The Procrastination Equation

by Piers Steel

  LOOKING FORWARD

  We live in a world where our impulsive nature is only appreciated by those seeking to exploit it. But this is beginning to change. The field of behavioral economics, which recognizes our capacity for irrationality, is being incorporated into governmental public policy. Recently, the Gallup Organization hosted the inaugural Global Behavioral Economics Forum. Events like this have started to draw the attention of economic and political leaders from all shades of the political spectrum; both British Conservative leader David Cameron and U.S. President Barack Obama are exploring behavioral economic solutions.45 Phrases from Obama’s inaugural address highlighting this need for change appropriately resonate, especially our need “to confront problems, not to pass them on to future presidents and future generations.” Some of this thinking has already been translated into action, such as legislation making it easier for businesses to automatically enroll workers in retirement savings plans. Still, much more needs to be done.

  As individuals and as a society, we pay a hefty price for our procrastination and have done so since the beginning of history. But we can bring millennia of dillydallying to an end today. A good start is to continue reading—the rest of the book is dedicated to actionable intelligence that puts putting off in its place. No matter what your procrastination profile—whether you lack confidence, hate your work, or are ruled by impulsiveness—there are proven steps you can take. And though we may have wished for this advice to have been available earlier in our lives, as we all know, working ahead of time is not really in our nature, is it? Perhaps we're now ready.

  Chapter Seven

  Optimizing Optimism

  BALANCING UNDER- AND OVER-CONFIDENCE

  A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.

  HERM ALBRIGHT

  Iremember few darker days of the soul than those I spent hunting for a job during a harsh economy. Job hunting is humbling—and humiliating—and it tests you to the very core. As rejections and months of unemployment add up, a gnawing uncertainty makes you doubt who you are. When bills mount so does the pressure to settle for less, to take that job you swore was beneath you. But then, when you finally lower yourself to apply, you find that even that possibility is out of reach. Here is where the value of faith comes in, whether in yourself or in a God with a plan. Against all facts and experience, you have to believe that the next interview, the next lead, or the next day will bring a different answer. Belief in oneself separates the successful person from the procrastinator; without such confidence, the couch beckons, the television distracts, and dreams of the future become what could have been.1 Many procrastinators doubt their ability to succeed and as a result, stop making the effort. Once effort disappears, failure is inevitable.

  Beliefs are powerful because they form or directly affect expectancy, making them a motivational keystone of the Procrastination Equation. As you become less optimistic or less confident in your ability to achieve, your motivation also ebbs: the more uncertain you are of success, the harder it is to keep focused. This self-doubt is usually associated with novel and difficult tasks, but it can also become a chronic condition: expectation of failure. Poor self-perception then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy—by expecting to fail, we make failure a certainty because we never dig in and make an intensive effort. Since beliefs can create reality, we need a healthy dose of optimism to motivate us toward success.

  On the other hand, too much optimism can also lead to procrastination.2 Remember Aesop’s fable about the race between the Tortoise and the Hare? The far faster hare was so certain of his victory that he took a nap halfway through the race. The tortoise, moving slowly and steadily, overtook his slumbering competitor and won. As Michael Scheier and Charles Carver, psychologists who have spent their lives studying optimism, write: “It may be possible to be too optimistic, or to be optimistic in unproductive ways. For example, unbridled optimism may cause people to sit and wait for good things to happen, thereby decreasing the chance of success.”3

  Over-optimism is particularly prevalent when we estimate the time a task will take. It’s called “the planning fallacy.” Most people are not very good at predicting the length of time required for completing even commonplace tasks.4 For estimating the time it will take to shop for Christmas presents, to make a phone call, to write an essay, the rule is “longer than you think.” I myself am making edits to this very chapter far closer to my publisher’s deadline than I'd like. We can’t really help ourselves; it’s a built-in bias of memory. To estimate how long future events take, we recall how long they took in the past. Our retrospection automatically abbreviates this time, and edits out much of the effort and obstacles. Unfortunately, this exacerbates the negative effects of procrastination. If you are leaving something to the last minute, there is actually far less time than that.

  We need to find a balance between gloomy pessimism and Pollyanna optimism. Jeffrey Vancouver, a psychologist at Ohio University who specializes in the study of motivation, has succeeded in locating optimism’s sweet spot. He found that, in a sense, we are motivational misers who constantly fine-tune our effort levels so that we strive just enough for success and use the prospect of failure as an indicator that we should up our game.7a Look at the figure on the next page.5 The vertical axis is motivation and the horizontal axis is optimism (that is, how difficult we perceive the task to be). Sensibly, we want the greatest reward for the least effort. Along the horizontal axis moving right, we start off with impossible tasks, too difficult to pursue. Why concentrate our resources where we will reap no reward? As tasks become easier and our optimism increases, we reach a tipping point. Motivation suddenly peaks: we believe that a win is possible, even though it will require considerable effort. As our optimism rises even further, our motivation falls, this time slowly. Eventually, we end up at the far right of the figure with tasks we believe we can easily perform. We're not motivated to accomplish these tasks because we deem them literally effortless. Most procrastinators are on the left of this chart, underestimating their ability, but a few are on the far right, believing that they are better than they really are.6

  Since most procrastinators tend to be less confident than non-procrastinators, we will start off by focusing on how to increase optimism, as it plays a central role in expectancy. Then we will consider overly confident procrastinators and learn how to gently deflate their overblown expectations.

