by David Parker
Interestingly, procrastination has aspects of both branches of OCD; in other words, one can find both obsessions and compulsions within the procrastinator. For example, a procrastinator might obsess over a past inaction by thinking, “I should have taken care of those bills yesterday; why didn’t I do it when I had the chance?” At the same time, his behaviors can also mimic the compulsive component of OCD because before taking action, he backs off, saying to himself, “I know I should sit down and pay the bills right now, but I don’t feel like it. I’ll do it tomorrow!” So, procrastination can not only take the form of either an obsessive thought or a compulsive behavior, it can also be a complex mix of both components, working together as a disharmonious tag-team helping to propel procrastination to its highest heights.
The Good News—Change Is Possible
So then, the question needs to be asked: If habitual procrastination has been such an all-encompassing, formidable, and difficult foe, how could a person such as myself wind up writing a book on overcoming it? Luckily, although I may have stopped taking care of myself at times, I was not incapable of observing and eventually changing many of my negative behaviors, which resulted in my ability to produce this book.
Truth be told, there are still times when I am approaching an unfamiliar task that I may feel some degree of apprehension. However, the difference between then-and-now is like the difference between night-and-day, because today I don’t allow feelings of fear or anxiety to get the better of me. During my transformation from procrastinator into “do”-er, I began to find a new sense of balance, and as the process continued, I noticed myself feeling a bit more comfortable in my own skin.
If you work at overcoming your own habitual procrastination you’ll start overcoming the fear that has interfered with your ability to deal with the tasks and projects that you’ve learned to automatically shy away from. You’ll discover that you are far more capable than you thought possible, and your new definitions of yourself will be based upon newer self-beliefs garnered from positive experiences.
Actively procrastinating is like stumbling through life like an ill-prepared actor. When I was a practicing procrastinator I sometimes wondered, if I were miraculously transformed into what I would have called a regular person, how I would look back on my earlier life? Would I hate myself for all the opportunities I’d lost, and if so, what would I do with all the anger that I imagined would come? Having bridged that gap, I now find myself at peace with those times. All I can say is that I simply did not know any other way of living.
All You Really Need Is Willingness
Giving up a long held belief or lifestyle, even one that works against you, isn’t easy. Beating up on yourself doesn’t help, nor does trying to hurry the process along. Like a cigarette smoker who only wants to stop smoking—but never gives stopping an honest try, wishing alone doesn’t help, because wishing is not a strategy. What does help is learning to do things differently, and then giving those new ways a real chance by trying them out. In short, it’s all in the “do”-ing.
Change is possible. As you will see later, the key ingredient that you’ll need to provide is willingness. Change takes place slowly and over a long time. It’s essential that you give yourself patience in order to continue growing into the person you want to become. You’ll also need to treat yourself to love and understanding. As a friend pointed out to me, “Ask yourself this question. What would you do if you loved yourself?”
If you are a habitual procrastinator, the “spell” that you’ve seemingly been living under can be cast aside and believe it or not, the power is in your own hands. As the second half of this book reveals, becoming a “do”-er is a lot more than merely possible. You’ll learn practical ways that will teach you how to deal with many of the tasks you find unpleasant or beyond your present ability to cope with. All it will require on your part is the willingness to practice some new ways of “do”-ing.
Chapter Two
“How Did I End Up This Way?”
THIS BOOK HAS ITS ORIGINS in a special type of diary called a “feelings journal” that I started writing on a cold and gray winter morning while living in London. Although I’m a native New Yorker or, to be accurate, a humble Brooklynite, I was unemployed on that gloomy London day, and renting a sparse room in a low-budget hotel—separated from my then-wife, as well as my friends back home.
I was suffering through a prolonged and devastating mental depression, and my spirits seemed as low as the clouds that clung to London’s low rooftops. Feeling under pressure because I was low on money, every morning I awoke to panic attacks—talk about your morning jolt! Typically, there were three types of days I muddled through:
Those on which I was very depressed.
Those when I suffered though anxiety and panic attacks, but didn’t feel terribly depressed.
And the days when I suffered through panic attacks while feeling greatly depressed for most, if not all, of the day.
Although I had had quite a long history of depression back home, my living circumstances in London contributed greatly to my heightened level of distress. An old adage goes, “Be careful what you wish for, you might get it!” That resonated within me because although it had once been my dream to live in London, my dream had turned into a living nightmare. Not only was I attempting to cope in the midst of a terrible depression, I was running out of money as well. If that weren’t enough, I also had to deal with my new cultural status, that of being a foreigner. Despite the fact that I had visited London many times prior to relocating there, another old adage rang true: “It’s one thing to visit a place, and another thing to live there.”
Just months earlier, I had been hospitalized there for depression. However, “depression” was too mild a term for what I had been going through. What actually landed me in the hospital was a strong desire for permanent relief from all the difficulties that I had faced for far too long.
