading; and secondly, that I have not yet succeeded in finding a routine time to meditate.  When I was meditating more regularly, last fall, I had fallen into a practice of meditating immediately after lunch.  A colleague suggested to me that doing it before lunch would alleviate the distraction of digestion, but for some reason the call of midday hunger often proved too much for my fledgling inner buddha.  And lately, lunch itself has been imperiled by my frantic efforts to stay on the ramped up treadmill of my days.

This week's focus goal is to meditate 5 times, while on vacation.  My plan is to take 20 minutes after lunch each day, wherever I am--tomorrow I will be either at O'Hare or on a plane.   Both great, if challenging, places for this recovering flight-phobic to concentrate on breathing.

  

Calendars, Calendars, Calendars

In my lifelong struggle to get and stay organized, calendars have played the part of useful ally, red herring, and saboteur.  

The first function is pretty straightforward.  When calendars do what they are supposed to do, they remind us of appointments.  They help us to avoid overlapping engagements.  They allow us to plan ahead, and to distribute our commitments sensibly.  They are our friends.

The red herring part comes in when I delude myself that the perfect calendar, and worse, the magical combination of several perfect calendars, will somehow cure my procrastination and allow me to achieve my dreams.  My father, had he known about my predilection for wandering through bookstores, office supply stores, and Target's office sections at all times of the year in pursuit of this quarry, would probably have diagnosed OCD.  There is certainly something obsessive about my quest.  

I continue to be drawn, despite years of disappointment, to the offerings of purse calendars, wall calendars, desk calendars and planners.  Color, size, arrangement of days and weeks, and "features" call out to me from the retailers' displays.  I stand as if mesmerized, picking up alternatives and comparing them, as if I were a calendar virgin.  As if someone somewhere might have "discovered" or "invented" my ideal solution since the last time I'd looked.  

I have spent too much time in this chimeric pursuit, time that might otherwise have been devoted to actually doing some of the things I intended to write in these instruments.  I have even been known to switch horses in midstream, changing calendars in September when a particular product seemed "more perfect" than the one I was already using.  And then, of course, obsessively (or is it compulsively?) copying entries from the soon-to-be-abandoned organizational tool into its replacement.  

But worse than this crazy tail-chasing behavior is what happens when I follow the advice of organizational gurus, who recommend keeping several calendars.  I currently have a purse calendar, which I consult when I am away from home and scheduling meetings or appointments; a planner/calendar, which contains my to-do lists and scheduled meetings and appointments; a wall calendar, on which I record my own meetings and appointments and those of other household members; and two computer-based calendars, one personal and one for the organization I help to manage.   My personal computer-based calendar reproduces a daily agenda on my home page, which should theoretically get me where I need to go by putting it in my face each time I open my laptop.  I have decided not to keep a calendar on my cell phone, partly because of its wayward habits of disappearing and running out of charge.

Of course, the gurus would have me synchronize all these calendars.  And that's the crux of my difficulty.  My failure to routinely copy entries from one to the rest of my calendars is what gets me in trouble, producing the third role--calendars as agents saboteur.  I rely on calendars to reality-test my hazy notion of where and when I should be, and behave as if each calendar holds all the necessary information.  This is hardly ever the case.  So when I check the calendar at hand, I am effectively playing calendar roulette.   This week, the game cost me $50 when I missed an appointment and was assessed the no-show fee.  On a good day, my spotty system might relieve me of attending a meeting I wasn't too keen on anyway.

Today, my purse calendar tells me that I am out of time for completing this post, and need to rush out the door to make a late breakfast with a friend, recently and involuntarily disemployed from his job of 31 years.  I leave for tomorrow the task of figuring out what to do about all my calendars.  But I won't stop at Office Depot on my way back.  

57 Channels and Nothin' On, to quote the Boss

Multitasking.  Why did anyone think this was a good idea?  As if mere tasking weren't bad enough.  


