Procrastinating 101: Thinking Like a Human

Chapter 5 in Dr. Timothy Pychyl's book The Procrastinator's Digest:  A Concise Guide to Solving the Procrastination Puzzle--entitled "Excuses & Self-Deception:  How our Thinking Contributes to our Procrastination"--is the basis of today's Procrastinating 101.  And his mantra for this chapter?  "I need to be aware of my rationalizations."

According to Dr. Pychyl, screwy thinking that supports the procrastination habit includes the human tendencies to:

1. discount future rewards in relation to short-term rewards
2. underestimate the time things will take and overestimate how much we can do  [leads to poor planning]
3. prefer tomorrow over today [eventually leads, via something psychologists call intransitive preference, to the point right before a deadline where not only is tomorrow no longer preferable to today as a starting date, but in fact a previous date--no longer available--is preferred to today]
4. self-handicap to protect self-esteem [like starting so late that you can't be expected to do really well on a project]
5. think irrationally about the task at hand and our ability to accomplish the task [like insist on perfection, for example], and
6. manufacture our own happiness by changing our thinking to be consistent with our behavior [i.e., contending with cognitive dissonance, which creates its own problems].

In order to cope with cognitive dissonance, procrastinators may employ 

• distraction 
• forgetting
• trivialization
• self-affirmation
• denial of responsibility
• adding consonant cognitions
• making downward-counterfactuals ("It could've been worse!"), and 
• [actually] changing behavior.  

Changing behavior would involve acting, instead of procrastinating--something that is difficult to do, and therefore not so likely.  The other coping strategies on this list, while they may result in better feelings in the present, can be maladaptive.  A better approach is what Pychyl calls "planful-problem-solving".  

Dr. Pychyl also reminds us, as we have learned from others in our Procrastinating 101 series, that, despite what many of us believe, in most cases we don't "work best under pressure."  (He includes in this chapter a pretty frightening cartoon, in which one of our last-minute brethren finally gets around to thinking about packing his parachute on the way down!  Maybe that will scare some of us straight--or early.)

Pychyl's main piece of advice in this chapter is that we identify those irrational thoughts that lead us to procrastinate; and having done that, that we form an implementation intention, which he described in his Chapter 3.  In this way, the irrational thought becomes the cue (e.g., "If I catch myself thinking/saying 'I work best under pressure,') to implement the desired change in our thinking ("then I remind myself that this is self-deception, and just get started on the task").

He leaves us with the assignment to list our typical excuses for procrastinating, something he says may take some time.  These lies we tell ourselves, when we hear them asserting themselves again, can then be used to trigger the new response--just get started.  

Next week, we will learn from Dr. Pychyl why this approach works.   I don't know about you, but from where I sit, it sounds too easy to be true.  But just in case, I plan to show up next week with rationalizations and excuses in hand, willing to take the plunge.  But not without packing my chute.  Not even this inveterate relier on that most motivating of hours--the 11th--would leave that to the last minute.

Done for the Week: Leaps and Bounds, and a Bit of Limping

February was full of celebrations, this year even more than usual.  And as I am working with my physical therapist to repair my "gait mechanics," I am challenged as well to negotiate the choppy rhythms of my days with strength and grace.

March should present a more even surface.

In this last week of February, in between snowfalls and tantalizingly warm days, stress and happy moments, I managed to get the following done:

Done for the Week:  Feb. 27-Mar. 4, 2012

1. Biked once; used elliptical trainer once; swam once with my workout partner
   
2. Continued physical therapy for foot injury
3. Continued reading Elizabeth George's A Place of Hiding aloud with my husband
4. Read The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, by Aimee Bender
5. Continued reading Proust's Remembrance of Things Past
6. Continued to work my two part-time jobs
7. Finished participating in BlogHer's NaBloPoMo for February
8. Published 5 Put it to Bed blog posts
9. Published 2 ReVersing Course posts
10. Invented NaJusWriMo, to keep myself motivated to write; and signed on for March
11. Began to participate more in the BlogHer community
12. Continued work on current clients' projects
13. Attended two yoga classes
14. Had dinner with friends; baked and brought a (not particularly sad) lemon cake
15. Did laundry 
16. Continued college conversations with youngest son
17. Meditated 6 times
18. Straightened my work room
19. Took my dog to the dog park
20. Made and communicated the decision to leave my current church, coincidentally on Leap Day
21. Celebrated our Leap Day anniversary with a small late-night Champagne party for two on the actual day
22. Made arrangements to explore joining new church
23. Attended new church with my husband and a friend
24. Saw Art Museum's Accidental Genius exhibit of self-taught artists with my husband
25. Celebrated our Leap Day anniversary two days late at the County Clare Inn
26. Watched an episode of Eureka with my son
27. Watched Devil in a Blue Dress with my husband

Successfully finishing the February challenge of BlogHer's NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month), and establishing my own NaJusWriMo (National Just Write Month) in order to continue the writing momentum inspired by NaBloPoMo, constituted last week's most significant achievement.  I am looking forward to continuing to take my writing more seriously, and to making more regular time for it.  I am beginning to believe that writing constitutes, at this time in my life, the deep yes I wrote about searching for some weeks ago.

Last week's focus goal was "to strategize; to figure out how to apply what I know and am learning to the problem of wanting and needing to meditate, but not making time for it."   

