Procrastination

by Jane B. Burka

  Here is an example from a man whose expectations careened from perfection to mediocrity to disaster. Ethan, a middle-level manager in banking, was, in outward appearance, very successful. He had a secure job, a devoted wife, and a comfortable home. Yet he always felt in jeopardy of losing everything. Ethan feared that he would be fired if he didn’t maintain exceptional job performance in every area—making decisions, managing his subordinates, projecting the budget, running meetings—everything.

  This demand to be in top form all the time grew into a pressure greater than Ethan could bear, and he began to procrastinate, putting off paperwork and phone calls, delaying personnel decisions, and postponing preparation for meetings. He feared his procrastination would be discovered and it would lead to his being fired.

  From one incident of imperfection, Ethan anticipated total disaster: “If I don’t have my agenda ready for Thursday’s conference, I’ll run a lousy meeting, and everyone will see that I’m not as competent as I pretend to be. I’ll be fired from my job and blackballed from the rest of the banking community—who would want to hire a lazy procrastinator? If I can’t get another job making as much money, my wife will be furious and she’ll leave me for someone else. I’ll be alone with no family and no future. I’ll have nothing to live for. I might even do myself in. Now I feel too depressed to work on my agenda. I need a drink.”

  Although you can probably see that Ethan’s picture of the cataclysmic consequences of one meeting is blown far out of proportion, to him the danger seems real. Disaster feels so imminent that Ethan becomes paralyzed and unable to do any work.

  This kind of catastrophic thinking is extremely undermining, especially if you don’t realize that you’re doing it. If you can learn to step back and take a careful look at what you are anticipating, you can challenge the “inevitability” of your “fate.” Ethan, for example, began to contest his conclusion that running a so-so meeting would lead directly to his being fired. He eventually saw there was a big difference between running a mediocre meeting and losing his wife, his job, and his hope for the future.

  The next time you find yourself slipping into a paralysis of perfectionism, consider playing out your worst-case scenario for that situation. Perhaps as you do, you can remind yourself that, although these fantasies are your fears, they are almost certainly exaggerated. And if you can take your thoughts a step further to shift from Fixed to Growth Mindset, you might begin to see that you can view imperfection in an entirely new light—as an impetus to improve or to learn something new, instead of as a death warrant.

  3

  Fear of Success

  Hello Procrastination,

  Good-bye Success

  We each have to define “success” for ourselves. For some, it is measured by societal standards of job status, financial stability, or personal power. For others, success implies a more relational achievement, such as a loving relationship or a happy family. An internal experience of success might be living mindfully or feeling content. Clarry Lay, a researcher in academic procrastination, defines success as “the timely pursuit of your intentions.”1 By this definition, any of us can feel successful whenever we do what we say we’re going to do. “The timely pursuit of your intentions” will gradually lead you toward any other measure of success, and at the same time, it allows you to feel successful just for trying. Procrastinators, however, have trouble following through on their intentions in a timely way, so they feel like failures every time they let themselves down—again. Yet, if they can shift into a Growth Mindset, appreciating their efforts toward improvement, they can see that getting better at the timely pursuit of intentions is success.

  Even when procrastinators manage to achieve outward success, they can’t fully enjoy it. The potential pleasure in success is dampened by the close calls, the last-minute scramble, the all-nighters that required Herculean efforts. Even if no one else knows they’ve barely pulled success out of the fire, they do—and for them that means they still haven’t really succeeded. They criticize themselves for their lack of success and wish they could be free of the chains of procrastination that hold them back. But in their self-deprecation, they often miss an important issue: perhaps they are actually afraid of being successful and are using procrastination to avoid the perils of success.

  ARE YOU AFRAID OF SUCCESS?

  It’s easier to identify the desire for success than the fear of it, but if you recognize yourself in any of the following scenarios, you may harbor a fear of success. Do you sometimes slow down on a project that’s going well? Do you feel anxious when you receive a lot of recognition? When your manager suggests a promotion, do you start to wish you were invisible? Do compliments embarrass you or leave you feeling apprehensive and wary? If you are successful in one area of your life, do you mess up in another? When things are going just fine, do you assume the other shoe is about to drop? If you have more opportunities to be successful than others in your family, do you worry about losing your connection to your relatives? These are just a few experiences that point to a fear of success.

  Jane remembers the first time she considered this counterintuitive notion. She entered college as an English major, but when she took a psychology course in group dynamics, she immediately felt at home. She discovered that her mind had found its element. Her required three-page papers turned into such detailed ten-page outpourings that she was often late turning in her weekly assignments. She did so much research for her final paper that she did not finish it on time, and she received an incomplete in the course. The professor called Jane into her office and expressed concern that a strong student was jeopardizing a high grade. “I think you’re afraid of . . . ” and Jane assumed the next word would be “failure,” but the teacher said, “success.”

