LEARNING TO SAY NO TO POINTLESS PURSUITS
Say No to Timewasters and Downers
It is as important to think about what you want to minimize or eliminate from your life as it is to think about what you want to include. Learn to identify and say no to things that aren’t helpful or connected to what really matters most. We all have things, people, and activities that weigh us down, tire us out, derail us, and diminish the quality of our lives. Yet for procrastinators, the prospect of getting rid of that which drags us down can be intimidating. Often we procrastinate by spending time on these peripheral or detrimental activities. More importantly, the process of deciding what to include and what to exclude can be difficult in and of itself, especially if you don’t trust your judgment.
Say No to Empty Tasks. There are plenty of tasks in life that we have to do even though we don’t want to, such as paying taxes and maintaining the car. It’s important to do those things that help your life run smoothly, even if they might feel aversive. But there’s a difference between taking care of business and wasting time on empty tasks. If you’re faced with doing something that doesn’t move you in the direction you want to go, don’t do it.
Empty tasks are those with the lowest priority relative to your current goals and values. One of the most frequently cited guidelines in time management is the “80/20 rule”5: 20 percent of your tasks are very important and yield the most results, and 80 percent of your tasks are not so important and don’t contribute much. This is referred to as “the vital few and the trivial many.”6 Learn to say no to many of the trivial tasks and devote 80 percent of your time to completing those few vital tasks.
Do you really have to clear off your desk before you can begin to work on the computer? If the most vital issue is writing the copy for your marketing brochure so that you can have it printed and get your business going, then cleaning your desk can wait. However, if the most important issue is paying your mortgage before it’s overdue, then cleaning off your desk to find your mortgage statement is vital. Recognizing empty tasks implies that you know what’s important and what isn’t. This can be difficult for procrastinators and for those with ADD or executive dysfunction. It’s always worthwhile to ask yourself, “Should I be doing this right now?” and to say no to tasks that are trivial.
Say No to Unnecessary Commitments. It’s so easy to become overcommitted. Procrastinators, living as they do in a world of high expectations and grand ideals, like to believe they can do it all. Being overcommitted provides an excuse for not doing everything—or anything—in a timely way. Unnecessary commitments infringe on the time we need for the most important things.
It can be hard to say no when other people ask us to do things—help them out, join their cause, provide a service. It boosts our ego when we are wanted and valued, especially if we’re persuaded that we’re the best person for the job, or the only person for the job. Sometimes we agree to do things because we want to please people, or we worry about offending them if we refuse. But agreeing to do things for the wrong reasons is ultimately unsatisfying and may lead to resentment and procrastination. Just say no.
Say No to the Wrong People. As you were growing up, your parents may have advised you to “choose your friends wisely.” It is important to spend your time with people you can be open with, laugh with, trust, and turn to in times of trouble. It’s also important to “choose your enemies wisely.” You probably know people who make you feel worse instead of better. Maybe they are angry, downcast, critical, or dismissive. When you’re with them, you find yourself shutting down and feeling drained, inadequate, or unlovable. If you recognize people like this in your life, it’s time to think about reducing their impact on you. Can you say no? Can you have less contact with them? You are not obligated to make time for every person who wants time with you.
There may be some people who have a negative impact on you, but you can’t say no to them altogether, especially if they are coworkers or members of your extended family. Perhaps you can limit the amount of time you spend with them or try to develop an internal buffer so that their negativity doesn’t become yours. When Terry, a perpetually guilt-ridden procrastinator, asked her younger sister how she resisted the constant criticism and pressure from their mother, her sister said, “I just don’t listen to her!” The thought of saying no to her mother in her mind had never even occurred to Terry.
Say No to Clutter
“Throw Out Fifty Things.”7 We love this suggestion by Gail Blanke, a life coach who advises people to start with throwing out stuff and then move on to throwing out mental clutter. We all have fifty things we can get rid of, says Blanke, from single socks and earrings to clothes we haven’t worn in years, from dried-out lipsticks to unidentifiable keys. Anything you don’t know what to do with or why you have it, get rid of it. If you have clutter that makes you feel heavy, weighed down, or discouraged when you see it, throw it out. There is one important caveat, however: newspapers, magazines, and catalogues count as one thing, no matter how many you throw out. As you say no to fifty things, make a list of what you throw away; later, you can look back and feel proud of all you’ve discarded.
You can also look inside yourself for “things” to throw away. Are you holding on to old ideas, grudges, resentments, hopes, or dreams that don’t fit who you are today? Are there regrets that fill your mind or disappointments that continue to haunt you? Are there beliefs about yourself, about other people, about success, failure, or life that no longer serve you? It’s not easy to let go of emotional clutter, but when you finally give yourself permission to do so, you’ll probably feel lighter, freer, and happier. Add the mental throwaways to the written list. Some of this emotional clutter probably contributes to your procrastination.
