Procrastination Habit Processes I 113

Steps in Your Procrastination Habit

Procrastination Habit Sequence Do It Now Sequence
1. 1.

2. 2.

3. 3.

4. 4.

5. 5.

6. 6.

7. 7.

The chief value in recognizing the steps in your procrastination habit process
sequence is that once you are aware of how and why you use these tactics, you have an
informed basis for making an enlightened choice. The chief value in contrasting the links
in the procrastination process sequence with the do it now sequences is that it provides a
sharper choice: continue procrastinating, or act to change the pattern.
If you decide to exercise the do it now choice,

1. Target a specific event that would usually evoke an avoidance sequence.

2. Monitor your thinking to identify the ideas, images, emotions, sensations, and
behaviors that comprise the sequence.

3. Question and dispute erroneous beliefs.

4. Directly expose yourself to problem-related situations to help neutralize the sequence.

When you act to disrupt the habit sequence process, you take another step toward
developing mastery in self-regulation. You also meet performance goals by getting rea-
sonable things done within a reasonable time.
 114 I The Procrastination Workbook

Key Ideas and Action Plans

You can often predict the different channels of your life where the static, inflexible, pro-
crastination habit is a forceful undercurrent. In fact, in chapter 3 we explored the procras-
tination zones that were most often troubling. While in your procrastination currents,
you are likely to gain a short-term advantage by delaying something you predict will feel
unpleasant. But in this procrastination mind-set, you can readily lose sight of a big
byproduct of procrastination. By practicing procrastination, you boost the strength of this
habit of delay. This potential consequence is among the more pestilent parts of
procrastination.
What key ideas from this chapter can you use to further your plan to decrease pro-
crastination? Write them down. Then write down the actions you can and will take to
support a do it now initiative.

Key Ideas
1.

2.

3.

Action Plan
1.

2.

3.

Postscript
Procrastination habit sequences serve diversionary as well as self-protective purposes.
The procrastination decision to divert, for example, can spare us from facing what we
think is an unwelcome discomfort. But the discomfort may be a signal to solve a problem
or take a reasonable risk. In the following chapter, we'll take another step in understand-
ing and containing procrastination through risk taking and enlightened decision making.
 CHAPTER II

Decision Making and

Risk Taking

You enter a cave through a hidden, bush-covered entrance at the bottom of a mountain
and find yourself in a place where humans have never gone before. You follow a path-
way spiked by a stalagmite border tipped with the dust of many ages. Hark—you see a
light. You walk toward it to where the end of this gigantic cavern opens onto a lush val-
ley teeming with dark vegetation. This is the legendary land of the polyped.
Polypeds are truly unusual animals. Each has six legs. While the front and the back
move forward, the middle ones move backwards. The poor polyped is always working
against itself.
At one time, polypeds wandered the planet. Their haven is now this spring-fed,
lushly wooded, abundant land where it never rains.
No polyped is alive today who knows how or why their ancestors settled here. Each
knew it was safe from all harm, except one—the dreaded occasions when spring water
touches polyped fur. It is said that when water touches fur, strange things happen.
We look around and see a polyped kick up water by the side of a spring-fed brook.
As droplets hit its fur, it sneezes, shutters, shakes, and flees as it works to override the
redirection of its strong middle legs.
Every polyped knows that when water touches fur it causes strange sensations. This
land of no rains sheltered them from that. Their only risk was when they drank from the
brooks or nearby lake and their middle legs kicked droplets onto their fur.
In polyped folklore, we learn a secret. When the creature roamed the earth, it had a
companion bird. When polypeds found this lost land of no rain, the bird was gone. No
one knew why or when, but all believed this was a great tragedy.
 1 16 I The Procrastination Workbook

Bathed in warm sunlight, stilled and silent, the land of lost rains was the calmest
place there ever was. But one day, a large dust devil whirled through the middle of the
polyped clan, causing one to tumble down a slope toward the small lake hidden behind a
thick olive grove.
The creature alighted near the water. In a panicked struggle to avoid the waters of
the lake, its middle legs, after years of struggle against the other four, had enormous
strength. The poor creature catapulted itself into the water.
Now sneezing, shuttering, and shaking, the creature struggled to exit the lake. Then
something strange happened. In the struggle, its middle legs turned to wings. A now sur-
prised creature rose above the olive grove only to settle back to earth as its newly formed
wings dried. The polyped had rediscovered the companion bird.
It is surprising that so many avoid reasonable risks that involve elements of unfamil-
iarity and uncertainty. Throughout most of our lives we've entered new situations: learn-
ing to read; being a new kid in the neighborhood; joining a club; going from elementary
school to middle school, to high school, to college; getting a new job; finding a new rela-
tionship. All these events involve change. Through engaging change situations, we gain
clarity on the way to developing mastery. Life also involves many familiar structures, such
as the way we measure time and the languages we use. Many of the things we do have a
certain predictability. Nevertheless, as the old saying goes, life is full of surprises.