For whatever reason, I ended up skipping past the strategy part, and going straight to the meditating.  However, some semi-conscious tactical work appears to have taken place.  The key elements of last week's almost daily meditating, after weeks of wishful thinking about meditating, appear to have been these:

1. I identified a time of day that had worked for me in the past, slotting in my practice as close as possible to that time.
2. I forced myself to meditate before lunch, which in turn preceded leaving for my afternoon job three days a week.  In this way, lunch served as a buffer that promoted the feeling of having enough time to meditate, and as a reward for having done so.
3. I lowered the bar in three ways, so that meditation didn't seem so daunting as it had become:  a.  I shortened the time from 20 minutes to 10;  b.  I relied on relaxation videos of nature scenes and sounds as a way of easing into a time of quiet; and c.  I skipped the cushion that had become a nemesis, and did my sitting on the couch in my workroom.  I view these measures as a form of training wheels to facilitate my return to this "bike" I had become so accustomed to before.  My intention is to continue using them until the habit is stronger, and then to remove them one at a time until I am once again sitting unsupported.

 I observe that I am feeling somewhat calmer--though perhaps only because I am not spending as much time flogging myself about not meditating? 

For the coming week, I am focusing on writing and meditating, continuing the approaches that have been working recently.   

What comes to mind is Michelangelo's purported description of how he created his sculpture of David:  "It's simple.  I begin with a piece of marble and remove everything that isn't David."  I feel like I am engaged in the attempt to unearth myself from all the busyness and clutter that keep me from being who I want to be.

To Curb Procrastination, Close Some Windows

In reading Willpower:  Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney, I discovered (not rediscovered, because they were new to me) several gems--concepts that help me think about my struggles with productivity, creativity, activity, proclivity, and all those other troublesome "ivities." One that comes to mind this morning is the Zeigarnik effect. 

Not so long ago (in the mid 1920s), in a galaxy not so far away (Vienna, to be exact,) Bluma Zeigarnik, a Russian psychologist, was lunching with some other psychologists.  She was struck by their waiter's ability to remember a complex set of orders without writing them down.  But afterwards, one of the party returned to the restaurant in search of a misplaced item.  The waiter had no memory of having waited on this individual a short time ago, or indeed, of having ever seen the person before.  Which got Zeigarnik to thinking.  And when psychologists start thinking, researching is seldom far behind.

What Zeigarnik learned, in a series of studies, was that those tasks we leave unfinished tend to remain in our short-term memory.  

Jeremy Dean, at PsyBlog, joins Baumeister and Tierney in fleshing out what this has to do with procrastination.  (And he has a wonderful vintage picture of Ms. Zeigarnik, looking soulful and inquisitive.)  He uses the model of the "cliffhanger," so frustratingly familiar to TV series viewers, to illustrate the power of the unfinished.


The lesson for procrastinators, asserted by Baumeister and Tierney, and by Dean, is that we continue to be distracted, to hold in consciousness, those tasks that we have left "hanging."  This distractedness gets in the way of our ability to focus on the task at hand, leading us to go "off-task" at least mentally, dividing our attention and diminishing our productivity.  The solution, say Baumeister and Tierney, is to figure out how to park those tasks that are in process, such that they don't keep "popping up."  They advise us to make a specific plan, detailing when and how such projects will be taken up again, including precise next steps.  They maintain that this strategy will reduce stress, improve focus, and lead to a higher rate of task completion.


The image that comes to my mind is not the TV cliffhanger, but my cluttered computer desktop.  My son remonstrates with me regularly about the number of windows and applications I have open at any given time.  This ADHD-style computer usage causes my processor to overheat, and to slow down to a primordial pace.  The solution?  Close some windows.  Close a lot of windows.  I literally can't complete what I'm working on with gillions of applications running in the background, and scores of tabs open.  


My brain, it seems, is experiencing the same difficulty.  The solution?  Close some windows.  Close a lot of windows.  Calendar them, bookmark them, list them, delegate them, organize them. . . .  And close them.

BlahBlahWhatNow?

I have decided to create my own event, "borrowing" liberally from the now infamous NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) phenomenon, and the derivative project which goes by the equally inscrutable, and slightly salacious sounding name of NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month).  

I recently participated in BlogHer's version of NaBloPoMo for the month of February.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I observed that some bloggers sign on for another month of NaBloPoMo at the conclusion of a month of blog posting.  I had been deliberating about whether or not I should do the same 

in order to "set" my new work energy and orientation, or . . . move to re-focusing these assets on other writing projects.

And then it came to me.  I could invent my own month of what procrastination experts term "pre-commitment."  Since blog posts are not all I want to write, and nor are novels (not even the one I am halfway through), I need a more expansive variant.  I'm calling it NaJusWriMo (National Just Write Month).  

Of course, it will need its own "badge," for those who want to commit online and display that pledge.   

Ta-da!

And, of course, some rules, which follow:

1.  Establish a list of what you yourself regard as "legitimate" writing products--i.e., output that makes you feel like a writer.  This is individual.  For some, it might be a letter to your mom, a grocery list, your memoirs.  For others, it could be a blog post, your very own War and Peace, a Pulitzer-worthy poem or play or piece of reporting.  Some of us might feel particularly writerly penning a song, an ad, a screenplay, a doctor's excuse--fictional or otherwise--or a piece for radio. 

You will know what will satisfy your writing urge when you see it.

2.  Specify criteria against which you can measure said output.  E.g., minutes/hours; pages; words; lines; posts; etc.

3.  Produce at least one writing product which meets whatever criterion you have determined each day.

4.  Keep a daily record of what you produce.

For myself, this blog post counts as today's writing.

Please feel free to sign on, if this sort of structure appeals to you.  And to let me know how it's going.