procrastination is a different problem...

[lifeprint]

I've been reading Neil Fiore's "The Now Habit" to help me work against my procrastination, and I agree with Fiore that procrastination is not a problem in itself, but a reponse to other things, like fear and anxiety about tasks or performance. Working to relieve those fears and anxieties is an effective way to overcome procrastination.

This is a great topic. I'm glad to have found more information on procrastination. I can see how it is a response to other areas that pose difficulties in getting things done. The "Getting Things Done" time management system has helped me some, but I can see where I've slipped in not keeping a list of projects and the next actions, but resorting to a task list which can be seen as overwhelming which I avoid overwhelming.
What steps has anyone here taken to help with their procrastination?

flexiblefine, I will look into your forum as well. There is another book that I need to read first... so I will resist the urge to buy another one before I finish this one.

 

[avrum68]

David posted a link to a great essay on this very subject in his Jan. 1 blog entry:
http://www.davidco.com/blogs/david/archives/2006/01/great_essay_on.html

Paul Graham's writing helped to start my new year on an inspiring note.

Enjoy,
Tom

Superb article. Seems to debunk much of the advice offered by Covey, Allen, etc. Moreso, the advice jives with my experience with successful folks, mostly artistic/creative, who don't have time for "time-management" articles, books. They DO the most important projects allowing "delight" to guide their decisions.

 

[flexiblefine]

Fighting procrastination depends...

What steps has anyone here taken to help with their procrastination?

My main method of procrastination is surfing the web. I check personal e-mail, check a list of sites, and keep up with a stack of Bloglines subscriptions, and it's easy for that to eat up a few hours a day.

I used to do all that stuff at the beginning of the day when I got to work. Sure enough, a bunch of web surfing sets a non-productive mood, and I would get very little done.

So I changed how I start my day. Instead of "settling in" with my online pursuits and amusements, I start with work -- and save my daily tour of the web for after lunch. My mornings have become more productive than whole days used to be.

(Sure enough, this week Gina at Lifehacker suggested a similar approach: http://www.lifehacker.com/software/feature/geek-to-live-ban-timewasting-web-sites-146448.php -- I got the idea from The Now Habit.)

What people do to fight procrastination depends on how they procrastinate. My tactics may not work for someone whose procrastination causes different behaviors. I'm certainly not done fighting procrastination, either...

 

[QCB]

Same Problem Here

I guess it is not all that surprising that many seeking of us, seeking to develop personal time management skill, suffer from some form of procrastination.

My procrastination habit is nearly identical to Flex ... Every morning, I sit down at my desk with the best of intentions, to review and clear email, briefly read todays news, review websites of my active organizations, and BAM ... it is lunch time. Even when I "get organized" and gather up everything in a "collection basket," it sometimes feels like I have no energy or interest in moving forward on anything. Sometimes the funk lasts all day, and I leave the office feeling just ... defeated.

I am just starting to work through the GTD system and implement it. I am hopeful that I can address procrastination problems by developing a system to manage my time, caseload, work assignments, and active life outside of work ... I am reading with interest but skeptical that I will EVER account for everything I have to do. And of course, a part of me is concerned that I am just engaging in ANOTHER procrastination activity!!

Also, when one is his or her own boss, it is sometimes hard to create the type of short-term accountability necessary to "get off the dime" and be productive ... it is not until we experience the long-term consequences of our actions (when it is too late) that we make an effort to be productive. In my case, I often wait until I am staring at a drop-dead deadline before I become productive ... It is like a game of chicken with automobiles, and even at 40 years old, I am waiting until the last possible moment to make the right move and get out of the way of danger.

So I guess this time management process (GTD) is my first step in addressing my procrastination. Hopefully, when the dust clears, I will be able to see more clear what I am anxious about, and what I am hiding from.

 

[Arduinna]

Amen to the endorsement of Paul Graham's essay on procrastination

Superb article. Seems to debunk much of the advice offered by Covey, Allen, etc. Moreso, the advice jives with my experience with successful folks, mostly artistic/creative, who don't have time for "time-management" articles, books. They DO the most important projects allowing "delight" to guide their decisions.

This is one of those great pieces of thinking that alters the way you perceive an issue. Graham's crystallized something I knew, but avoid thinking about. Viewing NAs as "doing errands" vs. "doing real work" provides that prioritizing device that's eluded me in GTD.

There may be types of work that can only be done in long, uninterrupted stretches, when inspiration hits, rather than dutifully in scheduled little slices. Empirically it seems to be so. When I think of the people I know who've done great things, I don't imagine them dutifully crossing items off to-do lists. I imagine them sneaking off to work on some new idea.