Living in that foreign locale, I was alienated to a large degree and even worse, I had far too much free time on my hands. Hoping to reduce my woes by talking them through, I visited the walk-in center of The Samaritans, where I would chat about my troubles with a kind volunteer. I also availed The Caravan, a free counseling center on the grounds of St. James Church, just a short stroll down the road from Piccadilly Circus. These gracious strangers helped me to continue moving forward through that sad, desperate period of dark despair.
“Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings”—Or So the Song Went
Stuck in despair, I tried to recall anything that might help my situation. I remembered when, years earlier, I was in a similar depression and a friend had recommended that I keep a feelings journal as a way of tracking my moods from day to day. I began that journal because, in spite of the help that I received at the counseling centers, I continued to feel emotionally shattered and unable to pull myself together.
Ironically, there were some occasions when I felt slightly worse after a counseling session than I’d felt before the session had begun. Of course, this was never the intended effect of a session, and in spite of this infrequent and unintentional backlash, I was grateful for the concern those volunteers showed me, as I still am today.
It seemed that since conventional talk therapy focuses on how the client, or myself, in this case, generally feels while in the session, that after spending thirty minutes focused on exactly why I felt so poorly, I sometimes left a counseling center feeling somewhat more unsettled than before I had entered it.
It felt as though I had fallen into a deep, dark hole—and it eventually occurred to me that perhaps I alone, might be the only one who could help me find my way out of it. So I began writing that feelings journal as a kind of self-constructed ladder, to help me climb a path of self-discovery and betterment.
The Procrastination Cycle
Eventually, I found a job in London, but although my financial pressures let up a bit, I was still very depressed. Despite living in one of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities
, my daily routine consisted of going to work and then returning to my hotel room, only to spend the entire evening watching television. It seemed that I was completely content to living a life of dull misery. Although a good part of me desired a change for the better, I felt utterly hopeless.
I continued writing in my journal and as time passed, I accumulated enough material to begin taking a look back at what I had written, and this presented me with an opportunity to observe the ways and patterns in which my mind worked. For the most part, each page consisted of sad thoughts and fears of tomorrow; however, mixed-in and almost hidden from view were hastily scribbled reminders, or “to-do notes.” Most had been quickly jotted down and just as soon forgotten. There was no logic or telling as to where they might appear—they just popped up and then disappeared with the turn of the page. Perhaps rather than “to-do notes” they were actually “here’s stuff you still haven’t gotten around to doing notes.”
A few days later, I was reviewing my journal again when, suddenly, it seemed like something unusual had occurred, it was as if all those reminders had connected in some odd way, but only momentarily. The connection appeared to me for only an instant, and then … whoosh … it was gone. This happened every time I re-read the journal, however, the more I saw it—the clearer it became. There seemed to be a relationship between the length of time a task was left undone, and the effect it was having on my emotions. This connection was so real; it felt almost palpable—as if I could run a finger over each reminder and feel the extent to which it affected me. Imagine that each reminder were a wire carrying its own electrical current—while one offered the faintest perceptible buzz, the next one might feel like high voltage. In reality, these pseudo-shocks that I felt were actually parts of me getting in touch with my feelings about myself. These feelings ranged from, “When am I going to get around to that?” blues, to “I wish I hadn’t written that down!” panic.
One of these reminders in particular clearly stood apart from the others: it was an unpaid bill from a warehouse back in the U.S. that was storing my belongings. Paradoxically, seeing this reminder unleashed on me a torrent of self-anger for not having dealt with the task, while at the very same time, I still didn’t want to deal with it! I was frozen in place and felt paralyzed, like a rabbit caught in headlights.
If that weren’t enough, I couldn’t find a better reason for not paying the bill other than, “I didn’t feel like it.” After all, it wasn’t like I didn’t have the money to pay the bill—I was working. It had more to do with the fact that I hadn’t balanced my U.S. checkbook in several months, and I didn’t know what my bank balance was. So, my burden from procrastination was greater than I’d originally thought, because there was just no way that I was going to deal with balancing that checkbook.
You might think I had a relatively simple choice to make here by either dealing with it then and there, or deciding to continue suffering in misery. However, I found neither of these two options viable, because I simply didn’t want to deal with it at all. So, I did the only thing that I knew would work for me: I distracted myself by turning on the television in my hotel room and channel-surfed until bedtime. Meanwhile, the storage bill waited for the next time I happened to stumble upon that reminder.
Unfortunately, while I could divert my attention from my tasks with relative ease, whenever I attempted to deal with just one task, one of the following scenarios usually played out:
If I tried to focus on just one task, then the other tasks I had put off came flooding back into my mind, causing me to second-guess myself about which one I should really be doing.
