NEGOTIATING WITH A PROCRASTINATOR
How can you interact with a procrastinator and still maintain a relationship that is basically positive for you both? There are some general considerations that can make life easier for both you and your procrastinator. First, we’ll identify some approaches to avoid, because they don’t work.
What Doesn’t Work
Saying, “Just Do It!” This phrase is the bane of the procrastinator’s existence. When you say “just do it,” you emphasize the procrastinator’s inability to do what everyone else seems to be able to do, making the procrastinator feel worse.
Nagging and Being a Watchdog. When you continually remind a procrastinator about what needs to be done or check up on her progress, you will be perceived as a watchdog—and resented for it. You may be placated with promises, but the procrastinator will feel so resentful of your watchfulness (however altruistically motivated) that she may slow down further just to stay out of your vigilant oversight or to get back at you.
Using Criticism, Ridicule, or Threats of Extreme or Exaggerated Consequences. You may believe that if you shame procrastinators enough, especially in public, they will be motivated to start working. The father of one procrastinator made predictions of doom about his son’s future at family gatherings: “If you don’t make more of an effort in school, you’ll never get a job. And without a job you can’t support a family. Nobody wants a loser—and that’s what you’ll be.” These kinds of comments do not help procrastinators take action. They only succeed in humiliating people who already feel ashamed of themselves, further eroding their confidence and prompting them to retreat from you and avoid tasks all the more.
Doing It Yourself. You should never—except in rare cases—come to a procrastinator’s rescue by doing the task yourself. It may be tempting to swoop in and take over, especially if you can see there will be significant consequences if the procrastinator doesn’t get something done. But in becoming the magic solution you only perpetuate the problem, reinforcing the expectation that you or someone else will come to the rescue at the last minute. And you risk getting stuck in a perpetually sticky situation, as the procrastinator engages you in a provocative game—how close must she come to disaster before you will finish the job?
Saying “I Told You So!” If indeed things turn out the way you predicted, you may be tempted to remind the procrastinator that you were right. But if you act on that impulse, it won’t help. Whether or not she can admit it, the procrastinator already knows that you were right and feels bad. Saying, “I told you so!” is like rubbing salt into an open wound. You may feel vindicated, but it will further alienate the procrastinator from you.
Attitudes That Can Help
Unfortunately, there is no one guaranteed method for dealing with a procrastinator. Nevertheless, there are some general attitudes that can ease life for both of you.
Promote a Growth Mindset. Most procrastinators are focused on outcomes and performance from the point of view of a Fixed Mindset, meaning that they see intelligence and talent as fixed entities that are set at birth.1 With this perspective, everything they do in life, in school, at work, on the playing field, and even at home has the potential to reveal how smart or talented they really are. Therefore tasks become tests and carry the risk of failing, which leads many people to put off doing them. A Fixed Mindset leads people to retreat from bigger challenges. (See Chapter 2 for more about mindsets.) You can provide a tremendous service to your procrastinator by combating Fixed Mindset thinking and advocating a Growth Mindset: cultivate and convey the attitude that life is about learning, that tasks are opportunities to practice and improve, and that it can be fun and exciting to challenge yourself.
It is particularly important to develop your own Growth Mindset if your child is struggling with problems related to schoolwork. Beware the temptation to focus primarily on grades or to emphasize your child’s intelligence above all else. Instead, compliment your child on how much effort he made, how hard he worked, or how much he learned. Notice how much better he is at doing something now than before. Ask about what was interesting at school, rather than about what grade he got on the test. If things didn’t go well, help your child think about what he learned that would help him do better next time. This approach will help both you and your procrastinator take the pressure off the outcome and respect the process. And that will make procrastination less necessary as a protective strategy. A better outcome is more likely in the long run with an emphasis on the process. Pleasure in learning reinforces more learning.
Maintain Your Individual Perspective. It’s easy to forget that you and your procrastinator are separate individuals and to feel instead as though the procrastinator’s problems are your own. You may develop a strong personal investment in the procrastinator’s success, as if you need the procrastinator to perform well in order for you to feel good about yourself. But your spouse and children are not you, and their performance does not represent the only measure of whether you are a good partner or parent.
Carol—at her wit’s end with her sixteen-year-old son, Jamie—had lost perspective. She felt totally responsible for him. If Jamie didn’t do well in school, it meant that she had failed as a mother. Unfortunately, this only made things worse for both of them. Carol’s overinvestment in his performance became an additional source of pressure for Jamie, as well as generating tremendous tension in their relationship. Even if Carol succeeded in making Jamie sit with his schoolbooks for an hour a day, only Jamie himself could read the printed page and synthesize it in his brain. You, too, must remind yourself that your power over your procrastinator is limited. You can try to influence your procrastinator to do what you want, but you can never make him or her take action. Like it or not, he is his own separate person.
