If you could choose between having more money in your life or more kindness, which would you choose?
To make a true impact in this world, we all need more than just money. Let’s be mindful of this as we consider our tasks in our different spheres of influence in the week ahead.
Let’s look for opportunities to bring true value into this world of ours.
So here we are with Part 2 of our two-part blog on procrastination. In Part 1, we looked at what procrastination actually is and how some in medicine are even calling it a form of self-harm.
This week in Part 2, we look at the root cause of procrastination, and how to manage the cause.
We even give you our A-B-C procrastination tips for you to consider for yourself.
Procrastination is about emotions not productivity
We must realize that, at its foundation, procrastination is about emotions, not productivity. That means treatment doesn’t involve downloading the latest time management app, it has to do with managing our emotions in a new way.
Our brains are always looking for rewards. So if we’ve created a habit around procrastination but we haven’t found a better reward, our brain is just going to keep doing it over and over until we give it something better to do.
To rewire any habit, we have to give our brains what’s known as the Bigger Better Offer.
In the case of procrastination, we have to find a better reward than avoidance — one that can relieve our challenging feelings in the present moment without causing harm to our future selves. The difficulty with breaking the addiction to procrastination in particular is that there is an infinite number of potential substitute actions that would still be forms of procrastination. That’s why the solution to what we’re describing here has to be an internal one, and not dependent on anything but ourselves.
Self-forgiveness and self-compassion
One option is to forgive yourself in the moments you procrastinate. In a 2010 study, researchers found that students who were able to forgive themselves for procrastinating when studying for a first exam ended up procrastinating less when studying for their next exam. They concluded that self-forgiveness supported productivity by allowing “the individual to move past their maladaptive behaviour and focus on the upcoming examination without the burden of past acts.”
Another tactic is the related practice of self-compassion, which is treating ourselves with kindness and understanding in the face of our mistakes and failures. In a 2012 study examining the relationship between stress, self-compassion and procrastination, Dr. Sirois found that procrastinators tend to have high stress and low self-compassion, suggesting that self-compassion provides “a buffer against negative reactions to self-relevant events.”
In fact, several studies show that self-compassion supports motivation and personal growth. Not only does it decrease psychological distress, which we now know is a primary culprit for procrastination, it also actively boosts motivation, enhances feelings of self-worth and fosters positive emotions like optimism, wisdom, curiosity and personal initiative. Best of all, self-compassion doesn’t require anything external — just a commitment to meeting your challenges with greater acceptance and kindness rather than regret.
That may be easier said than done, but try to reframe the task by considering a positive aspect of it. You could remind yourself of a time you did something similar and it turned out fine. Or maybe think about the beneficial outcome of completing the task. What might your boss or spouse say when you show them your finished work?
How will you feel about yourself?
A-B-C procrastination tips
Why not try our A-B-C procrastination tips of managing those procrastination triggers:
Address the temptation: If you’re feeling tempted to procrastinate, bring your attention to the sensations arising in your mind and body. What feelings are causing your temptation? Where do you feel them in your body? What do they remind you of? What happens to the thought of procrastinating as you observe it? Does it intensify? Dissipate? Cause other emotions to arise? How are the sensations in your body shifting as you continue to rest your awareness on them?
Buffer zone the temptation: Make your temptations more inconvenient: It’s still easier to change our circumstances than ourselves, said Gretchen Rubin, author of “Better Than Before: What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits.” According to Ms. Rubin, we can take what we know about procrastination and “use it to our advantage” by placing obstacles between ourselves and our temptations to induce a certain degree of frustration or anxiety. If you compulsively check social media, delete those apps from your phone or “give yourself a really complicated password with not just five digits, but 12,” Ms. Rubin said. By doing this, you’re adding friction to the procrastination cycle and making the reward value of your temptation less immediate.
On the other side of the coin, Ms. Rubin also suggests that we make the things we want to do as easy as possible for ourselves. If you want to go to the gym before work but you’re not a morning person, sleep in your exercise clothes. “Try to remove every, every, every roadblock,” Ms. Rubin says.
Consider the next action: This is different to the age-old advice to break up a task you’re tempted to avoid into bite-sized chunks. According to Dr. Pychyl, focusing only on the “next action” helps calm our nerves, and it allows for what Dr. Pychyl called “a layer of self-deception.” At the start of a given task, consider the next action as a mere possibility: “What’s the next action I’d take on this if I were going to do it, even though I’m not?” Maybe you would open your email. Or perhaps you would put the date at the top of your document. Don’t wait to be in the mood to do a certain task. “Motivation follows action. Get started, and you’ll find your motivation follows,” Dr. Pychyl said.
Self-honesty
Perhaps the most significant wake up call procrastination brings is that of honesty, not to others, but to ourselves. Procrastination is deeply personal, as it raises questions about how we want to spend our time as opposed to how we actually do, and if there’s a misalignment between the two, then we need to ask why?