  REALISTIC OPTIMISM

  A little optimism helps us persist when it comes to tackling difficult tasks. “Next time,” you might optimistically think, “it will happen for me.” Such a belief will keep you going much longer than a more realistic “Success is going to take about two or three dozen more tries.” But it isn’t obvious how to achieve this sunny disposition. Slogans and aphorisms such as “Be positive!” tend to be as ineffective as they are popular; they work best for people who are already optimistic and can actually make matters worse for people who aren’t.7 But don’t despair. After more than fifty years of research into developing effective options for improving optimism, researchers have identified three major proven techniques: Success Spirals, Vicarious Victory, and Wish Fulfillment.

  SUCCESS SPIRALS

  Whatever sport you are passionate about, from football to table tennis, your favorite athletic icon likely embodies the principle of success spirals. I am a fan of mixed martial arts, which I first started watching in the mid-1990s when I took up tae kwon do with a friend. Although I quickly sustained a knee injury, which stopped my martial arts practice in its tracks, I kept watching. I became fascinated by Royce Gracie and Matt Hughes, seemingly unbeatable fighters who once dominated the sport with their respective contributions of Brazilian jujitsu or wrestling skills and conditioning. Each victory, though, was a lesson to their competitors; eventually, these champions' abilities were countered or copied, and they fell. A titleholder of five years ago would likely be hard pressed to remain a contender t
oday. One of the few champions who managed to endure is Georges St. Pierre. Remarkably, he attributes his present success to an old failure—he was knocked out by Matt Sera. As St. Pierre puts it, “I think that loss was the best thing that ever happened to me, and skill-wise I'm way better than I used to be before.” In a rematch between the two the following year, the referee stopped the fight when Sera was unable to defend himself from St. Pierre’s attacks.

  What makes Georges St. Pierre such a resilient combatant is his history of overcoming adversity, which includes a hardscrabble Montreal childhood. His persistence enabled him to transform initial failure into success, which in turn gave him the confidence to continue fighting and to improve in the future.8 This is an example of a success spiral: if we set ourselves an ongoing series of challenging but ultimately achievable goals, we maximize our motivation and make the achievement meaningful, reflecting our capabilities. Each hard-won victory gives a new sense of self and a desire to strive for more. It is similar to the way Polynesian explorers colonized the South Pacific. From their home port they saw in the distance signs of a new island—a new goal—reachable if they made the proper provisions. Setting sail, they eventually made land, only to see another distant island from their new vantage point.9 Every step forward is enabled by the step just taken.

  For those who suffer from chronic discouragement and expect only failure, success spirals offer a way out. Initiating them is the trick, as everyday living doesn’t easily provide a structured and confidence-building series of accomplishments. However, great opportunities are available: wilderness classes and adventure education. Much like tribe members in a season of Survivor, participants from management trainees to juvenile delinquents go on outings where they are challenged to overcome extremely difficult tasks with the help of inspirational guides. Outward Bound is the longest-running and most popular of these wilderness programs. In small groups, participants complete demanding expeditions on land or sea that can involve rafting, sailing, rock climbing, caving, orienteering, or horseback riding. Problem solving and personal responsibility are built in; individuals have to make key decisions, both before (what to pack?) and during (which way and how?). As a hundred studies have concluded, these wilderness programs improve self-concept, particularly self-confidence.10

  One of the keys to the power of such programs is that participants leave with a vivid success experience they can hold on to—there’s nothing vague about crossing a river or climbing a mountain or figuring out how to deal with the unexpected. Personal stories of triumph can bolster people’s spirits for years to come. “I did it!” translates into “I can do it.” In follow-up assessments, wilderness program participants report that their self-confidence kept growing; having accomplished in the wild tasks they thought they couldn’t possibly do, they set higher goals for themselves at home. This is the essence of a success spiral: accomplishment creates confidence, which creates effort resulting in more accomplishment.

  Parents can start these success spirals in their children. Structured extracurricular activities that provide a circle of encouragement and a venue for achievement can increase a child’s academic achievement and self-esteem as well as reduce drug use, delinquency, and dropping out.11 In particular, scouting provides an almost textbook recipe for creating tangible challenges that promote feelings of confidence.12 With the motto “learning by doing,” the Scouts reward a progressive series of tasks with proficiency badges that recognize each accomplishment, culminating in the coveted super-scout Baden-Powell Award.13 Building a fire, setting up a tent, camping out, and cooking a meal for the group are all accomplishments kids can tell their parents about and—more importantly—remember themselves. Such success stories gradually build into a narrative that helps a child face the next challenge.7b

  Here is a personal example of a success spiral in action. A close friend of mine has a son with self-confidence and anxiety problems: since he doesn’t expect to succeed, he gives up quickly. So, his parents enrolled him in martial arts at a very strict tae kwon do dojo. It took the boy several attempts to get his yellow belt, but eventually he did. This turned out to be the pivotal experience that changed the course of his life, and it wasn’t because he became better at fighting. Every time he was tempted to give up in other areas of his life, especially school, his parents reminded him of how he had to persevere to get that yellow belt and how good it felt to receive it in the end. Having overcome obstacles in the past, he now routinely strives to overcome any new ones that arrive.

