(Last edited March 2, 2008)

Yes, I know that this blog is mainly focused on Palms and I intend it to stay that way. But I also know that many people who use Palms or initially bought Palms for the main reason of becoming better organized and be able to take control of their lives. I’m sure that many Palm users bought the Palm for other reasons such as the games, multimedia capabilities such as mp3 player and video player, among other things but I think that a vast number of people who buy or use the Palm mainly because they want to be able to organize their lives better.

So, to give the Essential apps series a temporary break, I’ve decided to spend a few postings on procrastination and how to combat it. Beware that these blog postings will tend to be a bit longer (as if I don’t write lengthy postings) than usual. Again, I don’t claim to be a guru or expert on this (I’m no expert in anything), but just offering my views on what I think can be done to somewhat help you procrastinate less. I am human and also have my share of procrastination but most times, I force myself to “just do it” immediately (if I can and it makes sense to do it imediately) so that I get it out of the way because I know that things come back later looking uglier than originally.

Before we try to tackle how to deal with procrastination, it’s always a good idea to try to understand what procrastination is, why we procrastinate and then, focus on how to stop procrastinating.

Why do we procrastinate?

What is procrastination? Here’s a definition of the word procrastination as defined by dictionary.com:

“To put off doing something, especially out of habitual carelessness or laziness.

To postpone or delay needlessly”

Hmm. Now, why would we try to put off something or postpone or delay something needlessly?

What would we try to put off? Would it be something we enjoy? Like skiing, vacationing, something easy, or doing activities that we wouldn’t mind? Or, could it be something that we don’t like? For example, a chore? work? dealing with a difficult situation or circumstance?

Reason # 1: Avoidance of something we don’t enjoy doing

Most likely, we try to procrastinate (put off doing) something that we don’t enjoy, or find is difficult or troublesome, or all those negative associations we can apply to something we don’t like.

We try to avoid doing something that we don’t enjoy, something we perceive to be time consuming, complicated. Taxes, paying bills, balancing the chequebook are just some of the things we dread having to do, but we have to do them or suffer the consequences. That means paying penalties for missing deadlines, paying more interest, paying extra service charges. In the end, you still have to deal with it, but it gets snowballed into something much worse, much more painful and costly. And of course, you feel even worse about it. But unfortunately, we don’t learn and this vicious cycle continues and we curse about the system rather than examine our own flaws.

Fight or Flight syndrome

The way how our brain works is that we want to do things that we enjoy and get a good feeling about and avoid things that we don’t like and get a bad feeling about. This can be associated with the “fight or flight syndrome” that is inherent in our nature. Regardless of how we have evolved and become civilized as human beings, we are still very primitive in our reactions, personalities, and feelings. This is something that we were born with and regardless of evolution, we still have many of the traits of our ancestors.

With most animals, when confronted with an enemy or something that is considered dangerous, they will either fight to conquer, or flight, running away to avoid confrontation. With humans, we are very much still the same way.

Although we don’t normally “fight” our enemies or unwelcomed tasks and problems, we still react negatively to such unknown circumstances and people. Recall how you reacted when your boss called you up just as you were leaving work to ask you to stay late and complete something. You were so mentally prepared to go home and relax but now, you have to spend more time working. Groan. Depending on your mood, you could very well feel like bashing your boss, or curse, or whatever. Hmm. Does that sound familiar? Sounds like you are “fighting” this unwelcomed interruption. Or recall other scenarios in which you reacted negatively to, like doing the taxes, or going to see the in-laws, or whatever else. Most times, we react negatively to things we don’t like and even if we don’t show it, our body mechanisms react negatively and releases chemicals that aren’t good for us. This is what stress is. It is a negative reaction to things we don’t like in our every day life. And that’s why we need to exercise or do yoga or other activities to help us flush it out or get rid of those harmful chemicals.

These harmful chemicals released in our body due to stress is not very healthy , and over time, makes our muscles tense, make us more angry, irritable, and we succumb more easily to injury. We either deal with the situation (fight) or avoid the situation (flight) or procrastinate. Yes. Procrastination is the avoidance or the flight part of our nature. But as humans, most times, when we avoid something, it somehow comes back, unlike animals out in the wild that avoid confrontation with another animal, it’s quite unlikely they’ll encounter the same animal again, although it may be a similar situation.

Reason #2: Short term focus aids procrastination

So, why do we avoid something if we know that we will have to deal with it again later on in the future? Well, I guess the majority of us, tend to ignore this important fact. Although we know very well that procrastinating isn’t a good thing and we know that it will come back in the future, we fail to take heed or bother with it right now. We usually don’t even think much into the future, relying instead on the here and now, having a short term focus. We avoid something, choosing to somewhat acknowledge it as a way to “somewhat deal with it” but in essence, we’ve never dealt with it at all.

For example, ignoring to study for an important exam while we’re out partying and having a good time with friends will usually end up costing us valuable marks for school. Why would anyone want to sit down and spend hours reading and studying when the other alternative is to forget about it and have fun? Again the short time benefit usually tends to cloud our judgement. Had we thought clearly of the whole situation in a longer term view, we could have seen the possible consequence of that choice. Some of us do see the consequence but succumb to the other choice because the other choice is more appealing.

