chapter 1
Procrastination’s Web
Keep putting things off until another day and you’ll find yourself on the strands of procrastination’s web. This sticky spider web has many interconnecting strands that can be challenging to escape from once you’re stuck.
Life is simpler off the web. So what can you do to get to that simpler place? You can free yourself from procrastination’s sticky strands using the tools in this book. In this chapter, you’ll see how to spot the different parts of a procrastination process. You’ll see what you can do to get yourself off the web at any time or place.
What Is Procrastination?
Procrastination is an emotionally driven performance problem where time is an important factor. When you are procrastinating, you are both avoiding doing something uncomfortable or threatening and approaching something more pleasurable, stimulating, or less uncomfortable.
When you procrastinate, you needlessly (sometimes unconsciously) put off performing a timely and important activity until another day or time. This process starts with a perception and negative feeling about an activity or situation. Then, when you procrastinate, you always substitute something less relevant or less pressing. For example, you have a biology test tomorrow. Instead of studying, you text, shuffle papers, join friends at the mall, or bicker with your parents. These substitution activities are procrastination’s most visible feature.
When you procrastinate, you’ll practically always engage in procrastination thinking, such as, I’ll do it later. You may give yourself excuses to justify delaying, such as, I’m too tired.
Finding Where You Stand: Procrastination Awareness Survey
If you believe you could improve yourself if you had the right tools, you are a good candidate for the information in this book. You’ll find many tested ways to build your self-mastery skills as you decrease procrastination.
Overcoming procrastination starts with an analysis of what goes on when you procrastinate. Below is a list of statements to help you identify your procrastination hot spots. For each statement, there are explanations and solutions in this book for developing self-mastery skills for successfully combatting procrastination.
Instructions: If the statement sounds like you, put a checkmark in the “Like Me” column. (Don’t concern yourself about how many items you check. Most questions are variations of a few basic causes.)
The “Chapter for Corrective Actions” column lists chapters in this book where you’ll find information on the self-mastery skills for each item.
By isolating procrastination hotspots, like the above, you’ll know what areas to target for change. After you’ve worked on combatting procrastination for six weeks, do the survey again. See where you’ve improved and where you have work to do. Thereafter, check your progress every three months. By monitoring your progress, you may feel motivated to keep improving.
Getting Off Procrastination’s Web
When you sidestep your high priorities, you are on the strands of procrastination’s web, and it is difficult to get back on track. Getting off the web is not impossible, though. It’s important to know that the spider and the web need not grab your attention.
Let’s see how Dawn did this. Dawn is a very bright young woman whose procrastination affects her grades, reducing her chances of getting into the college of her choice.
Experimenting with a Procrastination Log
To understand how Dawn got herself on procrastination’s web, Dawn created a procrastination log and wrote down what she did when she put off studying for an upcoming history quiz. The log gave her information for creating a self-mastery plan and for getting off procrastination’s web.
Create your own log alongside Dawn’s example. Your situation may be different from Dawn’s. However, the important thing to note is the process that you follow when you procrastinate.
Record, Plan, Assess: Three Steps to Breaking a Procrastination Habit
After recording her procrastination habits, Dawn was amazed by what she did to avoid studying for the quiz. Although she enjoyed communicating with her friends and watching TV, she didn’t like the idea of sidetracking herself at the wrong time. She felt bothered that she wasn’t truthful with herself when she told herself she’d start earlier, work harder, and do better next time. She had made the same promise to herself many times before, and nothing had changed.
Dawn recorded her corrective actions. Here is her self-mastery action plan.
- “To be truthful with myself.” Dawn reasoned that if she valued truth, the place to start was with herself. Her procrastination log allowed her to see the facts about what she was doing (and not doing) to study for her quiz.
- “To mark a start time on the calendar and stick to it.” The data from her log documented that she started too late to do an adequate job. She concluded that best way for her to prevent procrastination was to stop sidetracking and start earlier.
- “Make the penalty for delaying greater than relief from delaying.” To reinforce her commitment, Dawn told her best friend that she’d dress for school one day in an outfit from the 1950s if she didn’t start at the time that she designated. Starting earlier was a far easier thing to do than that.
For her next test, Dawn started studying before the deadline she set for herself. She prepared adequately and was satisfied with the grade she earned on her test.
When you examine your procrastination log, what do you find? Record your findings here.
Write down your action plan ideas and changes you can and will make to build self-mastery skills by substituting productive actions for procrastination distractions.
Record what happened when you executed your plan.
You’ll find a section like this at the end of each chapter. It’s for recording what you learned and found useful. Write down what you learned from this chapter and what actions you plan to take, and then record what resulted from taking those actions and what you’ve learned by answering the following questions.
- What three key ideas from this chapter struck you as most important to remember?
- What three actions can you take to combat your target procrastination problem?
- What resulted when you took these actions?
- What did you learn from the actions?
- Specifically, what would you do differently next time?
By doing these progress report exercises, you are interacting with the material in this book and taking an important step in developing self-mastery skills. This work serves as a reminder about what you succeeded at doing that you can do again.