Overcoming Procrastination - By Dr Windy Dryden - A Sheldon Press Book

We all avoid at times getting on with tasks. But some people procrastinate to the point where they needlessly suffer from putting things off in one or more important areas of their life.

Dr Dryden has an international reputation for his work in counselling and psychotherapy, and has helped many thousands of people deal with their problems. His many books include 10 Steps to Positive Living, The Incredible Sulk, How to Cope When the Going Gets Tough, and A Positive Thought for Every Day, which are all published by Sheldon Press.

Overcoming Procrastination

Contents

Preface

Part 1 Procrastination: What is it why you do it and what you can do about it

• What is procrastination?
• How to tell if you are procrastinating
• Understanding the broad sychological themes behind your procrastination
• The real reason why you procrastinate: Your beliefs
• Developing an anti-procrastination strategy

Part 2 Dealing with different types of procrastination:

• Dealing with 'just so' procrastination
• Dealing with procrastination based on fear of failure
• Dealing with procrastination based on 'fear of success'
• Dealing with approval-based procrastination
• Dealing with discomfort-based procrastination
• Dealing with worry-based procrastination
• Dealing with autonomy-based procrastination
• Dealing with crisis-based procrastination
• Dealing with other forms of procrastination

Part 3 Other techniques

• A Smorgasbord of other anti-procrastination methods

Overcoming Procrastination

What is procrastination: A recent consumer report on the amount of time we in Britain squander makes alarming reading. The report showed that we spend on average each week: 1 hour 30 minutes stuck in traffic jams, 36 minutes waiting for public transport, 1 hour 24 minutes dealing with bureaucracy, 1 hour 12 minutes waiting in queues at shops or banks, 1 hour 24 minutes looking for things at home, 1 hour 18 minutes shopping for things without success. All in all we squander about seven and a half hours each week in the above ways, which approximates to about two and a half years over the average lifetime.

While we may not have much control over some of these factors, we do have much more control over how we spend our time in other areas. But do we use this time wisely? Do we do tasks that are in our interests to do when it is in our interests to do them? The answer is that some of us do, but most of us don't. Most of us procrastinate. What does the term 'procrastination' mean? It means putting off until tomorrow what is in our interests to do today.

Thus procrastination has three major features:

• A task that it is in our interests to do
• A time frame in which it is important for us to take action
• A postponement of this action until another time.

In addition, procrastination involves one or more additional postponements until action is taken:

• Either at the very last minute
• After the due deadline
• Action is not taken at all

We all procrastinate at some time in our lives. How many of us, for example, have not put off paying a bill until the very last moment when it would have been better for us to pay it earlier? It is certainly not my intention to write a book hoping to persuade you to banish all forms of procrastination from your life. If this was my intention then I would inevitably fail. No, I have written this book mainly for those who have a chronic problem with procrastination and who suffer needlessly from routinely putting things off in one or a number of areas in their lives.

Major procrastination areas: Before I discuss chronic procrastination more fully, let me briefly review the basic areas in which we procrastinate. In the field of human endeavour it is possible to procrastinate over anything at all, but it seems to me and others who have written on the subject that we procrastinate in the areas of:

• Personal maintenance
• Self-development
• Honouring commitments to others

While these three areas can and often do overlap, I will deal with each area briefly in turn.

Personal maintenance: When we procrastinate in the area of personal maintenance we put off taking action that will maintain our lives in the following areas: health, personal cleanliness, finance, personal administration, general living conditions (such as cleaning, organizing and maintaining our living quarters) and work.

Self-development: When we procrastinate in the area of self-development we put off taking action that will enhance our lives in a variety of areas, such as: developing personal interests, improving opportunities for advancement in our chosen line of work, gaining further educational qualifications and broadening knowledge in specific and/or general areas.

Honouring commitments to others: Sometimes we make commitments to others which at the time we are fully prepared to honour, but which later we regret making or regard as onerous. Instead of 'biting the bullet' and doing whatever we agreed to for other people, we put off doing it, hoping perhaps that the other person will have forgotten the promise that we made to them. For example, I have edited a number of academic texts and I usually give those who agree to contribute a very generous amount of time to complete their chapter. However, a number of my contributors submit their chapters late, thus inconveniencing both me as editor and the publishers, who usually have tight publication schedules.

Having covered the main areas in which we procrastinate, let me discuss the nature of chronic procrastination in greater detail.

Chronic procrastination: when things really get bad
As I have already stated, this book is mainly for people who have chronic procrastination.

As I alluded to above, there are two types of chronic procrastination:

• Chronic specific procrastination
• Chronic general procrastination

If you have chronic specific procrastination, you tend to have a long standing problem doing things on time in one area of your life, but in other areas of your life you do not have a problem with procrastination. Thus, one of my clients does things on time and often well before time in all areas of her life except one. She procrastinates on tasks that have anything to do with her tax affairs and has done so for years. This has resulted in numerous fines and time-consuming audits, none of which would have happened had she dealt with her tax affairs on time.

If you have chronic general procrastination, you tend to procrastinate in a number of important areas in your life, you have tended to do so for years and you routinely suffer from doing so. It perhaps goes without saying that chronic procrastination is difficult to overcome, and this is particularly so when you have chronic general procrastination because it has almost become a way of life for you.

Help is at hand: I have two pieces of good news and one piece of bad news for you. The first piece of good news is that you can help yourself to overcome both types of chronic procrastination. I have helped hundreds of people whose lives have been blighted by their avoidant style of dealing with issues that were better confronted to overcome their procrastination problem.

The bad news is that you will not find this easy to do. Before you close this book and put it aside (which if you have a chronic problem with procrastination you will he strongly tempted to do at this point). please give me a chance to explain.

Chronic procrastination is by definition a bad habit, and habits take time to break. There is no getting around this grim fact. However, if you accept this point (without necessarily liking it), you will at least give yourself a chance to break your bad procrastinating habit.

All you need to have is the following:

• Awareness — that you are in fact procrastinating
• Goal-directedness — a wish to do the task that you are currently avoiding (or a wish to have the task done)
• Commitment — to put up with short-term pains for longer-term gains
• Persistence — a willingness to repeat the procedures that I will discuss throughout the book until they become second nature to you

Now, if you have chronic procrastination (either in a specific area or more generally), you may think that you are particularly deficient in the above qualities unless they are in the service of procrastination. Thus, you may be only too aware that you are procrastinating and that your goal is to avoid doing difficult, threatening or aversive tasks. You may well acknowledge that you have committed yourself to procrastination and are very persistent at continuing to actively avoid these tasks that are in your interests to do.

My point is that you do have the skills of awareness, setting goals, committing yourself to a course of action and being persistent (albeit at continuing to put things off). I don't need to teach you these skills: you have them already and are pretty good at using them. What I want to encourage you to do is to use those skills in areas where they help you rather than hinder you as at present. This is my second piece of good news for you: I do not have to teach you things that you are not good at; all I need to do is to encourage you to transfer these skills to areas that will help you live a more effective, satisfying life than one based on avoidance and self-deception.

I hope I have at least interested you enough for you to continue to read this book. As I have said, the road to overcoming procrastination is not easy, but it can be done and, as I have just shown you, you have all the tools at your disposal to help you to make this difficult but rewarding journey.

About the author: Windy Dryden was born in London in 1950. He has worked in psychotherapy and counselling for over twenty-five years, and is the author or editor of over 100 books, including Ten Steps to Positive Living (Sheldon Press, 1994) and How to Accept Yourself (Sheldon Press, 1999). Dr Dryden is Professor of Counselling at Goldsmiths College, University of London.