End Procrastination Now! (12 page)

The short-term advantages of a do-it-now initiative may include gaining an initial foothold on a stated productive agenda. The long-term advantages may include (1) progressing toward the goal, (2) building higher levels of frustration tolerance, (3) taking charge of the emotional decision-making process, and (4) less needless stress.

Now, redo the exercise with a different twist. Instead of comparing the advantages of procrastination and stopping procrastination, flip this around and do an analysis of the disadvantages. What are the short- and long-term disadvantages of procrastination and the do-it-now approach?

Procrastination Analysis: Disadvantages

This exercise can give you another perspective. The short- and long-term disadvantages of procrastination are typically greater than the benefits.

• Both short- and long-term disadvantages include similar results. The longer-term consequences of repeated procrastination cycles are the more ominous.

• A downside for procrastination is elevating specious relief over long-term benefit.

• Persistent forms of procrastination elevate health risks.

• Omissions in the form of lost opportunities may be a silent but pernicious result of procrastination.

• Delays in promoting productive activity can hinder self-efficacy and negatively affect your self-concept.

• Procrastination that affects others can lead to disgust, hostility, and a loss of credibility.

• Practice procrastination and you'll get better at procrastinating.

The list of short- and long-term advantages from pursuing a do-it-now approach is likely to be short. However, some people
view procrastination as something to make light of. There is the laughable pretense by the phony procrastination club that procrastination is an overrated problem. It's fair to say that for some people, procrastination is a serious and complex process. As it is an embedded habit, curbing procrastination takes serious actions. However, these efforts open the gate for new opportunities for productivity, health, and happiness.

Procrastination is normally an impulsive response to avoid discomfort. You distract yourself by engaging in substitute activities in order to dodge discomfort. There is a two-phase process for teaching yourself to slow down, understand what is happening, and shift to productive actions. By accepting discomfort, you are less likely to experience discomfort as a trigger for dodging a high-priority activity.

Think of the following PURRRRS exercise as a basic way to slow procrastination impulses, build tolerance for discomfort, and develop permanent cognitive, emotive, and behavioral skills for following through. The following describes the meaning of the acronym.

P
ause. This is an awareness phase in which you recognize your cues for starting to procrastinate. You tune in to what is happening.

U
se. You use your cognitive, emotive, and behavioral resources to resist the impulse to sidetrack yourself.

R
eflect. You probe more deeply into what is happening. What are you telling yourself? What are you trying to accomplish? What map are you following?

R
eason. This includes a consequences analysis. What are the consequences of following an urge to procrastinate? Do you want to change the pattern by promoting the stated over the implied agenda? What's the action plan for following through?

R
espond. This is the execution phase, in which you discover what happens when you think productively, take a no-personal-failure approach, and put yourself on a productive path. At this stage, you put your counter-procrastination plan into action.

R
eview and revise. This is an assessment phase. You review what you've learned and decide what you can do to improve your counter-procrastination plan.

S
tabilize. This is an ongoing phase. You keep practicing and improving your counter-procrastination efforts by actively following a do-it-now path.

The example in
Table 3.1
shows how to use PURRRRS to ward off emotional procrastination.

Now that you know how to implement the PURRRRS plan, you can begin using this technique to take a reflective and intentional approach to shifting from following a procrastination impulse to succeeding through productive efforts in which the rider regulates the actions. By repeatedly stopping procrastination with PURRRRS, using
Table 3.2
, you strengthen your emotional muscle, get more done, and spend less time procrastinating and stressing yourself when you are rushed to finish Once you get used to looking at procrastination through the lens of PURRRS, you'll learn how to mentally and automatically
pause, use, reflect, reason, respond, review,
and
stabilize
to overcome the procrastination habit.

Now that you know how to stop impulsive reactions, you've begun to flex your emotional muscle. Let's take this concept further by learning how to build tolerance for discomfort. How do you build tolerance for discomfort? The answer is partially found by toughing it out to produce results. But since procrastination is a process, and toughing it out with consistency can't be assured, what cognitive-emotive approaches can strengthen the process of building emotional muscle? How do you translate that tolerance into do-it-now behavioral actions?

TABLE 3.1
PURRRRS Planning

Procrastination problem:
Putting off completing a competitive analysis.

•
Tune in to what you tell yourself when you feel discomfort about a productive task.
Is it an urge to avoid or escape it? If you catch yourself thinking, “I don't want to,” that may be true. You may not want to study a competitor's marketing approach. Still, if this is a job responsibility, how do you grab the reins and get it done and out of the way?

•
Talk to yourself as though you were your own critic or a person who can calmly and caringly reframe the situation.
An honest reframing may include this perspective: “I don't want to, but I had better act responsibly if I want to avoid a last-minute rush and risk a negative performance review.” Sometimes telling yourself that following through is the responsible thing to do can cause a radical shift in perception from avoidance to productive actions.

•
Examine where you feel the discomfort.
Is it in your shoulders? Is it in your stomach? Does stress give you a headache? Does tension seem general? Without engaging in any diversions, is it possible for you to time how long the discomfort lasts? You may find that a measured time shows that tension is relatively brief. There is a biological reason for this: stress from adrenaline has a limited life. So, why run from something limited?

TABLE 3.2
Your Personal PURRRRS Plan

Procrastination problem: ___________________________________.

•
Is it possible for you to start something that you feel tempted to put off?
Once you start, do your feelings change? Can you find added benefits from grabbing the reins and guiding the horse? For example, positive affect increases as goal-directed behavior increases, and vice versa.

END PROCRASTINATION NOW! TIP

EMOTION

E
nergize your prosperity drives by keeping a positive focus.

M
ove yourself forward toward productive outcomes.

O
perate to keep your perspective on long-term advantages.

T
olerate—but don't give in to unpleasant emotions that reflect a false signal for delay.

I
ntegrate realistic thinking with self-regulated actions to support your stated objectives.

O
vercome diversionary urges through exercising your PURRRRS choice.

N
udge yourself in the direction of rider Y decisions that promote productive results and aid in the development of emotional muscle.

•
Think about whether or not you fear discomfort.
Is the anticipation of discomfort enough for you to find a diversion alluring? These discomfort fears are common but manageable. I will show you how to overcome distress as it relates to procrastination in the next chapter.

Discomfort-dodging patterns increase the risk that you'll procrastinate again in similar circumstances. Changing the pattern involves developing tolerance for tension. This is a conscious act. When you allow yourself to experience tension, you productively help yourself shift your attention from a procrastination retreat to a forward momentum. If you are not anxious about performance-connected tensions, and you are willing to allow yourself
to feel uncomfortable, then you are more likely to follow a positive direction.

Secondary distress is intolerance for tension; you think you can't stand emotions such as fear, anxiety, depression, stress, and feeling overwhelmed. Thus, you have a fear of fear, get depressed over feeling depressed, and feel anxious about feeling anxious—I like to call this phenomenon “double troubles.”