Be Aware of Possible Neurocognitive Differences. It is quite possible that your procrastinator lives with a brain that operates very differently from yours. His brain may have some executive functions that don’t work well, such as the capacities for planning, organizing, or self-monitoring. Perhaps your procrastinator doesn’t have a good working memory, or he may have ADD and be unable to stop himself from being distracted by every little thing when he tries to focus. Brains are wired differently. Your procrastinator may not be able to focus, track, sequence, or plan the way you do. Rather than assuming your procrastinator is uncooperative, slothful, or somehow morally deficient, you can help by learning about ADD and ED and offering (not lecturing) to be supportive in the practical ways your procrastinator needs. Just because you can see the steps that are necessary to begin and complete a task doesn’t mean that a procrastinator with ADD or ED will know or remember exactly how to approach and effectively work on it.
Be Collaborative. In order to offer your help and have it be accepted, you have to set up a two-way collaboration. This is a very different dynamic from nagging, pushing, punishing, or scolding. You and your procrastinator can come to an agreement on your role and then you have to stick to it. Ask how you can be of help and provide only what is requested. Offer to demonstrate how you might approach a complex task with a distant deadline, but do so as a partner, not as a dictator.
Be Flexible about Your Strategy. All too often, when a strategy has failed to yield the desired results, people try the same thing over and over again, with increased insistence. Instead, it would be more helpful to do something fundamentally different from previous efforts.
Carol tried many ways to get Jamie to stop procrastinating on his homework. For a time she nagged him: “Don’t forget the science test you have on Friday.” “You should start on your paper before it’s too late.” Jamie usually responded by sulking or by ignoring Carol altogether. When nagging didn’t work, Carol tried to bribe him: “If you do an hour of homework every day for a month, I’ll buy you an iPhone.” Didn’t work. Next, Carol attempted to motivate Jamie with guilt. “After all your father and I have done for you—can’t you even do your schoolwork?” Still no success. Finally, Carol tr
ied to threaten Jamie with moralistic doom: “You’ve got to learn how to discipline yourself. How will you ever make it through life if you can’t do basic math?”
What Carol failed to realize was that her different strategies were all variations of the same basic tactic. She was pushing Jamie to take action, whether by nagging, threatening, or bribing; everything she’d been doing was aimed at convincing Jamie to do his homework—and nothing had come of it but conflict and resentment. Jamie was always either angry or withdrawn in sullen silence. Carol felt she was losing her son.
In desperation, Carol tried something novel. She decided to stop pushing Jamie to study. Rather than pressuring him to do his homework, Carol said to him, “It’s part of growing up to learn to make decisions for yourself. You have to decide how important school is to you and how it fits into your life. I want our relationship to be about how we can enjoy each other, not about me nagging you to do your homework.” So Carol no longer brought up the subject of homework. Even if her worst fear came true and Jamie never opened a book, Carol vowed to herself that she would hold her tongue and focus on positive experiences they could share.
This new stance was very different. By taking this stance, Carol stepped out of a futile power struggle and let Jamie live his own life. She was relieved to find that, after she made this shift in her own behavior, her relationship with Jamie became friendlier. And Jamie, on his own, even gradually started to do his homework—not immediately, not without struggles, not without angst for everyone, but he was managing, and more importantly, Carol felt she finally was beginning to get her son back.
Remember What’s Most Important. Think about what’s most important to you about a relationship. No one wants to see a child fail a course, a spouse lose a job, a promising employee get demoted, or a manager create chaos in a department, all because of procrastination. But is it worth it to be in an angry stalemate with your spouse or child, or to remain loyal to an employee who doesn’t help your business, or to work for a manager who can’t manage? You have to decide what’s most important for you and what matters most in your relationship with someone who is a chronic procrastinator. Then focus on that, rather than on trying to eliminate procrastination.
Specific Techniques
With these general principles in mind, we now focus on specific ways of interacting with a procrastinator that can help you avoid the notorious power struggle or standoff. Because having a child who is a procrastinator is so painful and frustrating, we begin with a summary of our suggestions, focusing on the parent-child relationship.
A Summary of Suggestions for Parents 1. Help your child set small goals.Teach your child to break a task down into component steps. Every task can be broken down into steps.
Any task can only be done one step at a time.
Set up short intervals for working—ten or fifteen minutes at a time.
And, if fifteen minutes is too long, use five minutes!
