As we approach the end of the semester, many people in academe (faculty and students alike) discover that they have been or currently are procrastinating about something. An expectation of procrastination seems almost built into the academic landscape, with campus libraries offering 24-hour access during exams, syllabi that spell out late assignment policies, and journal or conference submission deadlines frequently being unofficially “soft.”
Most of us have been there at some point or other. But few people procrastinate about everything. Chances are, you’re always on time with certain kinds of things and often a bit behind or up against the deadline with others. Procrastination, in other words, is a selective strategy that we employ in part because it has seemed to have worked for us in the past. Sometimes if you keep putting something off long enough, it no longer needs to be done. Sometimes the burst of adrenaline you get the night before the deadline is enough to propel you to a successful finish. Sometimes it will calm you down to clean the house instead of working on something important and stressful.
But more often than not, there is some suffering involved along with procrastination: a feeling of guilt, some negative self-talk, and just wishing it didn’t have to be this way.
One of the best books on procrastination is Neil Fiore’s The Now Habit (1989). Fiore offers chapters explaining the whys and hows of procrastination as well as numerous practical strategies for stopping your own procrastination cycle. Fiore suggests that procrastination tends to derive from three main attitudes: the fear of failure, the fear of success, or resentment of authority. Each of these attitudes creates a sense of a divided self: the procrastinating self who doesn’t want to prepare the taxes, and the critical self who says “you’re worthless and you won’t do it correctly anyway.” This kind of self-division creates tension and stress that procrastination relieves, albeit temporarily.
Understanding the underlying attitude that drives your particular kind of procrastination (and it might be a different attitude fueling your procrastination on writing a report vs procrastinating on your taxes) is an important step in beginning to identify the negative or self-defeating ways you talk to yourself in your mind. Fiore offers very simple suggestions about small adjustments you can make that can help shift your attitude from a procrastinating or defeated one to that of a producer. One of these is:
Whenever you hear yourself say “I have to,” change it to “I choose to.”
By reminding yourself that you are in a position of choice about most things (you can choose to prepare your taxes on time, or choose to file them late and pay a penalty) it helps to refocus your thinking to small positive actions you can take right now.
Fiore recommends a variety of strategies that intersperse periods of “play” with periods of quality work in order to lessen both the anxiety that builds from not starting to work on something and the resentment or anxiety that can build from feeling like all you’re doing is working. One of the central ideas in his book is the Unschedule. First you take a calendar grid for the week and fill in all your firm commitments (teaching, meetings, appointments) and daily life maintenance tasks (sleeping, eating). Then you fill in enjoyable pleasant things: time with friends, TV, exercise, games, etc. Then and only then, you look to see when you actually have time available to work on your procrastination activity. As you go through the week, you color in a block on the grid each time you work on this activity for 30 minutes (see example).
Importantly, you only get to color in the blocks when you’ve actually done the work. This is not about drawing up some draconian schedule for yourself, or even about deliberately planning out when you’ll get it done. It’s about (1) checking in with reality (ie., I can’t possibly write for 5 hours today because I have other obligations) and (2) developing the habit of doing a little work first, followed by rewards. Over time, the act of recording your work time itself becomes rewarding.
Fiore emphasizes the importance of small, repeated sessions of work, rather than marathon sessions. Procrastinators tend to focus on the desired or expected end result and therefore feel overwhelmed.
Whenever you hear yourself say “I must finish,” change it to “When can I start?”
But, you say, it’s December and my paper/article/report is due in two weeks and I don’t have time for this Unscheduling. Fiore offers a number of other suggestions that can help, including the reverse calendar. Start a blank document with your ultimate deadline at the top. Then gradually work your way backwards through the required tasks, filling them in to a chronological schedule until you wind up at today, your starting point. (Dec 11 turn in paper; Dec 10 make final edits; etc.) This helps you understand all the tasks that will be required and helps you see more concretely how much time you have to complete them.
Whenever you hear yourself say “This is so big,” change it to “I can take one small step.”
Fiore also offers very useful chapters on maintaining your newly productive habits, on dealing with setbacks, and on increasing the time spent working in an optimal flow state. His book is a thoughtful blend of psychological discussion and practical strategies that has proven useful for myself and many friends and students over the years.
Questions? got another book you’d like to see discussed on ProfHacker? let us know in the comments!
[cc licensed image by flickr user alexkerhead]
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3 Responses to The Now Habit
Tria Wood - December 3, 2009 at 9:55 am
I am planning on spending one class day on time management skills from here on out, and these strategies sound like an excellent way to approach it! Thanks!
Nels - December 1, 2009 at 1:27 pm
I’m going to sound like a freak, but that’s never stopped me before. I use this line of thinking with grading. I actually like grading, sometimes. And when I don’t like it, I still feel like I’m doing one of the most important parts of my job. I try to think of commenting on student writing as something I get to do, not something I have to do. I love writing, and I love teaching writing, so grading writing feel like a natural, ordinary, yet productive thing to do, and that’s how I try to think about it so I keep on track with it and don’t feel negative things while doing it.
Susan Adams - December 2, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Thank you for an excellent reminder about these useful strategies. When I talk about procrastination with students, I tell them that a preschool teacher once told me that all behavior is communication. So rather than berating yourself for procrastinating, ask yourself why. What are you trying to tell yourself? Usually, it’s that the project seems too daunting, too overwhelming, too tedious. “Just do it” never gets it done. Shifting my attitude and my approach and breaking the project into smaller pieces–and asking for HELP–gets me going again.