Procrastination

by Jane B. Burka

  By procrastinating, Courtney gave up the possibility of a professional career in order to prove that she could resist her parents’ attempts to direct her life or take credit for her success. But Courtney’s behavior was not truly independent because her choices were organized by her reactions to her parents: although she did not do what her parents wanted, she also did not do what she wanted. Years later, Courtney regretted the compelling forcefulness of her need to prove her autonomy. Courtney can now embark on a new path in her mid-thirties, but she has many regrets.

  The Secret Battle

  When a need for autonomy is the overriding theme in a person’s life, the process of making decisions and committing oneself to a person or to a course of action can be very difficult. Committing yourself to a relationship, putting your thoughts into writing, or carrying out a business decision may mean that you are making your interests known, exposing your preferences for all the world to see. But once you’ve done that, you are no longer completely in the driver’s seat. For procrastinators who fear losing the battle, exposing what they want, think, or feel leaves them feeling vulnerable to others. Their concern is not that, once exposed, they will be judged as lacking ability or as being too successful but rather that they will be disempowered, their weaknesses ruthlessly probed. Battling in secret seems a much safer course of action—or inaction.

  Jeremy, who puts off everything from dating to deciding on a career path, described his experience this way: “I think of life as a poker game. I want to find out what cards the other person has before I make a play. Until I find out, I keep my cards close to my chest and try not to reveal a thing. So, I won’t ask a woman out until she’s let me know she’s really interested in me. I refused to request a transfer at work because I didn’t want people to know which department I was really interested in. I hold off making any decision because once I choose, I’ve given away my position, and someone could take advantage of that.”

  Procrastinating on decisions and commitments can be an indirect way of protecting yourself, since people can’t get a clear idea of where you stand and so can’t pin you down. As soon as you make a decision or commitment, however, you may begin to feel trapped or exposed. Your sense of safety, which depends on being unknown and elusive, evaporates. Your only protection seems to reside in avoiding any commitment, big or small. That way, you can shift to something else at the slightest intimation that someone might try to control you. Escape is always at hand.

  Procrastinators who avoid fighting out in the open don’t want to let anyone know that they are vying for power because if they do, they risk exposing their weakness and vulnerability, thus increasing the risk of losing. And, when you fight secretly, your opponent doesn’t know that a battle is on and so has less chance to mobilize his efforts against you. Your chances of winning improve.

  Additionally, fighting secretly allows you to appear to be cooperating with others and thereby keep up a “nice guy” image. You can actually be extremely frustrating to others, but when you are indirect about it, they can’t call you on it. Take Tom, for example: whether it be ordering the supplies needed at work or doing an errand for his girlfriend, Tom is consistently behind schedule. Because he’s also very busy and overcommitted, he always has a convincing rationale for his lateness. His schedule was so incredibly tight that he just couldn’t have done it any sooner. Tom is genuinely sorry for his delay, and he then is so generous in offering to make it up that most people swallow their irritation and try to be friendly in spite of the inconvenience they’ve suffered. In the end, Tom is doubly frustrating—he’s constantly thwarting other people, and he won’t admit to it.

  If you fight indirectly, even if someone does confront you about your behavior by saying that you’re making things difficult or that you’re being hostile, you can deny it. After all, you haven’t actually done anything overtly hostile or competitive: You were just late. And you can fall back on your old friend, procrastination, claiming that you’re just so disorganized and unable to keep track of time that you couldn’t do all that you intended. This way, not only can you hide your actual feelings, but you can also claim that your behavior is beyond your control. If you could be on time, you would, but procrastination always seems to get the better of you. It’s not your fault! It’s because of procrastination! You let people see your procrastination but you don’t reveal that you’re fighting.

  The indirectness of procrastination can also protect you from admitting the power of your own anger. Expressing your anger indirectly may be a way for you to keep your emotions under control. Perhaps you’ve come to believe that all of your feelings should be kept under wraps. Any expression of irritation or anger might show that people can get to you, that someone can push your buttons. Your opponent would then know how to get to you the next time.

  A Philosophy of Defense

  Whether procrastination is used to fight minor skirmishes or to wage full-out war, people whose main concern is winning or losing the battle seem to make several basic assumptions about the world and their power to influence it.

  The World Is an Unpredictable Place. For the embattled procrastinator, uncertainty lurks everywhere. Relationships with other people are not to be trusted. You never know whether someone will encourage and support you, or attempt to control and manipulate you. Rather than allow yourself to be lured into believing the best, you feel safer if you simply assume the worst. Since you can’t predict whether you’ll be helped or hurt, the world seems not only unpredictable but dangerous. No wonder you feel you must conceal weakness and never reveal your neediness or dependency.

