Procrastination

June 22, 2023 | jaylazzo

“I don’t want to postpone this session, Jed,” began Coach.

“Thanks, Coach,” replied Jed, laughing.

“Procrastination,” began Coach, “is the act of delaying or postponing tasks or actions. It involves avoiding doing something that needs to be done, often in favor of doing something more enjoyable or comfortable. While it’s common for people to procrastinate occasionally, chronic procrastination can have negative effects on productivity, performance, and mental health.

Image: https://www.manastha.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/procrastination-2.jpg

Risk Factors for Procrastination:

Lack of Motivation: Clearly, not being motivated or interested in the task at hand can make individuals more likely to give up difficult tasks for easier ones.
Fear of Failure: When people are afraid that they might not succeed, they might avoid even trying.
Perfectionism: The belief that everything must be perfect, all your tools, all your data should be there, can be paralyzing.
Decision Fatigue: I think that most people avoid the tedious stuff because they’re just tired. And when you’re tired, the thought of more effort causes you pain. Procrastination is an analgesic. And what’s the cause of the tiredness? Decision fatigue. That’s also why you delegate.
Impulsivity and Poor Time Management: Being impulsive can lead to prioritizing immediate gratification over long-term goals, and poor time management skills can contribute to procrastination, although I think it’s more out of fatigue of some sort.
Low Self-Efficacy: Believing that one lacks the abilities to successfully complete a task can lead to procrastination. What else can I say, Jed? Your thoughts lead to actions. You can choose to believe and trust your training, or you could choose not to. You choose!
Mental Health Issues: In some cases, anxiety, depression, or ADHD can make procrastination more likely. We’ve seen more of these coming out of the COVID pandemic. The jury is still out on the why’s of that.

Symptoms of Procrastination:

Chronic Delaying: Regularly putting off tasks for later.
Lack of Focus: Having trouble concentrating on the task at hand.
Guilt and Anxiety: Feeling guilty or anxious about not completing tasks.
Low Productivity: Despite being busy, not much gets accomplished.
Missed Deadlines: Consistently failing to meet deadlines.
Decline in Performance: A noticeable drop in the quality of work or performance.
Avoidance Behavior: Engaging in alternative activities to avoid the necessary task.

Techniques to Overcome Procrastination:

Break Tasks into Smaller Steps: Large tasks can be overwhelming. Breaking them down into smaller, baby steps are more manageable. And they build up a pattern of success more easily, which is very good for motivating.
Set Specific Goals and Deadlines: Set clear goals and deadlines. You know what writers say? There’s nothing like a deadline to boost productivity! And here’s another thing they say. When you end your writing for the day, end it as an unfinished sentence in the middle of an unfinished paragraph. You’ll wake up the next day wanting to finish that! And then do it all over again. Smart, if you ask.
Use a Timer: We saw the Pomodoro Technique that involves working for short, focused bursts, followed by a break. Other related techniques include putting down your pencils the moment you see the sun set.
Minimize Distractions: Create a conducive working environment by removing distractions like social media, or noisy environments. What some people do is escape to an unknown place, known only to their secretary in case of emergencies. They stay there for an hour or two to get work done in total quiet. I had a colleague who disconnects his internet between certain hours. And for writing I sometimes use JDarkroom.
Reward Yourself: Set up a system of rewards for completing tasks. Ice cream.
Change Your Mindset: Sometimes, changing the way you think about a task can make it seem less daunting. The same task, you can make look challenging and fun. Focus on the benefits of completing the task rather than the effort it takes. The Japanese also taught us the method of just starting. Instead of thinking about going to the gym, just think about putting on your sneakers. Things follow from there.
Seek Support or Therapy: In cases where procrastination is linked to mental health issues or deeply ingrained habits, seeking the help of a psychologist or counselor can be beneficial.
Time Management Techniques: Use calendars, to-do lists, or other tools to help manage your time effectively. We have different ways of doing that. Some like doing it precisely. I like scheduling in blocks, say, “Administrative email and all things administrative” between 9 and 10:30.
Practice Self-compassion: Be kind to yourself. Understand that it’s okay to not be perfect and that making progress is more important than perfection. It might help to think that mediocrity is not necessarily a shame. You can’t have all excellent people in this world.
Prioritize: Determine which tasks are most important and focus on those first.

“Remember, Jed, that overcoming procrastination is something you’ll have to manage all your life. It’s a not usually a moral fault, it’s not laziness. It’s more of pain, tiredness. If you can think differently, and get a bit of rest, that should be very effective.”

(Q.C. 230622)

Quiet Quitters

January 22, 2023January 22, 2023 | jaylazzo

I learned about Quiet Quitters browsing Youtube today.

Quiet Quitters will not open emails after 3 pm. There may be good reasons for that, but in their case they do not read emails because they are afraid to confront what’s might be there.

Doctors, who usually don’t have a clue anyway, wish that the symptoms will disappear by themselves; we all wish our problems will just disappear on their own. It is right to postpone deciding if a decision is not needed right now (Falkland’s Law).

Quiet Quitters, however, procrastinate. They discover that an “urgent” task needs doing, or they find a reason to browse Youtube, as an excuse. Yet it’s just so much better to be over with the d**n thing, in whole or in part, delegate if needed.

