I drink or do drugs.
I think about sex, have sex, look at Internet porn.
I spend time with my pets.
I read cookbooks.
What do you do when you procrastinate? Notice as many things as you can think of, including both your typical patterns and your most unusual delaying tactics.
At times it can be tricky to distinguish between procrastinating and not procrastinating. For example, when is working out an avoidance tactic, and when is it clearing your head or taking care of your body? Or when is housecleaning a task that needs to be done and not procrastination? Is reading the newspaper delaying, or is it relaxation? If you are someone who constantly gets angry at yourself for putting things off, it is important to learn the difference between goofing off and relaxing. Even procrastinators deserve to have fun.
Most people experience some clues that indicate they are procrastinating. Often it’s a nagging internal voice that says, “You know you shouldn’t be doing this now.” They may have a visual image of what they are avoiding or of the consequences that might follow. One procrastinator said, “When I procrastinate, I see a vivid picture of my boss scowling and shaking his finger at me.” Some people feel a physical cue, such as tightness in the stomach, headache, or tension in the shoulders, neck, or back. Or they may be unable to concentrate or to enjoy what they are doing. What are the specific cues that tell you that you are procrastinating?
Your Excuses for Procrastinating
Think about that moment in time when you could get started on a project or put it off. Here you are, faced with the possibility of making the phone call, writing the first sentence, or unpacking the first box. What do you say to yourself at this moment that somehow justifies not doing it?
Make a list of your excuses. Some people have trouble thinking of their excuses at first. These thoughts may be so automatic and familiar that they don’t seem to be excuses at all. But you can discover your excuses if you pay attention at the moment you avoid taking action. Here are some common excuses for procrastinating:I’ve got to get organized first; I don’t have everything I need.
I don’t have time to do it all now, so there’s no point in starting.
It’s too nice a day to spend on this.
I’ve been working so hard—I deserve a break.
It might not be good enough.
If I wait, I can do a really first-class job.
I’ll wait until I’m inspired.
I don’t feel well; I’m too tired right now; I’m not in the mood.
It won’t take very long, and there’s still plenty of time.
I’m having so much fun I’ll just do this a little longer.
I need exercise (sleep, food, etc.) first.
It’s important to keep up with what’s going on in the world, so I’d better read the news.
It’s too late in the week to start.
Why send it Friday? No one will look at it until Monday anyway.
I’ll have more time on the weekend.
If I wait long enough, they’ll forget about it.
Why bother to ask? The answer will be “no” anyway.
I’ve done the worst part of it; the final step will be a breeze.
Two hundred years from now, will this really matter?
Keep track of your excuses over the period of a week. Pay attention to your thoughts at those very moments when you put off something you want or need to do, the thoughts that provide you with a justification for waiting. It’s a good way to become more aware of what goes on inside your mind and to observe how your thoughts affect your behavior.
See if you can identify what happened just before you came up with a reason to procrastinate. What were you thinking, feeling, or doing at that earlier moment? What were the circumstances, and what was evoked in you? For example, one man promised to build a table for his girlfriend. Instead of heading into his workroom, he found himself thinking, “It’s too nice a day to be cooped up inside.” What led him to this excuse? That morning his girlfriend had called to discuss the table. “You’re such a craftsman,” she said. “Everything you build is a work of art.” He envisioned the look of disappointment on her face when his table was just a table and not a work of art. He thought about how much he wanted to please her, and he started to brood about where the relationship was going. Feeling defeated, he wanted to escape.
Many excuses have a kernel of truth. You probably do need exercise, and you might be tired, bored, uninspired, hungry, or sick. The house could stand to be cleaner, and your workspace could be a lot more organized. The point is that, even if there is some truth to your excuse, the function of the excuse is to avoid discomfort. You are using the kernel of truth to arrive at the procrastinator’s conclusion: “Therefore I’ll do it later.” For example, “It might not be good enough, so I’ll do it later.” “I’m tired, so I’ll do it later.” “There’s an interesting program on TV, so I’ll do this later.”
Everybody feels tired, bored, uninspired, or too busy from time to time. But whatever your excuse, no matter how tired, uninspired, or busy you are, you can always spend just fifteen minutes working toward your goal. Keep in mind that people who don’t procrastinate experience these difficulties, too, but they consider what they can do and get started. Overcoming your aversion to starting a task is not about proving yourself, which could be risky; rather, it is a way to stretch yourself. When you notice an excuse, you have an opportunity to think about the issues below the surface of your procrastination. You can reach a better understanding of yourself. With a different perspective in mind, you might come to a different conclusion:It might not be good enough, but I’ll give it a try anyway.
