Overcoming Procrastination
By Tom Moon, MFT
San Francisco Bay Times
July 26, 2007
James is mildly depressed, and he can’t seem to get anything done. His bedroom is piled so high with paper and laundry that his sex life is suffering because he’s too ashamed to bring guys home. He’s so anxious about paying his bills that he avoids doing it and racks up late fees, even though he has enough money to pay what he owes. He wants to go back to school and train for a new job, but puts off registering for classes every semester, and stays stuck in a boring, dead-end job. Here are some of the “psychological theories” which he uses to explain his procrastination to himself:
1. He’s just a lazy, undisciplined person, and he’s stuck with this “personality trait” because of his faulty upbringing. This “explanation” explains nothing. It just slaps a label on his behavior and conveys the impression that his lack of motivation is “the real Jim,” making it unchangeable and hopeless.
2. He’s deliberately hurting himself because he suffers from “masochism,” “unconscious guilt” or even a “death wish.” This theory is so strange that it’s hard to understand why so many people, including many psychotherapists, seem to take it seriously. Depression and immobilization are intensely painful experiences. It isn’t humanly possible to “enjoy” them.
3. He’s “passive-aggressive” and is expressing pent-up hostility toward those around him by frustrating them. This idea is based on the long-discredited theory that depression is blocked anger. In reality people who are stuck, immobilized, and depressed are rarely angry, and the thought that they may be disappointing or frustrating others usually makes them anxious and uncomfortable.
4. He must be getting a “payoff” from his procrastination, such as enjoying all the attention he gets because of his depression. In psychological lingo this payoff is known as “secondary gain.” In fact, few depressed people really enjoy getting attention from others. More often they disqualify it by telling themselves that they don’t deserve the attention they’re getting.
Jim’s “explanations,” like so many popular psychological theories that people use to account for their behavior, make things worse because they make him feel wrong, helpless and hopeless, and because they don’t suggest any practical solutions. Yet these kind of hostile and self-denigrating ideas seem to have captured the popular imagination as explanations for every imaginable problem – whether it’s a weight issue, shyness, substance abuse, relationship problems, or any number of other problems.
But psychological theories for many problems do exist which are both testable and offer practical solutions. Anyone interested in learning a practical approach to overcoming procrastination might profit by reading the fifth chapter of David Burns excellent book Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. The cognitive theory of procrastination which he describes is essentially that the apathy, anxiety, and sense of being overwhelmed that create immobilization begin with distorted thinking. According to the theory, the process typically goes like this: you start with such self-defeating thoughts as “This is too hard to do. I just don’t have the energy.” Or “There’s no point in even trying because I’ll fail anyway.” These thoughts create feelings of hopelessness and inadequacy. The feelings are taken as confirmation of the validity of your pessimism, and you respond by avoiding the “hopeless” tasks. This leads to decreased productivity, isolation, and paralysis, which creates more feelings of guilt, helplessness, apathy, boredom, and so on. These feelings “validate” the self-defeating thoughts which started the process in the first place, and a vicious circle results.
Because distorted thinking is so central to the cognitive theory, clients in this form of therapy are urged to keep a daily record of distorted thoughts. Merely paying attention to one’s self-defeating thinking can do much to relieve the problem, even if you do nothing else.
Another one of Burns’ suggestions for overcoming immobilization is what he calls the Antiprocrastination Sheet. Here’s how it works: Break down a task you’ve been avoiding into a series of manageable steps, so that each piece can be completed in less than fifteen minutes. For each step, write down a prediction of just how difficult you expect each step to take, using a 0 to 100 percent scale. If you think the task will be relatively easy, write down a low estimate such as 10 percent; and for harder tasks, write down a larger number. In the next column, write down a number from 0 to 100 predicting how much satisfaction you expect to derive from the task. Once you’ve made these predictions, do the task and then record how difficult it actually turned out to be and how much pleasure you actually gained from doing it. This simple procedure usually helps people rapidly disconfirm their distorted beliefs that the task at hand will be painful and intolerable if they don’t avoid it.
In general, procedures like this one help people stop ruminating about their supposed internal deficiencies and start focusing instead on what specific actions they can do to address the problem at hand. When people stop asking “What’s wrong with me?” and start asking “What can I do differently?” they’re already well on their way to overcoming procrastination.
Tom Moon, MFT is a psychotherapist in San Francisco.