  If Someone Else Is Strong, Then I Must Be Weak. The person who fights by procrastinating often feels powerless in relation to someone who is strong. The other person may have a lot of actual power, like your manager or professor. Or the other person may have a lot of personal power, such as your assertive spouse or your opinionated friend. But if you interpret someone else’s strength as automatically meaning that you are weak, you are exaggerating the other’s power in your own mind. You see the other person as having control over your life, telling you what to do and when to do it. Decisions seem to be made without your input; rules are laid down arbitrarily, and your opinions don’t seem to count much one way or another. Your opponent seems too big, too strong, and too powerful to yield to someone as weak and small as you. Feeling unable to engage as an equal, you resort to balancing the power through procrastination. The other person controls you only to the extent that you actively perform your duties and tasks. If you stop doing them, you take back some of the power. Because of this change in the balance of power, you can feel assured that you won’t be obliterated by the other. You can stand your ground.

  Cooperation Is the Same As Capitulation. For some of you, the mere idea of cooperating evokes a feeling that you are surrendering yourself and a fear that you might be giving up your power. Going along with someone else’s rules or agreeing to do something someone asks of you makes you feel that you are capitulating. The idea of choosing to comply because you want to, or because it’s necessary in order to obtain a goal that you seek, may not occur to you. Instead, cooperation makes you feel as though you have been forced to compromise yourself against your will.

  Thwarting My Opponent Is More Important Than Getting What I Want. Thwarting your opponent can become such a primary concern that it outweighs all other considerations, including getting what you want for yourself. (Remember Courtney and her parents.) It’s as if you’re saying, “If you want me to do it, I won’t do it, even if I might actually want to do it.” You get more satisfaction from frustrating or defying someone else than from accomplishing what is important for your own life. Some procrastinators, in fact, are so focused on defeating the other person that they don’t even know what they want. They only know that they don’t want what other people want for them! The irony in all of this is, of course, that if you are procrastinating to say, “Screw you!” to someone, the person who is really getting
screwed is you.

  The Roots of the Struggle

  You may remember things about your upbringing that help you understand how you have come to view the world as a battleground in the first place, regarding people as opponents who have the potential to control or disempower you. Many procrastinators who are sensitive to feeling controlled grew up in situations that did not encourage mastery and control over their own lives. Children may experience strict discipline, overcontrol of their toilet training, intense interest that feels intrusive, constant criticism that undermines confidence, limits on spontaneity and creativity—all of which inhibit their moves toward independence. Many of these battles are far beyond memory because they began in the earliest years of life when there may have been struggles around feeding, sleeping, and independent exploration.

  It is always a challenge for a parent to balance a child’s natural drive for independence with the parent’s need for the child’s cooperation, in order to support both the child’s developing self-expression as well as the child’s need for guidance and limits. Some parents have difficulty enjoying their child’s excited moves toward self-determination, especially if the parent experiences separation anxiety or needs to feel in control at all times.

  An overly controlled child lives through thousands of small encounters with parents in which the child’s autonomy is discouraged or even ridiculed. Each single encounter may seem unremarkable, but when these moments occur repeatedly over many years, they have a tremendous impact. A child who doesn’t have confidence in his autonomy cannot develop a secure self. The child begins to feel that there is something wrong with wanting to be independent. He comes to expect that his attempts to be autonomous will be met not with encouragement and support but with restrictiveness. For such a child, one way to survive is to do battle and to use procrastination for protection.

  Once you recognize that procrastination is linked to your sensitivity to being controlled, you can use your resistance as a warning signal. When you feel the urge to resist, you can ask yourself, “What am I reacting to?” There will be times when your resistance is well founded: someone is, in fact, trying to control you, restrict your individual effort, or take advantage of you. There will be other times when your alarm sounds in reaction to your own apprehension instead of to the realities of the situation. A request is not necessarily a bid for control; a rule does not have to be a prison from which there is no escape. And it’s even possible that cooperating can be fun!

  If you are compelled to fight every battle that comes along, you are not truly free or powerful. To be truly free, you must be able to choose which battles to fight and which to cede. Herein lies authentic power and the sense of being your own person.

  5

  The Comfort Zone

  Fear of Separation and

  Fear of Intimacy

  Procrastination can do more than protect a person from judgment or provide a covert way to engage in battle. Delay and postponement can also regulate the degree of closeness a person maintains with other people, preserving whatever interpersonal distance seems safest and most comfortable.