Say No to E-Addictions
Pull the Plug. For periods of time, ban the Internet, Blackberry, cell phone, and e-mail, and say no to distractions in your environment. Choosing to be disconnected for a few hours or days may be disorienting and even anxiety-arousing (“I might miss something important!”), but most people feel liberated once they unplug. For example, Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig, an expert on cyberlaw, “makes a deliberate decision to go off the digital grid—no blogging, limited email, few phone calls” for one month every year; on a smaller scale, when he needs to focus on writing, he unplugs his wireless router so that e-mail won’t get in the way of his focusing on his work.8 When you say no to e-mail, instant messaging, texting, blogging, and surfing the Internet, you’ll find that you have a lot more time and mental space available to concentrate on what you need to do. Keep in mind that your brain cannot actually multitask (it takes 0.7 seconds each time you shift your attention).9 So even if the meeting is tedious or the professor boring, unplug, turn off your cell phone or PDA, and listen to what’s being said; otherwise, you can’t really pay attention.
Go on a Low-Information Diet. Do you really need to watch or listen to news reports four or five times a day? Do you really need to check the latest price comparisons on the Internet? Do you need to have e-mail updates for retail promotions, political groups, or every good cause you support? Say no to e-clutter. There is too much information coming in, far more than our brains can comfortably process. It’s up to each one of us to set limits on how much information we take in, to keep ourselves buffered from an information glut that can pollute life rather than enhance it.
Say No to Video Games, Virtual Worlds, and Internet Porn. All are mesmerizing, to be sure, but they are also addictive and draining if you do too much of them. It’s like medicine—the right dose helps you feel better, but an overdose becomes poisonous. Check your fantasy dosage carefully. Besides being huge time wasters, these pursuits can take you away from healthy, intimate interactions with real people.
These suggestions for saying yes and no are only a beginning. We hope they will encourage you to think further about other yes and no choices you can make, about what you want and don’t want in your life. When you claim
the right to set parameters for how you spend your time, you will procrastinate less and make more space in your life.
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Using Your Body to Reduce Procrastination
When we are procrastinating, whether we are running fast to avoid something or frozen in couch-potato mode, we lose contact with our most fundamental self: our biological being. Taking time to attend to your sensory experience and to cultivate bodily well-being can help you face what you’ve been putting off. Taking care of your body will not stop you from procrastinating overnight, but it can help you feel more balanced, steady, and at ease in body and mind. When you’re in a state of physical and mental harmony, you are more prepared to handle the unfinished projects that are waiting for you.
GET GOING BY GETTING MOVING
For some of you, the idea that you can use exercise to help extricate yourself from the paralysis of procrastination may offer relief and a feeling of hope. Others may find the prospect unappealing and feel oppressed or trapped at the mere thought of putting on your walking shoes. Before you reach for the remote control or begin another computer game, however, we hope you’ll at least consider taking steps to include exercise as a way to manage your procrastination. Like all our suggested techniques, exercise can help if you do it. If you find yourself putting off exercise along with everything else, in spite of the known benefits, think back to the fears we described in Part One. Fears of failure, success, and feeling controlled can undermine your readiness to integrate exercise into your life.
We have known for some time that, in addition to promoting general physical health, exercise can have a significant benefit in improving mood. If people who are depressed can get themselves to take a walk or go to the gym, they typically feel better. Exercise spurs the body to produce endorphins, hormones that promote feelings of pleasure and well-being. Whether we are depressed or not, exercise can help lift our spirits, as long as it is not used to excess.
There is now evidence that exercise, in addition to elevating mood, promotes the growth and regulation of the brain. In his book Spark, Harvard psychiatrist John Ratey wrote about the many ways exercise helps our brain.1 We draw from his work in what follows.
When you exercise, says Ratey, not only do you feel better, but your brain works better: you learn faster, cognitive flexibility increases, you think more clearly, and memory is sharper. The blood that has been pumping through your body during exercise shifts almost immediately back to your brain when you stop, priming your brain for learning. In one research study, people learned new words 20 percent faster after exercising than before. In another study, after a Chicago school district instituted an early morning personal fitness session for students, its eighth graders scored first in the world on a standardized science test, besting students from such math and science powerhouses as Taiwan, Singapore, and Japan.2
Exercise stimulates the release of a growth factor known as brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). BDNF is like fertilizer for your brain (Ratey calls it Miracle-Gro), helping your neurons grow healthy and thick with branches that interconnect with as many as 10,000 other neurons.3 In addition, BDNF stimulates the growth of new neurons, including new neurons in the hippocampus. As you may remember, the hippocampus is vital for memory storage, so it plays an important role in helping us put what’s happening at any given moment into the broader context of what we have already experienced. With the help of our hippocampus, we can see the big picture.