Conversely, forcing someone to perform errands synchronously is bound to limit their productivity. The cost of an interruption is not just the time it takes, but that it breaks the time on either side in half. You probably only have to interrupt someone a couple times a day before they're unable to work on hard problems at all.

Errands are so effective at killing great projects that a lot of people use them for that purpose. Someone who has decided to write a novel, for example, will suddenly find that the house needs cleaning. People who fail to write novels don't do it by sitting in front of a blank page for days without writing anything. They do it by feeding the cat, going out to buy something they need for their apartment, meeting a friend for coffee, checking email. "I don't have time to work," they say. And they don't; they've made sure of that.

Gold.

 

[Busydave]

Be careful of what you mean when you say you are procrastinating on something. Procrastination has bad associations – an implication of failure – that may not be correct.

For example, I thought I was procrastinating on getting some jobs done around the house on weekends: I seemed to be just hanging around the kitchen with my wife and son, getting nothing done.

Then I realised that I was actually fulfilling my number one priority – spend any available quality time with family after having to work a stupid number of hours during the week.

My problem therefore is not procrastination; it is a lack of balance in my life.

Dave

 

[Cuffy_Meigs]

Morning surfing

I, too, have a real problem with opening up a surfing black hole first when I sit down to start my work day. I must check a handful for business sites for breaking news related to my job, but that quickly and seamlessly morphs into blog surfing. Next time I look up it's closing in on 11 AM & lunch is right around the corner---why get started on something big now? Sheesh.

So here's what I just did after reading some posts above:

1. Create a new favorites folder called AFTER LUNCH (yes, use allcaps)
2. Place it at the bottom of your favorites list
3. Put all "fun" sites in that folder

It's just an optical trick to remind me these sites are verboten in the morning. My hope is that this works so well that all blog surfing is consigned to my home PC after work.

Unfortunately, all my GTD bookmarks now reside in AFTER LUNCH as well. If you ever see me posting here in the AM again, feel free to harangue me without mercy!

 

[bmd]

procrastination

Busy Dave, you added a lovely and poignant note to a very engaging and helpful thread. If more busy parents could come to this realization, how different things could be. Your family is lucky.

 

[Busydave]

Busy Dave, you added a lovely and poignant note to a very engaging and helpful thread. If more busy parents could come to this realization, how different things could be. Your family is lucky.

Thanks for the support bmd; it took me a while to reach that realisation. Without priorities it can be hard to really say when we are procrastinating.

Dave

 

[Busydave]

I guess it is not all that surprising that many seeking of us, seeking to develop personal time management skill, suffer from some form of procrastination.

My procrastination habit is nearly identical to Flex ... Every morning, I sit down at my desk with the best of intentions, to review and clear email, briefly read todays news, review websites of my active organizations, and BAM ... it is lunch time. Even when I "get organized" and gather up everything in a "collection basket," it sometimes feels like I have no energy or interest in moving forward on anything. Sometimes the funk lasts all day, and I leave the office feeling just ... defeated.

I am just starting to work through the GTD system and implement it. I am hopeful that I can address procrastination problems by developing a system to manage my time, caseload, work assignments, and active life outside of work ... I am reading with interest but skeptical that I will EVER account for everything I have to do. And of course, a part of me is concerned that I am just engaging in ANOTHER procrastination activity!!

Also, when one is his or her own boss, it is sometimes hard to create the type of short-term accountability necessary to "get off the dime" and be productive ... it is not until we experience the long-term consequences of our actions (when it is too late) that we make an effort to be productive. In my case, I often wait until I am staring at a drop-dead deadline before I become productive ... It is like a game of chicken with automobiles, and even at 40 years old, I am waiting until the last possible moment to make the right move and get out of the way of danger.

So I guess this time management process (GTD) is my first step in addressing my procrastination. Hopefully, when the dust clears, I will be able to see more clear what I am anxious about, and what I am hiding from.

I read a good point somewhere that may have some relevance to you: the topic was leakage: where the barrier between your working life and your social/recreational life has broken down. In effect, you are trying to experience social/recreational pleasure by surfing during the hours when you should be in heads-down-working mode. The dangerous thing is that we can convince ourselves that surfing is somehow relevant to our jobs. But when we disconnect from the web and look at the desk again, we find we have achieved nothing through surfing. We have managed to blur the distinction between wok and leisure, to our own advantage.

Try treating surfing as a strictly personal, recreational activity. If you restrict surfing to personal time, you will notice that you are much less inclined to spend that many hours of personal time at it – yet you have no problem spending many many hours per month of office time on the web. Surfing during working hours is the same as reading a novel or watching TV during working yours - it’s just not work!

