20221101 Procrastination

 I've resolved to write at least something on here each workday. Will you help me with this? If you'll give the odd post a quick comment, I'll see what I can do by way of making it a valuable use of your time.

I am a creative person; a thoughtful person; a person with a head full of thoughts; an unfocussed person...

Is this familiar? I must be one of millions of unreformed procrastinators around the UK and beyond our chalky shores. What on earth are we doing? We know we could get our little piles of jobs done with ease. We'd feel terrific about ourselves. We'd shine at work / in our studies. We'd probably get a pay rise and finish early. We could use the time saved to learn to knit or something.

The magnetic pull of timewasting instead feels almost physiological. A Psychology Today post says it 'tends to reflect [our] struggle with self-control' (1). Well yeah, how much do I owe you for that? That's just a tautology. It goes on to say one in five of us are 'habitual procrastinators' (ibid). If that many people exhibit a behaviour, in my opinion it's not a personal shortcoming, it's a population-wide tendency. If that many of us struggle to wade through a working day, then either the working day for that chunk of humanity should be adapted, or some form of additional training/resource should be provided so we can adapt ourselves. (In a drawling New York accent:) Let's be solution-focussed, people! At present one in five of us are driving along the motorway in third gear.

'Procrastination may relieve pressure in the moment,' the article goes on – yes, that's right, it's a little like having a cigarette, isn't it? – 'but it can have steep... costs.' Yep. Fairly immediate and obvious ones: today's work didn't get done. Why not? I really tried. But I just kept having 'cigarettes' (a scroll-through-twitter cigarette; a make-another-tea cigarette; a BBC-website-quiz-meant-for-kids cigarette). I saw the work building up. That created stress. I relieved the stress with a Google-mortgage-rates-in-2024 cigarette.

A cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) approach, the article concludes, is a good way to break the procrastination-cigarette-habit. But— therapy, you groan? Really, Sam, for timewasting – really? Yes! Everyone on earth should have therapy, it's terrific. Let's destigmatise it for a second. 

Therapy is sitting somewhere comfortable with someone appropriately qualified for an hour. That someone has agreed to dedicate their hour to letting you explore yourself. They'll provide useful guidance where you need it. Do you know everything there is to know about yourself? No. Are you at total peace, at one with the universe, crystal clear about what your life means and how you wish to spend the rest of it? No. So if therapy were free of charge, and you had a spare hour, would you take up the offer? If the answer is no, well, then, my friend, you could really do with some therapy.

Closing thought: I've presented an issue (procrastination) but not a solution. I'll return to this post, I'm sure. There isn't a simple 'three step solution' to resolve a long-term habit (that I know of). The best short-term fix I know of is to pick one single task, forget all the rest exist, and commit yourself exclusively to that one thing. And when it's done, give yourself a mighty great pat on the back, because we far too seldom remind ourselves how much we're getting right in our days. The brain's fuel is positive reinforcement. You've earned that pat on the back. You're a good person & almost certainly deserve more praise than you get (including from yourself). If that sounds trite and awful and happy-clappy American (sorry again, Americans, the world loves you really), I promise it's good advice that I myself forget to take. I kick myself constantly for all I've not got done and step right over all I've achieved. That's because my brain is looking for problems to solve—bless it, it's trying to help, but it's more geared towards hunter-gatherer scenarios than desks and inboxes and mental wellbeing in a services-led economy. If the human brain was a laptop, and evolution was Apple Inc, our last big update re problem-solving will have been around the time we learned to attach flint to sticks. Our brains don't know about our brains.

Thank you, by the way, for reading this post – I appreciate it. Yes, really, I do. Of course I'll check the readership stats! Readership-stats-cigarette. But then I'll pick out my next task and forget the rest of the world exists until I've done it. Wish me luck with that.

(1) Anon. Procrastination. Available at https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/procrastination. Accessed on 1st Nov 2022.