Done for the Week: Always Behind

Another week of activity, to-do items crossed off, milestones in the rear view.  And yet, a deep down feeling of being perpetually behind.  Something systemic, I believe.  Something unlikely to be resolved by making lists and writing about my inability to get through them.

I did, however, do these things.

Done for the Week:  July 18-24, 2011

1. Completed Week 11 of 15-week triathlon training program; ran twice; swam twice; biked three times
2. Swam twice, ran twice, biked once with my training partner
3. Biked once with my husband
4. Signed up for additional triathlon prep camp
5. Replaced swim cap & goggles left at the pool
6. Made appointment to get new contacts 
7. Went with my husband to pick out his new glasses
8. Finished The Apothecary Rose, by Candace Robb
9. Continued to work my two part-time jobs 
10. Published 2 blog posts 
11. Shared Happy Hour dinner with my husband
12. Watched Treme with my husband
13. Returned to reading Elizabeth George's In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner aloud with my husband
14. Saw Beginners with my husband
15. Took my dog to the dog park, with my husband
16. Attempted (prematurely aborted) game of Pictionary with my family
17. Saw new Harry Potter movie with my husband and son
18. Met with prospective web client
19. Met with current web client; worked on project
20. Drove with about-to-be licensed teenager several times 
21. Participated in driving my not-quite-licensed-to-drive son to and from work
22. Finally cracked the code for road test appointment; succeeded in moving appointment up six weeks, to this Wednesday (Yay!)
23. Worked for recall candidate
24. Made major progress on backyard reclamation
25. Planted more flowers, started putting down mulch; got three bee stings
26. Went to outdoor jobs prayer vigil (in 100+ degree heat!)
27. Attended Issues Night
28. Attended 1 yoga class; sustained hamstring injury
29. Called my mom
30. Picked up prize won in library reading program
31. Listened to my son's amazing hip hop creations online
32. Continued progress in cleaning/straightening/decluttering work room, bedroom & kitchen  

My most important accomplishment last week was squeezing in time with my family.  This, despite the fact that, to a man/woman, all of them would say that I was too busy, and barely available.  In part, they are right.  In part, they are reacting to the sea change over the past couple of years, as I take back some of my energy and time from absorption in family tasks and responsibilities.  They may not think so, but they are still first in my heart.   

Last week's focus goal, back by not-so-popular demand, was to declutter our house, involving my housemates in the excavation, and starting with the kitchen, my work room, and our bedroom.  I am embarrassed to admit that five straight weeks of "focusing" on this goal have not produced the desired results.  It is beginning to dawn on me that I have left no room in my crowded schedule for this project, depending on "working in" this effort to achieve the desired end.  And like the overflow patients "worked in" to a doctor's bulging appointment calendar, these rooms are still waiting.  And waiting.  Their time in the queue has produced little in the way of real attention.  

Our bedroom saw the most improvement, though it has yet to be completely rehabbed.  But it's close.  The other two rooms see the most daily use, the kitchen in particular.  So reclaiming them requires dealing with continuing accrual of detritus, and making a dent in the significant backlog.

Given the scope of the problem, and my tardy recognition of the real barriers to its solution, I have decided to shift my focus this week to creating a realistic schedule that reflects my many current commitments.  When I can be more strategic about my use of time, it should be easier to defend against additional incursions of responsibility (by using that two-letter word I have so much trouble with), and to prioritize projects in a way that will allow me to feel that I'm making progress. 

Procrastinating 101: The Long and the Short of It

If Dr. Piers Steel is to be believed, we procrastinators may be about to run out of excuses.  (And God knows, we love our excuses!)  It's his persuasive argument, and his damned (good) practical advice that may prove their undoing.

Procrastinating 101 has been focusing these last nine weeks on Dr. Steel's book, The Procrastination Equation:  How to Stop Putting Things Off and Start Getting Stuff Done.  If you have been following its exposition, you may remember Dr. Steel's assertion that poor impulse control is at the heart of most procrastination.  In Chapter Nine, "In Good Time:  Managing Short-term Impulses and Long-term Goals," he lays out the problem more fully, details some creative solutions, and throws in a little ancient Greek literature.  As we have come to expect, Dr. Steel is once again an eminently companionable and unassailably (I looked it up--it's really a word.) knowledgeable tour guide through these regions of Planet Procrastination.

"Impulsiveness," says Steel, "multiplies the effect of delay, making it a major determinant of the Procrastination Equation's outcome."  For those who have not yet seen Steel's formulation, and those who have but have not committed it to memory, the mathematical expression he has devised to represent his theory of procrastination looks like this:

Here low Motivation predicts the big P, Procrastination.  The other elements have been teased out in previous posts (see, particularly, Procrastinating 101: 12-year-olds Get It, So Can We ).