Dave

 

[tim99]

I read a good point somewhere that may have some relevance to you: the topic was leakage: where the barrier between your working life and your social/recreational life has broken down. In effect, you are trying to experience social/recreational pleasure by surfing during the hours when you should be in heads-down-working mode....Try treating surfing as a strictly personal, recreational activity....Surfing during working hours is the same as reading a novel or watching TV during working yours - it’s just not work!

Wow. I am going to surf over to the depression forum and tell people who are depressed to just be happy.

There is a form of chronic procrastination that is similar to drug abuse or food abuse or even smoking. The person who does it may aftwards be angry at themselves for having done what they did, and realize that what they do is not helping them reach important goals, but then they are unable in only a few hours to keep themselves from doing it again.

I personally think that it is silly to just tell these people to just start doing this or just stop doing that. In fact, to me it shows that the person giving the advice does not understand the deep impact of the behaviour, the shame of the person affected by it, and how much that person wants to stop. Or...start.

There is something inside my head that reacts to specific events that leads me to think about those events in such a way that I am driven, in a non logical way, in a non productive way, and sometimes in a distructive way, to do something else instead of the very thing that not only do I need to do but that I know would feel wonderful if I accomplished. Over time it has become a habit for me to respond to specific events by doing something else to avoid the feeling that I get when faced with those events. And often I know that the something else is wrong, non productive, and destructive. I know that I am not making as much money as I could and I am not has happy as I could be with the position in life that I have achieved. In addition, I am further dismayed in that there are some events in my life that I accomplish more work at a higher quality than anyone I know. So I know that one part of my mind is capable, but another part is blocking me.

The key is not simply "doing this thing" or "understanding that the other thing is wrong", it is understanding why I look at specific events the way that I do and feel such a strong need to avoid those feelings. When I am procrastinating I do not "feel good", I feel stressed and feel bad, but there is something, some chemical storm inside by body that I prefer, or at least choose to have, over the feeling I get when faced with the other thing that I know I should be doing.

.

 

[bmd]

procrastination

Which Wise Forum Poster said this in the past?

"Would anyone looking at you know what you're working on right now?"

I have that on a table tent on my desk. I can be reading and thinking great stuff, but where's the evidence that I'm completing the grant application that's due in three weeks?

Many thanks for all the wonderful posts.

 

[Rainer Burmeister]

Disgust?

There is something inside my head that reacts to specific events that leads me to think about those events in such a way that I am driven, in a non logical way, in a non productive way, and sometimes in a distructive way, to do something else instead of the very thing that not only do I need to do but that I know would feel wonderful if I accomplished. Over time it has become a habit for me to respond to specific events by doing something else to avoid the feeling that I get when faced with those events. And often I know that the something else is wrong, non productive, and destructive.

Sounds like disgust to me; disgust recruited to defend the self against psychic incorporation or any increase in intimacy with a repellent object (though the object or work may look harmless to other people).

Rainer

 

[sonia_simone]

Analogy with depression

The analogy with depression is a sound one, and just as you probably won't find a way to cure clinical depression by reading a forum, you probably won't be able to address procrastination that is a serious disorder by poring through these topics.

It's tricky to find a good therapist for this, but I have seen in my own life how "procrastination disorder" can be as damaging as any other form of addiction. One thing I have seen work is drug therapy for ADHD -- there is a form of ADHD that makes the brain all but incapable of translating intention to action. The resultant life chaos can create truly disabling anxiety and depression. I've seen plain old Ritalin work true miracles in such a case.

This isn't a plug for Ritalin so much as a plug to go see a pro and take the problem seriously. People tend to think procrastination is a simple issue that just calls for a little will power. Sometimes that's true, but sometimes it's much more serious.

 

[sonia_simone]

Devil's Advocate

On the other hand.

Sometimes there really is wisdom in that old "it hurts when I do this," / "quit doing that."

 

[tim99]

Sounds like disgust to me...

I view the word disgust as more of a second order effect to a first order cause. I see disgust as a reaction. So even if I had disgust, I would still be looking for a deeper root cause.

My current thinking is that when I view some difficult tasks, usually tasks for other people where I do not define the problem or the outcome, I connect the task to memories of fear and shame from the past. The memories are sometimes strong enough to create in me a reaction to avoid the task. It is interesting that the memories do not have to be true. So I instead look for other tasks that I can do perfectly. Tasks where I can completly control the outcome to be exactly perfect.

I did not have a bad childhood. This does not come totally from my parents. It comes from myself. My reaction to what might have been viewed by others as success. My own perfectionism creates very strong memories when I feel that I have failed, and weak or no memories when I succeed. You would look at my success and think that I should feel good about myself, when instead I am thinking about this and that that did not go well in my view.

So, I am working on viewing life in a more truthful way, and thinking about the stuff that I have done well, and how good it feels to experience a successful outcome.

But, I want to create a new habit for doing things now and getting things done. That is why I read GTD and The Now Habit.