  How deeply involved with others should we be? We all have to make choices about how many relationships to maintain, the degree of our commitment to each, how much time we spend with others, and how much time we need to be alone. Just as some people’s lives are dominated by their need for approval or the desire to be independent, others’ are dominated by their need to find a “comfort zone” for closeness. Moving out of that comfort zone—being too close or too far away—can be so uncomfortable that people go to great lengths to stay within it. Procrastination is a device they use to regain their relationship equilibrium.

  FEAR OF SEPARATION: I’LL NEVER WALK ALONE

  When we talk about feeling more secure by being connected to someone else, we usually mean the preference most people share for having close relationships, seeking companionship, support, and love from others. Here, however, we focus on a need that springs from anxiety, a fear that you’re not safe and can’t survive on your own. It’s not only that you want someone else around but that you don’t feel complete unless you’re part of someone else and they’re part of you. When people feel they can’t manage on their own, it can be very difficult to engage in activities that lead to independent functioning. Let’s look at some ways people rely on procrastination when they’re not sure how solidly they can stand on their own two feet.

  Help Wanted. When people feel unsure of the validity of their ideas, or feel unable to generate ideas of their own, they depend on the ideas of others. We’re not referring to brainstorming with someone or getting feedback, but rather relying on another person to provide a viewpoint or a structure that can be adopted as one’s own.

  Many college students, for instance, devote weeks to gathering research for a term paper but never actually write it because they are afraid to offer a perspective of their own. They know how to consult outside resources, but when they try to look inside themselves, they come up empty-handed. Some college students received a lot of help during high school from their parents, who structured their time and oversaw their work. Gi was from a well-educated Korean family who placed tremendous importance on getting a good education. When Gi was in high school, her parents insisted on designated study hours, discouraged her from extracurricular activities, and monitored her social life. When Gi got to college, where she had to figure everything out for herself, she didn’t feel prepared to function independently; yet asking for outside help felt shameful. Her confusion and isolation led to procrastination and poor grades, the opposite of what she’d hoped for.

  People may feel they need the presence of another person to get going. They are afraid that without a partnership, they can’t activate themselves. Cynthia explained how this dependency affected her: “In a group, I’m full of ideas, I have a lot of motivation, and I get things done. But when I’m alone at my desk, I feel as if my brain has died. My mind is blank, and I start surfing the Internet. I need someone to provide the spark that gets me thinking, because if I’m left on my own, I have no thoughts.”

  Trying Harder to Be Number Two. Some people feel comfortable in a secondary position under someone else’s wing. They are looking for a guide, a mentor, a cheerleader, someone to make them feel safe. They avoid doing things that would propel them into the number one position, where they fear feeling too separate and alone.

  For example, many graduate students postpone taking their oral exams or have difficulty finishing their dissertations because they don’t want to give up the protection of the university or leave their faculty advisors. They don’t feel confident that they can manage successfully in the “real” world, and graduate school feels like their final opportunity for guidance and tutelage.

  People may also procrastinate when they don’t want to leave the boss who first mentored them in the workplace, or the person with whom they first had a serious relationship because they don’t feel confident that they can survive independently. This is particularly lamentable when a relationship actually offers little in the way of protection, support, guidance, or nurturance. Although they may actually be diminishing their lives by remaining in the relationship, it seems preferable to be with someone than to be alone in the world. Fear of separation prevents them from making a break that might ultimately be in their own best interests.

  S.O.S. Some people use procrastination to dig themselves into a deep hole in the hope that someone else will come along and dig them out. They create a procrastination emergency as a way to ask for help. The ultimate rescue for a procrastinator is to have someone else do your work for you. How many times have you hoped that if you just wait long enough, or if you’re in deep enough trouble, someone would magically appear to do the horrid thing for you? Sometimes it happens! A high school senior waited so long to write his senior thesis that his graduation was threatened. At the eleventh hour, his father finally wrote most of the paper for him. The son interpreted this bailout as a
sign of his busy father’s love, and when he got to college, the son continued to e-mail assignments to his dad for help. It was their special connection, but it also reinforced the son’s fear that he wasn’t able to think on his own.

  A divorced woman we know procrastinates on all financial matters, from paying bills to saving money to preparing her taxes. She finally realized that she’d always expected the man in her life to handle the finances. Doing it for herself meant that she was really on her own and no one was taking care of her, and this triggered her fear that maybe no one would ever take care of her again. If she didn’t do the financial work, surely someone somewhere would appear, calculator in hand, to rescue her from having to manage on her own.

  Occasionally, you may succeed in relinquishing responsibility for yourself and find someone who will rescue you, but there is often a high price to pay. Although you might enjoy the gratification of being helped or rescued, you never learn what you can do for yourself.