If one particular task felt “impossible” to complete, I then felt incapable of accomplishing any of them.
Once in a great while, but usually on a Saturday or a Sunday, I’d wake up and decide that that day was “the day” to tackle my tasks—meaning, all of them. It didn’t take very long for me to realize I didn’t have the patience to deal with just one of them, let alone all of them.
Soon, my ever-decreasing ability to handle tasks, combined with ever-increasing levels of frustration, led to lower levels of self-esteem and stamina within myself, which culminated in feelings of mental depression. In short, not only did I worry about my ability to complete tasks—I also grew concerned about my ability to take care of my own well being. Self-pity then turned into self-anger and I berated myself with terrible self-judgments, such as “I’m a worthless piece of crap,” or, “I’m unworthy to roam the earth among other people, the ones who have value and take care of themselves.” My self-directed anger then boiled over and I reluctantly came to the belief that, as a person, I was incapable.
Upon reaching that conclusion, an unexpected feeling of serenity came over me. It seemed as if there was no longer any point in beating myself up, for it was all quite obvious: that compared to other adults, not only was I incapable, but inadequate as well. Thus, doomed to this terrible fate, it seemed rather cruel to continue beating up on “poor old me.” In light of the circumstances, it made a lot more sense to be kinder to myself, and to even treat myself to some much-needed relief as a compensation of sorts for all the pain, anguish, and misery that I’d just gone through. Can you guess what form that took?
Would you be surprised if I told you that it was spending countless hours watching television? Actually, there were many times when my self-inflicted wounds needed healing from similar traumatic experiences and I would either bathe my psychic injury in alcohol (“Poor me, poor me, pour me another one.”), smoke marijuana (“But only on days that ended in the letter “y”—like Monday, and like Tuesday, and like Everyday.”), or I would engage in overeating (“I feel better when I feel filled!”)
Getting back to that storage bill: after a couple of days’ escape from reality, I always had a clever solution at hand with which to buy me a little more time. For example, I could do the courteous thing, by calling the warehouse’s accounting department from London and saying something along the lines of, “I’m sorry but I think I’m a little behind in my storage bill—it must be a terrible burden for you. I’m really a bit ashamed to be telling you this.” The bookkeeping clerk would actually be grateful for my call, and then compliment me on my “honesty.” This usually bought me enough time to formulize a plan to accomplish the unthinkable, if not the unbearable: calling my bank in New York to find out my checking account balance, writing a check, and then mailing it to the warehouse.
Of course, after this drama had run its course, I’d eventually discover, or rediscover, yet another source of discomfort, whether it was a tax form that required completion or one of those reminders that I had stumbled upon while reviewing my journal. Whatever the particular task was didn’t matter too much, because I had long since convinced myself that as a person, I was both inadequate and incapable.
Looking back upon all of this, I can now see that what I had believed were a series of individual incidents, were actually the same situations that were happening with different scenarios and people. My distress, which was rooted in procrastination, would come and go over time, and came and went in the form of “Procrastination Cycles.”
Here’s how each “Procrastination Cycle” ran its course:
1. I had numerous tasks which required my attention, but which I avoided.
2. If I were reminded of a task, I became enveloped by anxiety, especially by the tasks I had put off longest.
3. My level of anxiety rose steadily as I worried:
(a) that I was unable to complete the task;
(b) that I was also uncomfortable with the task;
(c) that I didn’t have the patience to deal with the task;
(d) that I might not “do it” correctly.
4. Feeling psychologically paralyzed, physically weak, and utterly helpless about situations that I felt I had no control over, I fell into a state of depression.
5. After anywhere from a few of days to a few weeks of this internal confusion and conflict, I reached the point where
my self-pity turned into self-anger, and I berated myself for not attempting what I believed I should be able to do.
6. Eventually, it seemed almost cruel to continue torturing myself for what seemed like an inborn weakness, and I came to peace with the fact that I was incapable of taking action. I then reasoned that I needed to go easier on myself and instead, to give myself some much-needed tender loving care, like watching television, surfing the Internet, or indulging in comfort foods or mind-altering intoxicants.
7. Returning to reality, I eventually rediscovered the task that I had fled from. If I happened to be under a time constraint, then I devised an action plan of sorts.
8. Otherwise, I continued to disregard the task and “The Procrastination Cycle” was once again underway.
After you’ve gone through The Procrastination Cycle a few dozen times, you gradually become a different person because despite evidence to the contrary from when you have accomplished tasks, you’ve already convinced yourself that you’re utterly incapable of handling much of anything that requires patience, thought, or action. Over an extended period of time, habitual procrastination leads to ever-declining energy levels, which in turn can lead to feelings of depression. If you have any doubt about the relationship between procrastination, energy levels, and depression, ask yourself if you’ve ever heard of a habitual procrastinator who’s been described as a “highly-energetic individual.”