That is why I am here.

.

 

[QCB]

I read a good point somewhere that may have some relevance to you: the topic was leakage: where the barrier between your working life and your social/recreational life has broken down. In effect, you are trying to experience social/recreational pleasure by surfing during the hours when you should be in heads-down-working mode. The dangerous thing is that we can convince ourselves that surfing is somehow relevant to our jobs. But when we disconnect from the web and look at the desk again, we find we have achieved nothing through surfing. We have managed to blur the distinction between wok and leisure, to our own advantage.

Try treating surfing as a strictly personal, recreational activity. If you restrict surfing to personal time, you will notice that you are much less inclined to spend that many hours of personal time at it – yet you have no problem spending many many hours per month of office time on the web. Surfing during working hours is the same as reading a novel or watching TV during working yours - it’s just not work!

Dave

Dave:

A very insightful and perceptive comment ... and true on several levels. But in some ways, it leads me right back here after a 360 degree turn. I am definitely taking time at work to pursue "recreational" activities ... one of the bigger ones currently relates to coaching (i.e., I coach several soccer and basketball teams for my children). It starts with an email to parents about something (practice, game times, whatever), checking the league website for something, communicating with another coach or referee or whoever, and surfing coaching related sites for more info and help. Next it is on to personal finances, checking banking statements, revising my budget. Then it is a stop by another online community ... and on and on.

So there is no doubt that a part of my problem is misdirected use of my time. I have lost the proper boundaries between work and everything else in my life, to the point where I almost do whatever I feel like doing during the day, unless there is a metaphorical gun pointed at my head to get something done!!

But if I peel back another layer, I think that one of the reasons I do this stuff at work is that I have no time to do it at home. Seriously, I often make it home 30-60 seconds, before I have to run off to a practice or a meeting or some event for one of my children. After the kids go to bed, my wife would like to have some adult communication rather than see me with my face in a laptop ... besides the fact that I am exhausted. The next day brings more of the same. It is like setting the goal to "get up by 6:00 a.m.," and then going to bed at midnight, knowing that I generally need 7-8 hours of sleep to function.

So my hope is this ... If I can master my time, at work and at home, with the GTD method, I can put everything back in its place and build up the barrier between work and recreation again. Along the way, I need to learn to delegate, say "no," accept help, stop trying to be superman, be more of a manager than a doer, and regain some self-discipline in my daily work habits. Of course, now I am not sure whether to add "Stop by GTD Website" to the list, before it becomes another well-intended recreational pursuit!!

Thanks again for the advice. I will keep you posted ... I am on about page 100 of the book and committed to finishing it this weekend.

 

[flexiblefine]

I live there too!

I did not have a bad childhood. This does not come totally from my parents. It comes from myself. My reaction to what might have been viewed by others as success. My own perfectionism creates very strong memories when I feel that I have failed, and weak or no memories when I succeed. You would look at my success and think that I should feel good about myself, when instead I am thinking about this and that that did not go well in my view.

So, I am working on viewing life in a more truthful way, and thinking about the stuff that I have done well, and how good it feels to experience a successful outcome.

Tim, I know exactly what you mean -- I had a job a few years ago (working for a startup) where everyone else thought I kicked ass, and I felt like I was working long hours and seven-day weeks just to keep up. Two people can really see the world completely differently from each other.

Are you also much more forgiving of others? I'm willing to let everyone else be imperfect, but not myself. I still have a fair amount of changing to do, but I've come a long way so far. It'll be nice to see myself and my life the way other people do.

GTD helped me get control over the things I had to do, and it brought my procrastination into sharp focus. I found recommendations for The Now Habit, and I'm working my way through it again. I really need to learn to get off my own back, and I think the Now Habit methods will help.

 

[tim99]

Are you also much more forgiving of others? I'm willing to let everyone else be imperfect, but not myself....I found recommendations for The Now Habit...

Yes. More forgiving of others. I have self perfectionism, not "other orientated perfectionism". I am the only person I know who can drive down the road, have someone cut me off, and simply think that person is having a bad day instead ot thinking that they are a fool.

GTD and The Now Habit are wonderful for Organization and Procrastination. But books by Melody Beattie are good for people who beat themselves up.

I am here to *improve* my organization, *reduce* my procrastination, and beat myself up *less*. If I continue to try to do those perfectly, I am just adding on another expectation that will cause me to look at something I do as a failure, even if I am doing that something better than I was before.

If you beat yourself up, "The Language of Letting Go" by Melody Beattie is wonderful.

 

[iainp]

Bump

I'm "Bumping" this as I have a teenager with serious procrastination and issues of 'getting lost while researching for school'. After 6 months I finally stumbled upon this thread again.

Great topic!!!

Iain