Impulsiveness contributes to the divisor in the equation, so that the more impulsive among us will experience lower motivation, and thus be more inclined to procrastinate.  And, as Dr. Steel warns, "you can't escape your fate.  Impulsiveness is not something you have, but something you are."  Yikes!

But there is hope, and it begins with Odysseus.  Dr. Steel recounts the preparations urged upon Odysseus by the goddess Circe, who knew that he would face, on his return trip from Troy, the temptress Sirens.  Circe advised him to plug his men's ears with wax, and to lash himself to the mast of his ship, so that he would be able to pass through the district of these irresistible creatures and continue his journey.  Thus, Odysseus employed the technique of precommitment.

Dr. Steel recommends we face the fact that temptations too often get the better of us, leading us off task and into putting off what we need to get done.  We would do well to identify our Sirens, and to invest in precommitment.

He offers three contemporary strategies (no ear wax or ship masts required) for precommitting, intriguingly categorized under the heading "Bonding, Satiation and Poison."  For the sake of brevity, and my sanity (it has been a looonnnnnngggggggg week!), I will just hit the highlights here:  

• Throw Away the Key--The idea here is to devise a way, technological or analog, to block off the exits while focusing on work.  Steel mentions, e.g., a program for Apple users called Freedom, which blocks internet access; Clocky, an alarm clock on wheels that goes berserk when you hit Snooze; and Google's "Take a break" button, which gives the user fifteen minutes of email-free work time.
• Satiation--This approach addresses our urges and impulses by having us "tank up," scheduling in a modicum of pleasure and relaxation, and then slotting in work around these "appointments."  Dr. Neil Fiore popularized this Unschedule in his book The Now Habit:  A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play.
• Try Poison--This strategy features penalties & scare tactics.  One example was employed by my ex-husband in his dissertation research on behavior change.  Participants put up $100, which was forfeited to their least favorite cause or charity if they resumed smoking during the study period.  Alternatively, Dr. Steel recommends visualizing in horrifying detail the dire consequences that could result from putting off a dreaded task.

Then there's "Making Attention Pay," Steel's two-pronged advice for diminishing the pull of distractions/temptations.

• Inside Out:  Pay Attention Please!--We can minimize the appeal of those objects and activities that would keep us from work by altering our perceptions, and thus the level of attention these things command.  Using abstraction and symbolic representation--e.g., focusing on attributes of a desired food, and thus recruiting the prefrontal cortex to compete with the limbic system response of "yum," "gimme"--is one way of doing this.  Another is to run a "smear campaign" on the desired object, attending to its negative qualities and consequences--e.g., weight gain and high cholesterol from junk food; STDs, unwanted pregnancy and a ruined marriage from infidelity; or public disgrace and firing from failure to complete work.
• Outside In:  Now You See It, Now You Don't (stimulus control)--This approach attempts to limit the environmental cues which distract us.  For example, a dieter might stock the fridge with only healthy food choices.  Those of us who struggle to stay on task might limit the number of windows open on our computer desktops; remove troublesome bookmarks; arrange our work spaces to cue work and not entertainment; incorporate work triggers; and--addressing two of my personal pet peeves--declutter our work space, and maintain "pristine" boundaries between "clashing life domains, typically family and work."  Hard to do for the increasing number of us who work from home, and whose laptops accompany us from one messy and distracting space and location to another.

And finally, Scoring Goals.

Dr. Steel has this to say about goals:

We have already touched on some of what makes a goal good.  In chapter 7, we mentioned that making goals challenging is more inspiring than making them attainable.  Easy goals are attainable. . . .In chapter 8, we focused on making goals meaningful by linking them to personally relevant aspirations.  If you see how present tasks lead to future rewards, you will value them more highly.  In this chapter, we will put the finishing touches on goal setting by putting time back on your side.

• The Finish Line is Just Ahead--Dr. Steel's suggestion in this section is to proceed toward "concrete, exact" goals by stages, using subgoals.  In this way, we can take advantage of our tendency to work more intensely closer to deadline; a series of intermediate "deadlines" will result in spreading out effort, and a better quality product.  He discusses the issue of "motivational surface tension," and using a technique I first learned from Alan Lakein (in How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life)--setting a mini-goal that gets us started, and more often than not, ultimately engaged in the work we're avoiding.
• Full Auto--This advice builds on the predictability that flows from build routines and habits of work.  He also urges us to plan for distraction, as in "'If I lose focus, then I will move my attention back to the task.'"

But again, Dr. Steel says all this better than I.  You might want to just read the book yourself.