Yesterday, I found myself minding a talkative, energetic two-year-old high on the first warm sunshine in months, while combing the itsy-bitsy remains of my shattered glass patio table-top from their haven in the dead grass and leaves, and taking an ugly work call on my cell phone.  Later, rushing to meet a deadline receding in the rearview mirror, I accompanied my soon-to-leave-home teen on his dog-walking job while discussing the details of the growing-like-Topsy fundraising project I've been left to manage with our printer.  As I write this blog post, I am interrupted by urgent calls and emails, requiring my fractured attention.  These charming vignettes are becoming our societal paradigm.  


Searching for images of "multi-tasking" and "crazy-busy," I unearth Kali-like women using their many arms to rock babies, hold phones, manipulate computers, cook, hold books, write notes by hand, vacuum--and all in the lotus pose.  One ubiquitous picture in this genre is titled "The Modern Woman." 


Women are supposed to be better than men at this newly named "skill."  Some say because we've had to be.  But why would we want to be?


The Merriam-Webster dictionary included the term for the first time back in 1966.  They define it as 

1 : the concurrent performance of several jobs by a computer

2 : the performance of multiple tasks at one time

It seems likely that computer usage may be responsible for introducing the concept, and in some cases the goal, and some would say the necessity of multitasking.  The growth of multitasking has probably also have been influenced by the growing number of parents, male and female, who are juggling work and family responsibilities.  

Wikipedia tells us that:

Multitasking may refer to any of the following:

• Computer multitasking - the apparent simultaneous performance of two or more tasks by a computer's central processing unit.
• Media multitasking could involve using a computer, mp3, or any other form of media in conjunction with one another.
• Human multitasking - The ability of a person to perform more than one task at the same time.

I would quibble with the language in their last instance, amending "ability" to read "attempt," or even "hubris that leads one to attempt". . .  But that's just me.  Or is it?

At least some "modern women" and men seem to be, like me, falling out of love with the notion.  Governmental units, including my own municipality, want us to give up talking on our cell phones while driving.  (This is something my family learned about the hard way, when my husband tried to answer a call from me while on a bike, and collided with a small child who suddenly ran into his path.  The child was fine.  My husband wasn't.)  Apparently there are many of us who have not gotten the message that the automaticity of the driving task that allows us to give attention to other things can change in an instant to a situation which requires our full attention; the time spent switching attention modes may have disastrous consequences.  And, astoundingly, many of those unconverted individuals are texting while driving.  


At least some writers and brain scientists are questioning the trend toward time-splitting.  Psychologist John Arden warns us "dummies" that "multitasking decreases your memory ability.” He asserts that with each new task we assume,  “you dilute your investment in each task.”  In journals, newspapers, magazines and blogs, articles such as Faith Brynie's "The Madness of Multitasking" caution that this attempt to do it all might "make [us] stupid," slow us down, and drive us mad.  I have not yet read Dave Crenshaw's The Myth of Multitasking:  How "Doing it All" Gets Nothing Done, but I intend to.  And not while spinning, or watching basketball, or half-listening to my spouse.  I think it will need my undivided attention in order to bear fruit in my thinking, and in my life.


Research conducted at the University of Utah and reported on Tuesday  by the New York Times and others apparently reveals an elite class of supertaskers, whose brains seem capable of managing simultaneous tasks efficiently.  If there is such a class, I suspect that many of us who think we might belong to it in fact do not.  And therein may be at least some of the rub.

But for me, the biggest cost of spending more time than I would like in this straddling mode is not efficiency, effectiveness, or even memory.  It is peace.  The most jarring part of the multitasking woman images I have seen is the meditation pose of the multitasker, super or not.  How can anyone "be here now" when "here" is in at least two places?

For today, I vow to spend the afternoon with my grandson ignoring my cell phone, and whatever other tasks nag to be added in that interval.  And if this resolve doesn't make me smarter, or more effective, or help me to retain the experience, I expect that it will leave me less jangled in the end.


Reading over this post as I prepare to run out the door to deal with yet another  emergency of my volunteer job, sandwiched into an overscheduled day, I am unsatisfied with the disjointed quality of what I've written.  Another casualty of multitasking.