This capacity to contextualize is crucial for the regulation of emotional upset. When you’re in the throes of procrastination, filled with feelings of dread, anxiety, defiance, or fear, the threat detector of your brain, the amygdala, is activated. Normally, your hippocampus helps you put the threat in perspective, so that you don’t get stuck in a cycle of fear. You can tell yourself, “I’m not going to lose everything if I don’t pay this credit card bill on time; last time, I had to pay a late fee.” However, as Ratey and others note,4 chronic stress wreaks havoc on the hippocampus (it actually shrivels up as neurons die), reducing its effectiveness at remembering the past. As the threat detector gets stronger and you get more worked up, realistic thoughts become less accessible. It can then be literally terrifying to start writing that report, to work on the overdue tax return, or to go to the post office to pick up all the mail that has accumulated over the last six months.
Exercise not only “wards off the ill effects of chronic stress; it can also reverse them.”5 It has been demonstrated that in rats, a reduced hippocampus can actually grow back to its preshriveled state through exercise! Blood volume in the hippocampus increases by 30 percent after just three months of regular exercise.6 So, get moving; it will help your brain help you get going. Here are some suggestions for how to do it.
Get (and Use) a Pedometer. Health professionals recommend that we take 10,000 steps each day, which is roughly equivalent to walking five miles. Using a pedometer (which you wear at your hip) significantly increases the number of steps you are likely to take—by about a mile each day!7 When you wear a pedometer, every little step really does count. Walking more can help you feel better, sharpen your brain, and put you in a frame of mind to tackle those long-avoided tasks.
Take Exercise Breaks. When you find yourself bogged down in a task or spinning your wheels fruitlessly trying to get started, take a short break. A break will interrupt the connections of a neural circuit that fills you with dread, anxiety, or self-loathing. What you do during your break matters, however. Instead of sitting down to watch your favorite TV program or eating a bowl of ice cream, find some way to get your body moving. A walk around the block, ten minutes on the exercise bike, or dancing around your living room to your favorite music can get your blood moving and help your brain be ready to focus.
Do Something You Enjoy. It does not matter how you exercise; picking something that’s fun for you does matter because exercise will be hard to sustain over time if you hate every minute of it. If you enjoy an activity that not only gives you a cardiovascular workout but also challenges your brain, all the better. Sign up for salsa lessons or set up tennis games with a friend. As your brain works to learn unfamiliar movements or anticipate the moves of your opponent or partner, you’ll get the benefit of a double workout.
Exercise with a Friend. As with so many other hard-to-do tasks, finding a buddy to keep you company can increase your commitment and make the activity more fun. If you have a date to meet another person, you are more likely to get out of the house instead of giving in to the temptation to put your feet up and take a nap. Remember, too, that social contact is beneficial for your brain; it counters the stress hormones that are activated by isolation.
Exercise before Tackling a Difficult Project. When you get your blood pumping during exercise, that blood flows right to your brain when you stop. Your brain gets bathed with extra oxygen, BDNF, and endorphins, so you will be sharper mentally for an hour or so after your workout. Take advantage of that and plunge into one of your harder tasks right after you finish exercising.
Start Small. Yes, we know, we say this all the time, and it’s as unappealing as ever. If you’re interested in exercising, you might feel compelled to start by running three miles or playing full-court basketball, even if you’ve been sedentary for years. After all, small steps feel so puny! But with exercise, as with so much else, taking small steps is the best approach. While this strategy may not be as grand as your ideal vision, it is more realistic. People who start exercising too aggressively are not only at greater risk for physical injury but more likely to abandon the effort. It’s much better to start slowly and progress bit by bit.
Exercise Your Brain. Like your muscles, your brain strengthens with exercise. It responds especially powerfully to novel challenges that demand your full attention and concentration, and stretch you to perform at progressively higher levels. Michael Merzenich, a researcher at UC-San Francisco, who was one of the first scientists to demonstrate brain plasticity throughout the life span, has deve
loped programs of computer-based exercises for the brain. Merzenich has found that when people are challenged in performing auditory and visual tasks, brain speed and accuracy improve significantly and last over time. People who are 65-90 years of age can re-establish the brain functioning of people who are fifteen to twenty years younger!8 So do those brainteaser puzzles and learn a new language or how to play bridge. If you want to check out Dr. Merzenich’s Web site, see http://www.positscience.com.
Exercise is the single most powerful thing you can do to optimize your brain function.9 If you move your body and expand your brain, you can get going on other things you’ve been putting off.
MINDFULNESS: THEME AND VARIATIONS
Exercise gets your body moving, and that is one way to prime your brain to grapple with things you’ve been putting off. Another approach that helps prepare you for tackling delayed projects involves the exact opposite activity—slowing down so that you become “mindful.”
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