By Tom Moon, MFT
San Francisco Bay Times
July 26, 2007
James is mildly depressed, and he can’t seem to get anything done. His bedroom is piled so high with paper and laundry that his sex life is suffering because he’s too ashamed to bring guys home. He’s so anxious about paying his bills that he avoids doing it and racks up late fees, even though he has enough money to pay what he owes. He wants to go back to school and train for a new job, but puts off registering for classes every semester, and stays stuck in a boring, dead-end job. Here are some of the “psychological theories” which he uses to explain his procrastination to himself:
1. He’s just a lazy, undisciplined person, and he’s stuck with this “personality trait” because of his faulty upbringing. This “explanation” explains nothing. It just slaps a label on his behavior and conveys the impression that his lack of motivation is “the real Jim,” making it unchangeable and hopeless.
2. He’s deliberately hurting himself because he suffers from “masochism,” “unconscious guilt” or even a “death wish.” This theory is so strange that it’s hard to understand why so many people, including many psychotherapists, seem to take it seriously. Depression and immobilization are intensely painful experiences. It isn’t humanly possible to “enjoy” them.
3. He’s “passive-aggressive” and is expressing pent-up hostility toward those around him by frustrating them. This idea is based on the long-discredited theory that depression is blocked anger. In reality people who are stuck, immobilized, and depressed are rarely angry, and the thought that they may be disappointing or frustrating others usually makes them anxious and uncomfortable.
4. He must be getting a “payoff” from his procrastination, such as enjoying all the attention he gets because of his depression. In psychological lingo this payoff is known as “secondary gain.” In fact, few depressed people really enjoy getting attention from others. More often they disqualify it by telling themselves that they don’t deserve the attention they’re getting.
Jim’s “explanations,” like so many popular psychological theories that people use to account for their behavior, make things worse because they make him feel wrong, helpless and hopeless, and because they don’t suggest any practical solutions. Yet these kind of hostile and self-denigrating ideas seem to have captured the popular imagination as explanations for every imaginable problem – whether it’s a weight issue, shyness, substance abuse, relationship problems, or any number of other problems.
But psychological theories for many problems do exist which are both testable and offer practical solutions. Anyone interested in learning a practical approach to overcoming procrastination might profit by reading the fifth chapter of David Burns excellent book Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. The cognitive theory of procrastination which he describes is essentially that the apathy, anxiety, and sense of being overwhelmed that create immobilization begin with distorted thinking. According to the theory, the process typically goes like this: you start with such self-defeating thoughts as “This is too hard to do. I just don’t have the energy.” Or “There’s no point in even trying because I’ll fail anyway.” These thoughts create feelings of hopelessness and inadequacy. The feelings are taken as confirmation of the validity of your pessimism, and you respond by avoiding the “hopeless” tasks. This leads to decreased productivity, isolation, and paralysis, which creates more feelings of guilt, helplessness, apathy, boredom, and so on. These feelings “validate” the self-defeating thoughts which started the process in the first place, and a vicious circle results.
Because distorted thinking is so central to the cognitive theory, clients in this form of therapy are urged to keep a daily record of distorted thoughts. Merely paying attention to one’s self-defeating thinking can do much to relieve the problem, even if you do nothing else.
Another one of Burns’ suggestions for overcoming immobilization is what he calls the Antiprocrastination Sheet. Here’s how it works: Break down a task you’ve been avoiding into a series of manageable steps, so that each piece can be completed in less than fifteen minutes. For each step, write down a prediction of just how difficult you expect each step to take, using a 0 to 100 percent scale. If you think the task will be relatively easy, write down a low estimate such as 10 percent; and for harder tasks, write down a larger number. In the next column, write down a number from 0 to 100 predicting how much satisfaction you expect to derive from the task. Once you’ve made these predictions, do the task and then record how difficult it actually turned out to be and how much pleasure you actually gained from doing it. This simple procedure usually helps people rapidly disconfirm their distorted beliefs that the task at hand will be painful and intolerable if they don’t avoid it.
In general, procedures like this one help people stop ruminating about their supposed internal deficiencies and start focusing instead on what specific actions they can do to address the problem at hand. When people stop asking “What’s wrong with me?” and start asking “What can I do differently?” they’re already well on their way to overcoming procrastination.
Tom Moon, MFT is a psychotherapist in San Francisco.
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