Psychology Today
Science and Sensibility
Uncover Procrastination Thinking That Drives Procrastination Behavior
Procrastination thinking is like an octopus with similar but separate tentacles. You tell yourself later is better. You put it off by telling yourself that the task is too tough. You tell yourself you'll get to it, but after you've done something else first. Like a stealth bomber, procrastination thinking can be tricky to see, but you can feel the results.
Self-deceiving procrastination thinking is largely ignored by both procrastination researchers and the general public. Yet this is one area where the majority of people who procrastinate can make the quickest gains by recognizing this self-deception, refusing to buy into it, and by shifting gears to action drive.
How do you uncover thinking that lurks under procrastination? Here is a two-stage awareness and action technique:
1. By thinking about your thinking (the metacognitive way) you can see how procrastination thinking gets in the way of productive actions. Educating yourself about procrastination thinking speeds this awareness process.
2. Taking corrective behavioral action is a second step, but you can make this step one. By taking on what you feel tempted to put off, you can tune into task-blocking emotions and thinking. You may also get the task done quicker.
I‘ll describe classic procrastination thinking that spur delays, Wheedler thinking that propels self-defeating habits, and procrastination jokes and criticism to avoid correcting these toxic processes. Use this information to shed your procrastination covers.
Classic Procrastination Thinking
Tomorrow thinking is common among people who procrastinate. You decide that later is better. You sidetrack yourself into "safer" or instant pleasure activities. Mary Todd Lincoln understood this thinking: "My evil genius Procrastination has whispered me to tarry ‘till a more convenient season."
Contingency tomorrow thinking bloats procrastination by throwing in an added complication. You decide to face up to and overcome procrastination. You con yourself into believing that you need to read up on the subject first. So, you buy books on how to end procrastination. You put off reading them. You decide that you need to unearth childhood conflicts before dealing with procrastination. So you spend 10 years on an analyst's couch awaiting answers.
Here are two corrective techniques for rejecting procrastination thinking: (1) Boost your awareness of procrastination thinking by recording information in a procrastination log. Do this when you feel tempted to procrastinate. (2) Teach yourself to test procrastination thinking by raising questions about its results. Why would you expect to do better later? How does setting an interfering condition for action help? By asking and truthfully answering these questions, you exercise your mental muscle and power down your procrastination impulses.
Beat the Wheedler
What does it mean when you wheedle? Wheedling involves using guile and flattery to persuade. However, what if you wheedle yourself?
Your inner Wheedler is like a con-artist or flim-flam artist. What does it mean if your Wheedler squeezes you onto a procrastination path? You've conned yourself.
The Wheedler has many tricks. Upon learning that overcoming procrastination takes work, you may hear an angry and defiant Wheedler on the attack: "Screw this BS. I'm not going to do it." A whimpering Wheedler has its own expression: "Oh, life should be convenient and easy. It's awful when it's not."
Abraham Low, the founder of Recovery Inc., understood the Wheedler's discomfort-anxiety approach to life. He described this boomerang effect: "It is the anticipation of discomfort and nothing else that causes the apprehension."
The Wheedler lacks the foresight to see beyond its nose. Nevertheless, this fast flowing current of impulsive thinking is concentrated, influential, and supports harmful behavioral habits. Procrastinating on dealing with excess drinking or binge eating are classic examples. Larry tells himself: "I'll be good forever after this one last ice-cream and pizza feast." Later he repeats the same pattern. Chalk up another for the Wheedler. (Whoever believes that procrastination is laziness that discipline corrects, resides in la-la land.)
How do you beat the Wheedler? Well, you don't escape human nature (see May 24, 2010 blog). But you can strengthen another part of your human nature. Use reason as an opposing force. This strengthening begins with: (1) Wheedler recognition followed by questioning and debunking toxic Wheedler logic. (2) Proactively stretching to follow enlightened choices. This simple action plan isn't necessarily easy to start or continue. However, by taking extra steps to beat the Wheedler, you may discover that you act on enlightened choices.
Where the choice lies between following Wheedler logic, or taking charge of your life, the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky gives this view: "Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit."
Procrastination Jokes, Criticisms, and Resistance to Change
It's easier to joke about procrastination or to complain about a "typo" on a page than to take procrastination antidotes seriously. How do you tell when procrastination jokes and "criticism" about anti-procrastination strategies reflect resistance to change? The answer is simple. You can tell by the results. When jokes and criticisms substitute for addressing performance anxieties, general discomfort about an activity, aversion for inconvenience, or other procrastination substratum, these results warrant attention.
With no ill-effect, most people can joke about procrastination as they might about the weather. However, jokes are a cult phenomenon to a sub-group who procrastinate, who downplay their serious problem habit, and who seem frustratingly stuck in a procrastination rut.
Procrastination jokes, such as "I'll read this procrastination book later", can echo a feeling of helplessness. Turning procrastination into a joke can have a distancing effect to cover up a deeper sense of helpless thinking. An undercurrent of helplessness thinking muddles positive changes. For some, the smile that goes with the procrastination joke disguises tears, but nothing changes.
Some forms of criticism are defensive. If you can marginalize a tested process for positive change, you can justify avoiding doing the work that is practically always necessary if you intend to do better. As an act of self-sabotage, you complain about helpful resources as inconvenient to use. You whine about a sentence in a self-help procrastination book you don't like, or you find a concept that doesn't apply to you. Now you can overgeneralize and disregard the entire corrective process. What kind of solution is that?
Perhaps "discouragement" is why so many self-protectively use jokes and criticisms to sidetrack from looking at their own behavior. Nevertheless, you can substantially decrease collateral habits of joking or criticizing by using psychological principles designed to dismantle this toxic logic, such as cognitive behavioral therapy and rational emotive behavior therapy techniques that appear in a self-help format. Skill in using these methods takes knowledge and practice. However, you can gain ground by taking corrective actions, profiting from feedback, and from repeatedly applying what you learn to go farther in expressing and extending your positive abilities. If you decide to take the other path, too bad.
End Procrastination Now (Knaus, 2010, McGraw-Hill), The Procrastination Workbook (Knaus, 2002, New Harbinger), and the classic Do it Now (Knaus, 1998, John Wiley), describe many forms of procrastination thinking. Each gives corrective remedies.
Access Content Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/science-and-sensibility/201006/uncover-procrastination-thinking-drives-procrastination-behavior
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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
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