  What a shock! It had never occurred to Jane that she could be afraid of doing well. She had found a subject that fit the way her mind naturally worked, but there would be complications. The class had solidified Jane’s decision to switch her major to psychology, which would force her to meet a new set of students and teachers. She would follow an entirely different career path from the one she had envisioned. Even though Jane had found her calling, she didn’t feel free to pursue it fully, not only because it meant change, but because it anointed her as being really good at something, and that didn’t fit her self-image at the time. (She thought only her older brother could inhabit the role of being really good at something.) Her anxiety about being successful was unknown to her, but it was demonstrated by her procrastination.

  Why are some people unable to pursue success wholeheartedly, whatever success means to them? It can be baffling to find yourself undermining the very success you desire. We think many procrastinators are conflicted about being successful, as Jane was. They fear the downside of success often without even being aware of it. Most people who fear success want to do well, but because of unconscious worries, the desire fails to turn into reality.2 These worries may be so subtle that they are not always known directly. Psychologist Susan Kolodny says the conflict “sometimes manifests itself instead as an inexplicable shift in mood, an attack of self-doubt or guilt, a wave of hope or despair, as if something had been whispered almost within earshot and we aren’t sure what, or by whom.”3

  The important question for all of us is not whether we are ambivalent about success, but whether our conflict about success is so intense that it gets in our way. Does it stop us from moving forward and taking risks that could enrich our lives? Does it lead us to restrict ourselves to such an extent that we lose our spontaneity, our curiosity, and our desire to master new challenges?

  CULTURAL PRESSURES

  Cultural norms, gender roles, and economic opportunities have influenced all of us with respect to our possibilities for success, creating advantages for some and limiting others. For many procrastinators, they also create conflict. For example, we are bombarded by demands that could keep us occupied 24/7, and some people use procrastination to resist the cultural pressure
to be everything and to have it all. On the other hand, some people who want it all find that procrastination gets in the way of having it.

  Cross-cultural pressures can have an inhibiting effect on success. People who left their homelands and moved to our country may feel that succeeding in the high-pressured, competitive American culture means abandoning the traditions and values of their native lands. Caught between a desire to assimilate and loyalty to their heritage, they may use procrastination to avoid making an impossible choice.

  Although notions of “masculine” and “feminine” have become less rigid, they may still contribute to procrastination. Women who want to be successful in “a man’s world” may fear being labeled ambitious and aggressive—too “masculine”—and put off doing what it takes to be competitive. Men who feel pressured to be “masculine” may avoid success because they fear they would have to give up the “feminine” sides of themselves—to be tender, to have doubts and insecurities, to need comfort.

  These are all significant factors, but they do not tell the whole story. We must also consider the more personal concerns that lead men and women to avoid success and to rely on procrastination as their way out. We present below some common psychological predicaments that reveal a fear of success.

  COMMON REASONS FOR AVOIDING SUCCESS

  Success Demands Too Much: I Have to Retreat

  Some people worry that success will require too much of them, more than they can afford to give. Because working toward success demand a lot of time, effort, and dedication, there are those who believe they are not up to the task. It feels safer to hold back, to retreat. Here are some possible variations.

  Competition: Take It or Leave It. By delaying, procrastinators appear to be disinterested in competitive struggles and indifferent to the rewards of victory. Procrastination gives the impression that they can “take it or leave it,” because they don’t make an all-out effort.

  People who are afraid of failure choose not to compete because they are afraid of losing or being exposed as weak or inadequate. People who are afraid of success, however, choose not to compete because they are afraid of winning. They procrastinate to hide their ambition, because they think there’s something wrong with being competitive in the first place. So they put off sending an application until it’s too late to be considered for a position; they delay training for a marathon run and thus cannot be a serious competitor in the race; they postpone studying, saying “grades aren’t all that important,” and take themselves out of the running for a scholarship for graduate school.

  Shaun is an architect whose lifelong dream has been to have his own architectural firm. He is a creative thinker, but he delays laying out the designs he plays with in his head. As a result, he is always behind schedule. Other designers ask him for advice informally, but no one wants to work with him on a project because he can’t meet deadlines. Shaun is anguished by his inhibition. “I hate myself when I don’t get my vision into the computer. My great ideas exist only in my head, where no one else can see them. If the others really did like my drawings, I’d be proud but uncomfortable. It makes me nervous when I hear a lot of compliments. I’ll never be able to start my own firm if I keep this up.” Shaun is undermining his talent, and his attention is focused on his bad habits and his self-disgust. But this preoccupation may be a distraction. Although Shaun spends a lot of energy feeling bad about what he isn’t doing, he rarely thinks about what awaits him on the other side of his goal. What if he could consistently show his designs and he did ultimately have his own architectural firm?