Next Week:  Chapter Ten--Making it Work.  We're in the home stretch now!

Done for the Week: Slip Sliding Away

A busy day today, finishing up yesterday's overly ambitious to-do list.  And a too-busy week last week, with too little to show for my efforts.

As with my efforts to remodel my swim stroke, my struggle to bring order to my life is proving strenuous.  The results of both campaigns to date urge refining my approach.

In any case, last week was not without its achievements.

Done for the Week:  July 11-17, 2011

1. Completed Week 10 of 15-week triathlon training program; ran twice; swam three times; biked twice
2. Swam twice, ran twice, biked once with my training partner 
3. Got bike computer installed, new water cage mounted
4. Watched series of YouTube videos on Total Immersion swimming
5. Finished Hamlet's Blackberry, by William Powers
6. Continued to work my two part-time jobs 
7. Published 2 blog posts 
8. Shared Happy Hour dinner with my husband
9. Began watching new anime series with my son
10. Designed and printed new business cards
11. Went out driving with learning teenager several times 
12. Participated in driving my not-quite-licensed-to-drive son to his job
13. Continued to work on cracking the code for road test appointment; succeeded in moving appointment up 2 weeks
14. Worked on getting out the vote for recall primary
15. Made major progress on backyard reclamation
16. Picked up mower in for repair
17. Planted more flowers, two tomato plants
18. Went to jobs rally
19. Meditated once 
20. Saw my therapist
21. Bought new tent
22. Had first backyard campout with my grandson
23. Attended board meeting
24. Continued progress in cleaning/straightening/decluttering work room, bedroom & kitchen  

Finishing Hamlet's Blackberry:  A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age, by William Powers, was last week's most important accomplishment.  The book made me rethink how much time I'm spending online these days.  Powers argues, and I am beginning to believe, that much of the anxiety and confusion many of us are experiencing in our lives, as well as a great deal of our difficulty with focusing and getting things done, represent side effects of our absorption in screens.  I plan to continue reflecting on how I can use the technology that surrounds me to accomplish more of what I care about, while avoiding more of its distractions.

Last week, for the fourth week running, my focus goal was to declutter our house, involving my housemates in the excavation, and starting with the kitchen, my work room, and our bedroom.  Unfortunately, my virus returned for an encore performance; my pregnant daughter spent a night in the emergency room, requiring me to give a day to watching my overtired grandson; the recall primary election demanded more volunteer hours; and "life happened" in other ways too numerous and dreary to mention.  I made a bit more progress, but I'm not "there" yet.  I'm giving it at least another week.

Yoga and meditation were among the things that didn't happen last week.  Symptomatic, I suppose, of my general difficulty with self-discipline in this period.  I intend to do better this week.

Procrastinating 101: Winning at the Job Game*

 

My favorite lines in Tom Meny's song, Job, are these:

I don't dig ditches or bang on doors
But I don't end hunger and I don't end wars
And I don't do anything that'll ever make a change

although I must confess that his refrain

I hate my job
I hate my job
I hate my job
I hate my job
I hate my job
Lord knows, I hate my f-in job

also holds a certain resonance for me.  (Of course, as with Meny's disclaimer, this has no relationship to my current, much-loved jobsss.)

Piers Steel deals with the subject of jobs in The Procrastination Equation's eighth chapter--"Love It or Leave It:  Finding Relevance in Work."  My brief YouTube survey, in search of a link, musical or otherwise, to use for this post's image turned up a host of material that supports Steel's opening point about the nature of work in the modern world.  A raft of funny, brilliant, disturbing, and in many cases explicit videos express the alienation many of us experience, whether in cubicles or warehouses, as fast food pushers, shelf stockers, telemarketers (who apparently hate themselves as much as we hate them), fry cooks, sales personnel or domestic workers.  Even children are making videos about how much they expect to hate their jobs when they grow up!

Steel tells us that about a game he uses "to warm up my students for a class on motivation . . . called My Job Is Worse Than Your Job, " and the conclusion they draw from it:  that the "worst" jobs "aren't the physically demanding ones . . . [but rather] the mind-numbingly boring ones."  Ever been bored at work?  (Of course, if you're a brain surgeon, I hope you're going to answer "No.")

Steel traces the influence of Frederick Taylor, whose efficiency studies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries led to a growing fragmentation of work--"simple routine tasks lacking autonomy."  Enter boredom, alienation, and a lack of motivation.  Enter procrastination.  (Remembering that the lower our motivation, the more we delay, according to the Procrastination Equation.)  Of course, lollygagging on an assembly line may be physically dangerous.  Think Charlie Chaplin's character's entanglement in the machinery in Modern Times.