I’m tired. I’ll just work for fifteen minutes and then I’ll go to bed.
This may not turn out perfectly, but I’ll learn a lot from doing it.
I don’t have the proper equipment, but is there something I can do anyway?
I don’t have enough time to finish now—but I’ll spend fifteen minutes on it.
This is going to be hard, so I’d better leave enough time to work out the problems.
With a Fixed Mindset, you retreat from risk and from taking action; when you use an excuse, you are retreating. With a Growth Mindset, you take action even when things are hard or you don’t feel like it. Rather than being derailed by believing your excuses, you take action in spite of them.
12
Setting and Achieving Goals
By definition, procrastinators have difficulty achieving goals. Procrastination can interfere to such an extent that you rarely accomplish the goals you’ve set. Or you may ultimately attain your goals, but only after you’ve been through agonizing fits and starts.
It may not be as obvious that procrastinators also have difficulty setting goals, since they are busy setting (and resetting) goals all the time. But they almost always set ambiguous goals, such as, “I’ve got to get some work done today,” or overly ambitious goals, such as, “I want to be number one in my field.” Goals framed in this way are elusive and actually invite procrastination.
When we started out to write the first edition of our book, we thought our goal was clear enough: we wanted to write a book on procrastination. We developed an outline and declared that we would begin. Then it was time to write. Whenever we thought about getting down to work, we’d say to ourselves, “I have to write the book.” An invitation to socialize, the opportunity to do other kinds of work, the need for recreation—all these were weighed against the injunction, “I have to write the book.” But we didn’t get very far with the actual writing. Eventually, we realized that we felt intimidated by our goal to “write the book.” Each page seemed like a tiny drop in a huge bucket. Would our little pages ever fit together into a cohesive form? We were taking such a broad view of our purpose that it was antithetical to making progress. We were setting ourselves up for trouble by the way we thought about our goal.
Finally, we started to take our own advice. Instead o
f thinking about having to “write a book,” we focused on only one part of a single chapter at a time, trying to put the rest of it out of our minds. In the process, we began to say something different to ourselves when we anticipated our writing sessions: “I have to spend two hours this afternoon working on the introduction to the goal-setting chapter.” It was a more reasonable, reachable goal, and it helped us to get to work.
THE BEHAVIORAL GOAL
It is most helpful to define your goals in behavioral terms. Focusing on what you will be doing when you accomplish your objective helps you recognize where you’re aiming to go. A behavioral goal has the following characteristics:• it is observable by you and others;
• it is specific and concrete;
• it can be broken down into small steps;
• the first step can be accomplished in just five minutes.
“I want to stop procrastinating” is a noble goal, but it is not a behavioral goal. You can’t actually see yourself stop procrastinating—what would you look for? It is not concrete—stop procrastinating on what? It is difficult to break down into steps—how do you start to stop procrastinating?
Let’s look more closely at the elements of a behavioral goal.
Observable. People can’t see how you are feeling or know what you are thinking, but they can see what you do. For your goal to be observable by you and others, it must be defined as an action. Imagine a movie camera filming you as you finish your goal. What action will you be taking when the camera records your accomplishment? If your goal is truly a behavioral one, you should be able to take a picture of yourself doing it.
For example, procrastinators often propose, “I’d like to feel less overwhelmed by all the work I have to do.” It’s an understandable desire, but it’s not a behavioral goal. No one can observe you feeling less overwhelmed. And it’s not a helpful statement, either. How would you know when you feel “less overwhelmed”? How much “less overwhelmed” would you have to feel to be relieved? To restate it as a behavioral goal, we suggest that you select one project you’ve been putting off and define its completion in behavioral terms. You may decide, “I’ll update my résumé and post it on the Internet,” or, “I’ll read one chapter in the book on procrastination,” or, “I’ll make an appointment with the dentist.” A camera could see you pushing the send button on your computer, closing the book at the end of the chapter, or hanging up the phone after your conversation with the dentist’s office. If you achieved any of these goals, you’d probably feel less overwhelmed, and you could identify exactly what helped you feel better.
Specific and Concrete. Procrastinators are prone to thinking in such vague terms that they find it very difficult to be specific. What exactly will you be doing when you accomplish your goal? When specifically will you do it? Who else in particular will be there?
We’ve often heard people state as a goal, “I’m going to reorganize my life.” With a vague objective like this, a procrastinator is stymied. However, if you translate your goal into specific, concrete terms, you will have some clues about where to start to get better organized. You may decide to go through your piles, keeping important papers and throwing out the rest. “Getting organized” might mean cleaning out a closet or hiring a clutter expert. Being specific about where you want to end up will facilitate your getting there.