  As adults, you might not have the time to try Outward Bound or share my passion for martial arts, and you are definitely too old for the Scouts. No worries; there are plenty of other options to create a success spiral. The secret is to start small and pay attention to incremental improvement, breaking down large and intimating tasks into manageable bits. Like the old adage about how to eat an elephant—one bite at a time—you carve difficult projects into a series of doable steps, purposefully planning in some early accomplishments. If you don’t feel up to writing a whole report, find a small portion you do feel capable of. Could you do the headings? Perhaps there are a few apt quotes to set aside? How about finding a few similar pieces to inspire you or to provide direction for organization? If you can’t run a mile, then run a block. Stop when you've done that and next time try two blocks. Keep note of your progress, and watch how quickly you get to a mile. Nobody has to know about your small successes; keep them as your own happy secret and let them encourage you. The trick is taking the time to acknowledge incremental change, perhaps by recording your performance in a daily log.

  Remember, there is always a path toward progress, no matter how small the increments. The better you are able to recognize subtle advances toward your goal, the more likely your confidence will continue to grow.14 Success breeds success.

  To help you put this into practice, throughout this chapter and the next two, I've included sections called Action Points. These sections give you pointers about how to put what you have read directly into action, easily and without delay. Here is the first.

  1. Action Points for Success Spirals: Think of an area of your life of real interest and then strive to improve just a little beyond your present skill set. As your confidence builds, you can also try exploring life outside your comfort zone. Consider this list (and add to it):

  • Volunteer for more responsibility, either at work or in your community. If it involves hard physical work, like building houses for the homeless, all the better. Those sore muscles will remind you of your effort and your success.

  • Travel to a place you've always wanted to go but thought you never would. Give yourself bonus points if you don’t speak the local language.

  • Try an adventure course such as white-water rafting, mountain climbing, bungee jumping, or skydiving.

  • Learn a new skill. Sign up for a class in cooking, kickboxing, photography, or music. As you advance, pay attention to the small improvements in your skills and recognize them as victories.

  • Challenge yourself by pushing an old hobby to a new level. If you are a runner, train for a race; join an amateur sports league; or tackle the harder solos in Guitar Hero.

  • Break down the tasks that daunt you into smaller and smaller pieces. Keep formal track of your progress. Count your successes.

  Vicarious Victory

  When I was a child, zoos were made up of cages, not habitats, and animals were truly captive. My father once took me to see the elephants. A mother elephant and child were on display side by side, both of their right hind legs secured to the ground. A large and heavy chain limited the baby, but the mother only had a slender rope. “Why Daddy?” I asked. “Shouldn’t the big chain be around the big elephant?” No, he explained to me, the younger elephant needs the bigger chain because it is still struggling to become free. Eventually, it will accept that the chain won’t break and, like the mother, it will stop trying. Once the baby elephant believes that it can’t escape, the flimsy rope wil
l be as effective as any cage.

  Though I told it in the first person, this is a motivational story I've heard many times. Its implication is that we have untold strength, but that we were broken and tamed at some point and we don’t realize how easily our potential could be regained if only we tried. I find it almost impossible not to be stirred by it, longing to break my own metaphorical ropes. There are many other motivational stories with this capacity to give us vicarious victory—from King Henry’s “St. Crispin’s Day” speech to Winston Churchill’s “We Shall Fight on the Beaches.” The most powerful of these are biographies of successful people that you can relate to.

  Consider the effect one such story had on entrepreneur Kaaydah Schatten. Despite being raised in profound poverty by alcoholic parents, today she is a multi-millionaire and international franchise owner, a transformation she partly attributes to early inspiration. At a young age, Schatten read the life story of Catherine the Great and, seeing a common thread with her own heritage—Kaaydah is of a royal line, being the hereditary chieftain of the Quakiutl tribe—she adopted Catherine as a role model. To reap a similar benefit, perhaps you too can find the right story, another’s life history that resonates with your own and speaks to your potential.

  But people with extremely low self-confidence may need something stronger than inspirational stories to help them take their first step. Pessimists tend to put down any personal victories with a stream of negative self-talk: “Anyone could have done that,” “It was all luck,” or “It won’t happen again.”15 They need active forms of encouragement to believe that their success is due to their own effort: that when they try, good things happen. We normally absorb encouragement of this kind through social support, peer groups, and role models. From adolescence on, our peer group is a determining factor of our own development.16 Hang with the wrong crowd and they can hold us back. Hang with the right crowd and their successes can inspire us to think, “If they can do it, I can too!” Attitudes are catching, so you would be smart to hang out with groups of upbeat people. The social group we associate with helps cement our own view of what is possible and what we ourselves should strive to be. Giving up or continuing to strive—both are contagious.17