Taking Advantage of Incidental Discoveries

Incidental discoveries can surprise us. Knowing what to do with them can be a mark of
genius. At the turn of the twentieth century, the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov experi-
mented with the salivation reflex. Using dogs as his subjects, he noticed that they would
sometimes salivate before he presented them with food. His associates wanted to control
this, arguing that this deviation in their plans was ruining their experiment. But Pavlov
saw something different. He wanted to find out what it meant.
Pavlov made a decision to take a risk to study something unusual, leapfrogging the
conventional thinking of his colleagues. And as a result of this deviation from conven-
tion, he won a 1904 Nobel prize for his discovery of the conditioned reflex.
A chance opportunity favors those who know enough to see what there is to be
gained. Sometimes seeking to understand the unexpected is just the right thing to do.
When chaos erupts, such as when the dogs salivated before receiving the food, Pavlov's
understanding and management of these events turned accident to advantage.
Most of the decisions we make and risks that we take lead to the discoveries we
make. Some of these discoveries are born within a crucible of chance. You don't know
the outcome until after you've engaged the challenge.
We can mine for opportunities at any time by deliberately entering uncharted
regions where we face uncertainties and must act to gain clarity if we intend to make dis-
coveries. With the understanding we derive from our discoveries, we might find a way
to control the processes we visited.
In choosing to enter situations that appear risky, you can face conflicting thoughts. On
the one hand, you expect to experience discomfort and awkwardness until you get familiar
with the situation, and you strongly prefer to avoid that experience. On the other hand,
you know you can organize and regulate your resources so that you can ably find out
more of what you can do, and the resources you can muster in this process of discovery.
In those life zones that involve risk and where you are inclined to procrastinate,
your initiatives may first go toward protection. Still, making a decision to procrastinate
 Decision Making and Risk Taking I 117

entails risks that are quickly obscured from view. You can lose opportunities and pay a
price. This is rarely your intent when you make a procrastination decision, but some-
times the result. To the extent that you choose to take charge of your life, this is a deci-
sion to enter areas of relative uncertainty in order to gain clarity. This act opposes a
procrastination decision to avoid the unknown.

Decision-Making Procrastination
Decision making and risk taking intricately intertwine. If you face choices, you have a
decision to make. So in the best of worlds, you weigh your options, consider their advan-
tages and disadvantages, and use good information to render a reasoned choice that is
consistent with both your values and the realities of the situation. But we don't live in a
perfect world. Our informational gaps can be wider than we want. We might have too
much information about one direction, only because we lack information about other
options. We might prefer a safe, dry choice from a potentially riskier one with a bigger
payoff. We see this play-it-safe decision in children at ring-toss games when they stand
close enough to the post so that they never miss. Others choose to improve their skill by
taking a greater risk and standing at a longer distance.
When you procrastinate, you decide to avoid a timely and relevant activity that you
don't want to do, find difficult to do, fear doing, artificially deflate in importance, or sub-
jectively view as risky. When such avoidance choices become habitual, you have entered
the realm of decision-making procrastination.
The decision to procrastinate is normally easily made. Although the procrastination
decision is often so automatic it feels natural, it is not made without some evaluation. It's
like running a red light when you see a wide opening and feel safe that you'll make it. As
an alternative to running the light, you might deliberate on important decisions, seek
information, digest your options, and act on the basis of the best information you have at
the moment. To help put this matter into perspective, let's look at a procrastination deci-
sion process and compare it to a self-regulating decision process:

How Do You Decide

Procrastination Decision Process
Vague or confusing understanding of
the choices
Procrastination impulse to delay
Judging that later is better and delay
is okay
Rationalizing consequences of delay
Repeating the cycle of procrastination
Self-Regulating Decision Process
Clear statement of the problem
Articulation of options and choices
Determination of advantages and disad-
vantages for the known options
Developing and executing a plan to
reduce the risk of disadvantage while
increasing the opportunity for gain
Learning and gaining from the results