Steel's discussion of games and tricks we might employ on the job to keep boredom at bay reminded me of a book I read many years ago called Manufacturing Consent, by Michael Burawoy.  Burawoy's Marxist analysis argued that the "gaming" used by workers in which they competed with each other to "make out" in a piece rate pay structure, "playing all the angles," gave them the illusion of choice.  

Playing the game eliminated much of the drudgery and boredom associated with industrial work.   (Manufacturing Consent, p. 89)

 Thus, in Burawoy's view, workers were diverted from concerns with labor-management conflict, their participation was co-opted--and consent was thus manufactured. 

But Dr. Steel is not addressing the workings of capitalism and labor relations.  He is looking, as psychologists do, at the experience of the individual--of us work-inured, bored procrastinators.  And his recommendation is that we game the system as a way of making work tolerable, and of shoring up motivation.  He also advocates the use of goals, and particularly positive or approach goals to enhance the relevance of our jobs, and further buttress motivation.  And he points out the usefulness of framing, or viewing tasks so as to increase the value we assign to them.

Steel goes on to discuss the matter of  available energy for tasks we dislike--physical energy as well as emotional energy.  And like Chip and Dan Heath, in Switch, he notes that willpower is depleted by the many efforts we make at self-control.  He echoes Marshall Cook, author of Slow Down. . . and Get More Done, in this statement:

To some extent, we should accept that we don't have infinite mental energy and acknowledge our motivational limitations along with our physical ones.  Everyone understands why you can't run back-to-back marathons but it's not so obvious that equivalent internal struggles can be just as onerous.  Perhaps we have trouble with procrastination because we demand too much of ourselves in a day, and it's possible that pursuing a less stressful, slower paced life would help us get energized.

But given that we "don't always have a choice," Dr. Steel offers these suggestions for managing our energy:

1.  Eliminating distractions from our work environment, so that we don't exhaust ourselves fighting constant temptation;

2.  Working with circadian rhythms to schedule tasks when our energy for them is optimal;

3.  Using short naps and/or walks to revive energy levels; and

4.  Maintaining energy with exercise and proper diet and sleep, rather than relying on junk food and stimulants to stay alert.  

He shares this fascinating tidbit:

Committing to a regular schedule of exercise has been shown to decrease procrastination

and advises learning about sleep hygiene.

Dr. Steel is also a proponent of structured procrastination, an idea advanced by John Perry, and one that I have written about previously.  This strategy, which Steel calls "productive procrastination," would have us do something worthwhile while avoiding a less palatable task, thereby reducing but not eliminating the cost of procrastinating.  Eventually, so the theory goes, this approach 

does clear your plate and puts you in a much better position to dig in when you're ready.

Before concluding this chapter about this scariest of all four-lettered words, Dr. Steel puts forth two notions to which I especially warm.  The first of these he calls "Double or Nothing," encouraging us to pair something pleasant with a hated task.  Over time, this should result in "learned industriousness."  And in the meantime, it means I can look forward to more chocolate, more meditation time, and more movies.  (Dr. Steel does not take up the recent debate about what some experts claim is the harm done to children's intrinsic motivation by the use of extrinsic rewards.  And, by extension, to our own "love" for "the work itself."  See, for example, Rewards and Praise:  The Poisoned Carrot. )

The second of these two warm and fuzzy suggestions is to "Let Your Passion Be Your Vocation."  He says that "finding work you want to do is a major step toward avoiding procrastination," and that "This combination can make work almost addictive; motivation shoots upward stratospherically, souping up creativity, learning, and persistence."  Just ask my husband, who is frequently caught in bed, late at night, highlighting the more salient sentences in books such as Histories of the Hanged:  The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire.  Not my cup of tea, but then I myself can get lost for hours following Facebook links to arcane discussions of Wisconsin state politics.  My "work," as I define it, but not my "job."

Steel observes that achieving this state of work/passion, or "job/calling" congruence can be a long-term project.  Indeed, 

If we all went with or first impulse, the working world would be primarily composed of firefighters and ballerinas. [Or where I grew up, nuns.]

He counsels us to martial available resources, and make the effort to, as Marshall Cook (and the Buddha) advised, "find right work" and "make work right." 

Next week--Dr. Steel tackles impulsiveness.

_______________________________

*Note:  I should mention that I began the day at a protest rally, calling attention to the unacceptably high level of joblessness in my city, parts of which register 60% unemployment among African American males.  While some of us procrastinate on our jobs, others are in desperate need of decent, family-sustaining jobs--no matter how boring, tedious, or strenuous.

## Apropos of today's subject:  on the Red Stapler Chronicles, this list of the top 6 movies about hating your job.  Yet another procrastination resource.  Check it out.