2. Help your child learn to tell time.Practice being realistic, rather than wishful.
Practice predicting how long a task will take.
Work backwards from the end point to gauge when to begin.
Look at time commitments and think about how much time is actually available.
Teach your child to use a timer. (Buy a timer if you don’t have one!)
3. Set clear limits and consequences.What exactly must be done and what exactly are the consequences of not doing it?
Instead of setting a time to start a task (e.g., homework), decide the time by which the task must be completed.
Consider a written “contract.”
Enforce consequences matter-of-factly and consistently.
4. Encourage appropriate rewards.Reward effort, creativity, and persistence, rather than outcome.
It’s important to reward steps taken, not just completion of the final step.
Rewards come after completion of a goal and steps taken along the way.
Convert “excuses” into “rewards”—e.g., “You’re hungry, so just do fifteen minutes on your paper, then have something to eat.”
5. Remember whose task this is: Who owns the job? Your child, not you! Your child is not an extension of you.
Your child’s performance is not a reflection of your value; manage your own feelings of disappointment, competitiveness, embarrassment, or envy.
Never do for your child what your child can do for him or herself.
Do not rescue! Let your child live with the consequences.
(If you choose to help your child out on occasion, use a “time trade” so your child pays you back for your time by doing something for you.)
6. Respect your child’s need for autonomy.Be as flexible as you can within your limits. Offer choices whenever possible.
Choose your battles; is it really more important to win or to be right than to maintain the relationship and help your child develop in his own way?
7. Combat perfectionism whenever you see it—your child’s, and yours too.Talk about mistakes, and admit your own with humor and good grace.
Beware grandiosity; acknowledge human limitations and flaws.
8. Talk about fears—your own, as well as your child’s.Fear is a universal human experience. There are reasons for feeling afraid.
We can take action even though we are afraid.
“Courage is the mastery of fear, not the absence of fear.”
9. Listen to what your child tells you with curiosity, not judgment.Refrain from saying, “Why don’t you just do it?” or some variant, especially if said with exasperation, disbelief, condescension, or other similar tone.
Never, ever demean, humiliate, ridicule, or express contempt for your child or your child’s procrastination. (Watch out for eye-rolling.)
No matter how hard it is to understand, procrastination serves a purpose and this must be respected. Without judgment, it will be easier to help your child learn to manage difficult feelings and to act in spite of them.
10. Check for underlying issues that might be involved and need professional treatment. Possibilities include:Depression, ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, Oppositional/Defiant Disorder,
Anxiety Disorder (including Social Phobia, Panic Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder), Sleep Disorder (be especially alert for Sleep Apnea)
Some of these techniques are also effective if the procrastinator in your life is your partner or employee. In your interactions with adult procrastinators, try to function as a consultant and not as a director. Offer your support, be a sounding board, and help procrastinators be realistic, but don’t try to decide things for them or judge their moral character. The most important strategies are:
Establish Clear, Specific Limits, Deadlines, and Consequences. It’s best to do this collaboratively. Then, if the task isn’t completed by the deadline, you can implement (nonpunitively) the consequences. If the procrastinator refuses to collaborate with you, you can set deadlines and consequences unilaterally, then follow through. Be as straightforward, calm, and matter-of-fact as possible, and try not to react impulsively out of frustration, resentment, or despair. Take time out to settle yourself down before approaching the procrastinator to talk things over.
Help the Procrastinator Be Concrete and Realistic. Procrastinators often set extremely vague and unrealistic goals. They think about what they’d like to accomplish rather than what is possible, given the limitations of their time and energy and the disruptions that are likely to occur. By being vague about their goals, they are much less likely to follow through. Be alert for attitudes such as, “No problem—won’t take me any time at all,” or, “That’s way too complicated—it will take me years to do it right!” Then ask questions that help counter this tendency to view tasks unrealistically. “What’s actually involved in this project?” or, “How much free time do you have this week?” These questions will help the procrastinator to stop and consider whether his assessment of the situation is realistic.
Help the Procrastinator Set Small
, Interim Goals. You can help your procrastinator think through a set of minigoals, a series of steps that must be accomplished in order to reach the larger, final goal. Procrastinators tend to think about the end point of a goal but forget about the steps they’ll need to take to get there. You can provide valuable assistance by pointing out steps the procrastinator has overlooked (such as allowing for commute time), or by clarifying the separate parts of a task that make up the whole.
Reward Effort and Progress along the Way. Procrastinators usually don’t think they’ve achieved anything until they’ve reached their final goal, which means they derive no satisfaction from progress made along the way. No wonder they feel so discouraged.
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