Small Steps. The only way to achieve any goal, no matter how large or small, is step by step. As the old saying goes, “Life by the yard is very hard; life by the inch is a cinch.”
A behavioral goal can be broken down into small, observable steps, and like the final goal, each of these steps should be observable and specific. You will end up with a series of minigoals that you can work on one by one. The advantage of aiming toward interim minigoals instead of the ultimate final goal is that each minigoal is more vivid than a distant goal and therefore more likely to be achieved. A goal such as “I have to prepare next year’s budget for the annual meeting next month” can feel overwhelming, and next month may seem far off. This makes the task both aversive and less salient, even though it’s very important. Instead, the project could be divided into its component parts: locate last year’s budget; update budget categories; estimate expenditures in each category; estimate income for each category; confer with your assistant during Friday’s meeting. As a series of short-term steps, “preparing the annual budget” will be much more manageable.
Sometimes as you break down a goal, you discover it’s more complicated than you thought. Breanna chose as her one-week goal the completion of her quarterly report on the use of services in her information technology department. The report was already late, as she had missed the deadline at the end of the quarter. The steps she anticipated were (1) ask all the IT technicians to send her their work reports for the quarter; (2) review and integrate their reports into one spreadsheet; and (3) send the compiled spreadsheet to her manager with a note listing the most frequent reasons departments asked for IT help.
Breanna had indeed created a behavioral goal, as she could see herself sending the report to her manager. But as she was about to take her first step, composing an e-mail to send to the IT technicians, she realized that, during the quarter, one had left and a new person had been hired. Did she have the data she needed from the person who’d left the company? Had she explained well enough to the new hire just how he was supposed to keep track of his service contacts? She would need to spend more time with the new technician to make sure he understood how to organize the data she needed. Breanna also remembered that when she had filed her previous quarterly report, she had made notes about how to improve the presentation. Where were those notes? Should she spend time looking for them, or should she just follow the old template? When Breanna avoided even thinking about the task, she certainly wasn’t thinking about how to get it done. Now, as she reviewed her behavioral goal, she realized that there were some steps she had not considered, and she was no longer certain that one week was a realistic time period for finishing the report. Breanna was upset that she had underestimated the time needed to complete her goal, but reassessing your time frame as you work with your goal is frequently part of the process. Breaking your goal down into smaller steps can help you clarify—for better or worse—the reality of the task you face.
Focusing on the steps you need to take will also serve as a reminder that you have to travel down the road in order to reach your destination. Most procrastinators think only about “being there” and have a hard time thinking about “getting there.” Many are surprised to find that the process of getting there—accomplishing each step along the way—can be challenging and rewarding in its own right.
Minimal Acceptable Goal. Procrastinators tend to be unrealistic about their goals because they often think in terms of an ideal situation, as if there were no limitations on their time or energy. As a way of establishing a more realistic goal, we ask procrastinators to consider what their minimal goal might be. What is the smallest goal you could set that would give you some sense of progress and accomplishment? Is there part of a larger goal you could choose to work toward over a limited period of time? For example, your ideal goal may be to redecorate your house, but a minimal goal might be to reupholster the sofa.
Some of you may be reluctant to lower your sights even the least bit. This is your perfectionism in action! You devalue anything that is short of your ideal goal. Although it may feel like a blow to your pride to choose a minimal goal, thinking small could ultimately be more rewarding. You can build on real accomplishment by achieving your goal, minimal step by minimal step, rather than insisting on setting lofty goals and doing nothing.
A ONE-WEEK EXPERIMENT
Selecting a Goal
We suggest that you choose one goal to work toward during the next week, and we’d like you to try to approach this goal with a Growth Mindset—a desire to learn from both success and failure, an openness to challenge, and an understanding that effort is not a sign of weakness but is necessa
ry for growth.1 See what you can learn about your procrastination as you approach or avoid your goal. Pay attention to how you set up goals and how you handle them, when you make progress and when you procrastinate. It is important to examine both your successes and your setbacks. Think of this week as a time for self-observation and learning. It is not an evaluation of how smart, responsible, or talented you are. Try to take the perspective of a researcher gathering data, not the role of a critic passing judgment. Use the following steps as a guide to accomplishing your goal.
Choose Just One Goal. What are some things you would like to accomplish in the next week? What would be your target date for each goal? Remember that a behavioral goal should be observable, specific, and able to be completed in steps. Write down three possible goals and when you’d like to finish them.
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