Procrastination is a reminder of our common frailty — we’re all vulnerable to painful feelings, and most of us just want to be happy with the choices we make, but we can control it, rather than it controlling us.
Now go and make those drinks for you and your associates before it becomes your next procrastination temptation 🙂
Ruth
If you’ve ever put off an important task by, say, making a cup of tea or coffee for your family, friends or colleagues, you know it wouldn’t be fair to describe yourself as lazy.
After all, brewing the perfect cup requires focus, effort and time, and hey, maybe you even went the extra mile and put a swirl of something on top too. And it’s not like you’re messing around with friends, you’re actually doing something to provide for other’s needs. This isn’t laziness or bad time management, but, if you did this to get out of an important task, this is procrastination.
So, if procrastination isn’t about laziness, or bad time management, then what is it about?
Well let’s look at where our English word procrastination came from, and that will give us a clue.
Etymologically, procrastination is derived from the Latin verb procrastinare — to put off until tomorrow, which implies a passiveness on our part. But it’s more than just a passive delay on our part, because procrastination is also derived from the ancient Greek word akrasia — doing something against our better judgment. So we are actually pro-actively doing something rather than passively doing nothing.
So what is it we pro-actively ‘do’ when we’re procrastinating, and isn’t it just harmless anyway?
Procrastination as a form of self harm
Well what if I were to tell you that many in medicine and academia are classifying procrastination as a form of self-harm.
Understanding this is key to understanding why procrastinating makes us feel so rotten. When we procrastinate, we’re not only aware that we’re avoiding the task in question, but also that doing so is not the best option. And yet, we still do it.
“This is why we say that procrastination is essentially irrational,” said Dr. Fuschia Sirois, professor of psychology at the University of Sheffield. “It doesn’t make sense to do something you know is going to have negative consequences.”
She adds: “People engage in this irrational cycle of chronic procrastination because of an inability to manage negative moods around a task.”
So, it seems procrastination isn’t so much about our ability to manage time, but a form of escapism to cope with challenging emotions and negative moods brought on by certain tasks — boredom, anxiety, insecurity, frustration, resentment, self-doubt and beyond.
“Procrastination is an emotion regulation problem, not a time management problem,” says Dr. Tim Pychyl, professor of psychology and member of the Procrastination Research Group at Carleton University in Ottawa.
But why should we believe Dr Pychyl & Dr Sirois anyway?
Well, in a 2013 study, Dr. Pychyl and Dr. Sirois found that procrastination can be understood as “the primacy of short-term mood repair over the longer-term pursuit of intended actions.” Put simply, procrastination is about being more focused on “the immediate urgency of managing negative moods” than getting on with the task, Dr. Sirois said.
The specific reason for our avoidance depends on the given task or situation. It may be due to something inherently unpleasant about the task itself — having to clean a dirty bathroom or organizing a long, boring spreadsheet for your boss. But it might also result from deeper feelings related to the task, such as self-doubt, low self-esteem, anxiety or insecurity.
Staring at a blank document, you might be thinking, I’m not smart enough to write this. Even if I am, what will people think of it?
Writing is so hard. What if I do a bad job?
All of this can lead us to think that putting the document aside and making that round of tea and coffee for everyone is a much better option.
But, of course, this only compounds the negative associations we have with the task, and those feelings will still be there whenever we come back to it, along with increased stress and anxiety, feelings of low self-esteem and self-blame.
Ironically, the momentary relief we feel when procrastinating is actually what makes the cycle especially vicious. In the immediate present, putting off a task provides relief — “you’ve been rewarded for procrastinating,” Dr. Sirois said. And we know from basic behaviourism that when we’re rewarded for something, we tend to do it again. This is precisely why procrastination tends not to be a one-off behaviour, but a cycle, one that easily becomes a chronic habit.
Over time, chronic procrastination not only has productivity costs, but measurably destructive effects on our mental and physical health.
It’s one of life’s ironies that we procrastinate to avoid negative feelings, but end up feeling even worse – maybe someone is trying to tell us something?
Prioritizing short-term needs ahead of long-term ones
Procrastination is an example of prioritizing short-term needs ahead of long-term ones, but, as with any other type of self-harm, we can’t just tell ourselves to stop procrastinating. And despite the prevalence of “productivity hacks and apps,” focusing on the question of how to get more work done doesn’t actually address the root cause of procrastination.
O.K. so how do we address the root cause of procrastination?
Well, if I can bring myself round to it, we’ll look at the root cause of procrastination in my next blog 🙂
Ruth
What worry can and cannot do for you…
Worry cannot add any value to you.
Worry cannot not add even 1 hour to your life.
Worry cannot lead you one step nearer to your goal.
Worry cannot change anything in your past.
Worry cannot change anything in your future.
So, what can worry do?
Mess up your today.
In the week ahead, if you find yourself tempted to worry, treat it as you would a dashboard warning alarm indicating you need to focus on the small things you can influence, not the big things you can’t!
Stephen & Ruth