  We asked Shaun to consider the “dangers of improvement”4; in his situation, the possible downsides of having his own firm. “I would be in the spotlight. Everyone would pay attention to whether my business was successful or not. And once you’ve produced one really interesting design that gets built, people expect everything you do to be innovative. To do that, I’d really have to put pressure on myself and work nonstop. I might never have any free time to have fun and be lazy.” By procrastinating, Shaun diminishes his chances for success, giving him a buffer from the possibility of being exposed and trapped—forced to live a high-pressured life he thinks he doesn’t want.

  This worry about escalating expectations is a common anxiety for those who fear the pressures of success. One procrastinator expressed it vividly: “It’s like being a competitive high jumper. You train for months, get yourself ready physically and mentally, you keep trying over and over to clear the bar and break the record. Then, when you finally do jump higher than you ever have before, what do they do? They raise the bar.”

  Commitment Phobia. An indirect method of staying out of the spotlight and avoiding competition is to delay making commitments. If you don’t commit, you can’t move forward in any one direction, and you can’t rush headlong into success. As Zach said, “Success is like an escalator. Once you get on, there’s no place to get off except at the top.” Procrastinators who worry about getting stuck on the escalator refuse to take that first step. Instead they may spread themselves over numerous interests and activities and end up busy yet frozen, unable to progress toward any one specific goal.

  Procrastinators who fear failure have trouble making commitments because they worry that they will make a mistake and commit to the wrong thing. Those who fear success worry that making a commitment will sweep them into the competitive process and move them into the contest for success before they’re ready. Procrastination is their way to step on the brakes.

  I’ll Turn into a Workaholic. Some procrastinators who fear success worry that if they stop fooling around and get down to work, they will work all the time and never be free to fool around again. Against their will, they’ll somehow be transformed into workaholics who toil endlessly and whose lives are a succession of productive days and nights.

  A freelance writer explained how procrastination saves her from this dismal fate: “If I start three weeks ahead of time, I’ll be working solidly for three entire weeks. I might as well wait until I have only three days, so I only kill myself for three days. That way I can at least have a life for two and a half weeks.” It’s as if the work, of its own accord, takes over and turns her into an automaton, whether she likes it or not: “Once I get into working, there’ll be no stopping me. I’ll think of people as interferences who get in my way, and I won’t want anything to do with them. Then they won’t want anything to do with me.”

  What we find so intriguing about this perspective is the implication that success invariably leads to a loss of control and a loss of choice in one’s life. Procrastinators often assume that, because their delaying seems to operate outside of their control, their working would become just as unmanageable. They fear that without compulsive procrastination, they would be doomed to compulsive work. The fear of morphing into a workaholic suggests that you worry success will create a sense of helplessness instead of a sense of power: you will no longer be yourself, you will turn into someone you don’t like, and you won’t be able to keep this alien “you” from taking over.

  Success Is Dangerous: Somebody Always Gets Hurt

  Many people who procrastinate to avoid success expect to be punished for their desire to win. You may fear you will be criticized, accused of being “selfish” or “full of yourself.” Then there’s the loser to contend with—someone might be hurt and withdraw from your relationship or may become angry enough to retaliate against you for winning. Whatever happens, someone ends up feeling bad—hurt, diminished, or left behind. Going after success feels like entering a dangerously aggressive world. These fears may be somewhat based on reality if you are in fact competing with someone who would be a sore loser, or they may be imaginative worries. Either way, these concerns feel real. Fear of causing harm and being harmed can be a powerful inhibitor to doing your best and may become an invitation to procrastinate, as you keep your competitive desires hidden from others, or more importantly, from yourself.

  I Could Hurt Someone Else. Have there been t
imes when you have belittled or hidden something good that’s happened to you because you didn’t want to offend someone else? Maybe you kept the A you got for your last-minute paper a secret from your friends who got Bs and Cs, even after working hard. Or you didn’t tell your father about your latest salary increase because you don’t want him to know that you’re already earning more than he does.

  You may be concerned that your good news will be bad news to someone else. In some cases, of course, keeping your success to yourself is simply courteous: no one likes a braggart. But many procrastinators have taken more extreme measures than simply downplaying their success to protect someone’s feelings. They have diminished themselves in order to prop up someone else. When you assume that being successful means that you are hurting someone else, success becomes equated with aggression. You may use procrastination to hold yourself back, so that you won’t have to live with guilt.

  Teresa went to work to augment the family income. Her husband, Tony, was a building contractor whose business had hit hard times. Teresa started making good money on commissions at her sales job. But instead of capitalizing on her success, she got so far behind on her paperwork that her job was threatened. “It would almost have been a relief to lose my job,” she said. “I was afraid to tell Tony about my commissions because I didn’t want to hurt his pride. It wasn’t his fault that his business was bad and I was making more money.”