Decisive action requires accepting the pain, not fighting it.

Steve Magness in Do Hard Things describes an experiment. Subjects (athletic coaches) were paired and pairs were seated facing each other, knees almost touching. The researchers instructed them to stare into each others’ eyes for a minute. To cope with the discomfort people looked at foreheads, giggled, fidgeted. As one minute turned to two, the unease became even more unbearable. However, as the minutes turned from two to three and three to four, subjects became more and more relaxed as they accepted their condition. The experiment ended in five minutes with a heightened sense of camaraderie.

Magness describes a similar experiment with male and female pairs. The researchers got the same results, and a bonus: some of the couples fell in love and married! Magness then described his personal attempt to replicate these results during a date but failed.

The experiments show that we can get enormous control over ourselves if we accept pain rather than fight it. Pain, in many ways an emotion like any other, is not compatible with action. If AFRAID, you SPEAK LOUDER. When in pain, act, don’t procrastinate. Open that email. Make that phone call. Say sorry.

Quiet Quitting can be unethical. You cheat others, you cheat yourself. And for what? A temporary reprieve from pain, which only returns for the issue that caused it remains unresolved.

Quiet Quitting makes you less useful to others. A mindset fixed on avoiding pain ends by avoiding service. A Quiet Quitter might look intense at work, but in reality may just be going through the motions. He will not have many ideas about how to improve the work place, though he might have detailed options about where to eat that night. Facebook, Instagram and cell phones make it possible to do a lot without doing anything.

Understand that many people have become Quiet Quitters during the pandemic and may be in a worse mental or emotional state than it appears. If you can help them now with firm, gentle reminders, just do it, now, don’t procrastinate.

(QC, 230122)

On procrastination and dreaming of bicycles

January 10, 2023 | jaylazzo

Is it the case that having many interests promotes procrastination?

It would seem that having interests makes it painful to consider other tasks. According to this reasoning, having an interest other than the task at hand distracts. But this reasoning is nuanced. Although it may be true that having many other things in mind can be distracting, the problem is not with those other things but with the task one struggles with. This new task may be too large, too “difficult”, too complex. The mind protects itself, and puts a barrier that makes it easy to decide to postpone action.

It’s safer to run away, to procrastinate. The mind stays clear of danger. Let’s just not do anything. It’s a wise strategy sometimes. Perhaps the problem will disappear by itself, or somebody else will handle it. That is certainly something to hope for when one has too much on one’s plate. Which would be a problem in itself: not knowing how to manage priorities. And to manage emotions. Casually hoping a problem would go away when one’s priority is to deal with that problem is a problem of mismanaged emotions. Deal with it. Deal with it not by thinking about it but by acting on it.

Accounting is not an easy skill. I used to find Accounting very painful just to think about. But I came to love it. How? I acted, starting small. I bought a basic textbook, did all the exercises, and saved them as Excel templates that I still use today. On the other hand, intermediate accounting is daunting because I never studied it; I did not need it for my regular work.

Many other things cause pain, such as thinking about repairs in the house. I don’t have a system. A system would involve, say, scheduling a repair and preparing the materials the night before. This is an example of breaking the daunting task into familiar fragments — how much skill does it take to gather tools?

In short, the hard part is to begin, and the solution is to begin with a simple fragment of the whole and let momentum do the rest. In other words: “When you feel lazy about going to the gym, just think about putting on your gym clothes.”

Leadership roles are certainly more complex. They involve objects, people, how people relate to objects and how they relate to each other. But even for a CEO, a very complex work can be cut into fragments. Divide and conquer.

Another way out of procrastination is to obey. One can obey other people, or one can obey one’s to-do list. We often obey against the grain, sometimes even against our perceived self interests. But we can see why acting from obedience — whether it is in response to a boss’ demand, or to one’s own to-do list, works: action kills pain.

I do not know why action has that effect. It appears that action and fear are incompatible. A hunting dog does not feel its fleas. There, alone with one’s thoughts, one will soon discover a million reasons not to act where risk and difficulty are involved.

So, act. This is no way guarantees success. But even failure is relative — it’s just feedback. Failure is essential to success, for who can do anything well without feedback? One is almost sure to fail when one takes on too big a task. It’s still feedback, but it is reckless to set oneself up for failure. Again, the problem is not having too many things on one’s plate, but in poor planning and mismanaged priorities.

I once met an engineer who handled about 30 projects; he seemed to be doing a good job. He does have a good team. Teams multiply action. In fact, I’ve been thinking how one might write a hundred books in 10 years, and the answer is “ghostwriters”. But even a system of ghostwriters will get a poor share of one’s resources if one also employed assistants in so diverse fields that teams don’t benefit from the work of other teams. It’s still better to focus on related tasks, and leave the unrelated tasks few and for purposes of rest and recreation.

I like to bike. But last night I dreamed I was on a bicycle that became more and more difficult to pedal even though the ground was flat. The fact that failure is essential to success is an uncomfortable thought that sometimes shows in dreams.

But even in the dream I’m on the bicycle. That’s what matters.