Okay, we have discussed how our shortsighted focus tends to cloud our judgement possibly leading to procrastination. That can’t be the main reason why everyone procrastinates because if it is, we can easily deal with it just by widening our focus and viewing the whole picture. Is it that simple? Why else do we procrastinate?

Reason #3 : Fear

One of our traits as human beings and as animals is fear. We fear of things that are unknown or have not previously experienced. As kids, we don’t want try new things. We don’t want to try to eat vegetables, cheeze, or whatever else. Only until our parents actually force us to try it, do we discover that it’s not so bad. And maybe we end up liking it. Even as adults, we still don’t want to try new things.

By default, we always have a negative view of something that we’ve never tried before or ventured into or did. Not many people are all too enthusiastic to learn a new language, skill, work at a new job, move to a new place or home, etc. Things that are unknown are always perceived to be fearful or we try to avoid having to change to try something new. That’s why we have so much difficulty with other races, cultures, religion, ideas, etc. Our fear hinders our capability to understand, learn, accept.

We are comfortable with what we know but don’t usually make the effort to understand and learn something new or foreign. We fear people who are not like us. And some of us behave not only just negatively against those they consider different or unknown, but react violently against any attempt to listen, or understand. That is unfortunately, what happens in real life.

This fear also raises our testosterone level and we get ready to “fight or flight”. Imagine being at home alone at night and hearing strange sounds. Fear sets in and we are grabbing at something for defense. If you discover it was your cat, or your loved one just coming home, things go back to normal but your heart has been racing like crazy and you can feel the adrenaline rushing. But just consider how the situation could have been had you reacted without thinking and possibly hurt someone or something. We tend to react negatively and can readily shift into our “fight or flight” state. As I’ve mentioned, this can be a bad thing.

Reason #4: Avoiding confrontation

Another reason for procrastination is to avoid confrontation. You may have a problem with your boss and how he does certain things that irk you. Or maybe he keeps piling more work for you even though you’re swamped. But you try your best to keep up, thinking that you can tackle it. No sooner did you start on it, he piles on something else. You don’t want to be the bad guy and complain or whine. You choose to avoid confronting him about the workload until one day, you can’t take it anymore and totally blow up at him only to get fired. In this case, procrastination causes you to keep something that’s usually quite small to begin with get bigger until it overwhelms you and causes you an outburst with severe consequences.

Reason #5 : Failure to plan or organize

Many of our troubles come from our failure to plan or organize (surprise, surprise). Had we spent some time to plan a trip, organize our tasks, projects, or goals, we probably could have achieved a much better result than what we usually experience. We learn from our experience. We tend to associate a result with our past actions, situations and history. If our history involves procrastinating for everything we do, we only know what we’ve experienced. Being late, paying for overdue charges, and other consequences of our inaction or procrastination is the “norm” and something we are comfortable with. Making changes to this is something “fearful” or “unknown”, and we tend to avoid trying to stray away from what we’ve been doing all along.

If we’ve never planned for a vacation and buy our tickets at the last minute and figure out where to go or what to do the last minute when we get there, we won’t know how different things could be if we did plan. Unless something forces us to do so and we realize how much better the result is, we won’t try to change our old habits and try to plan. We may complain about how we didn’t see much or wasted our time, but we always fail to look at our own mistakes as the reason why things didn’t work out the way we would have hoped.

If we didn’t organize or plan for a meeting, most likely the meeting would not be as effective or constructive as another in which we did plan or prepared for. But, we wouldn’t know about it unless circumstances change. What we don’t know doesn’t hurt us, right? Wrong.

Reason #6: Failure to allocate adequate time for completing a task

We try to plan our tasks or projects but somehow, we fail to allocate enough time to complete it. Unfortunately, that insight can be attributed to experience. If we’ve never tackled a new project at work, we will probably miscalculate the time it takes to be done. We miscalculate how much time to spend on various parts of the project and adding extra time for any last minute touch ups, additions, or unexpected hiccups. Most times, when we fail to make the deadline on time, we procrastinate more, knowing that we won’t complete it anyway, regardless of the consequences. How much worse can it get?

Reason #7 : Failure to break things down into small, simple, parts and do them one at a time

Many times when we encounter something like a task, project or something that we’re not terribly pleased about doing, we immediately get into our “fight or flight” mode. Do we “fight” (react negatively, groan, etc) or do we “flight” (procrastinate, ignore it, do something else)?

When presented with such a situation, most of us will immediately start to see how complicated, hard, problematic this new task or project is and become so overwhelmed. We fail to focus on what’s important. And most of us will start fretting and wasting valuable time thinking only about how big the project is, how much hassle it is, how it’s not possible to get it finished on time, etc. Unfortunately, that usually ends up becoming procrastination as we continue to waste valuable time not actually “dealing” or working on it, but rather concentrate on the other aspect that isn’t so hard, such as complaining, whining, or worrying about it. But doing that isn’t going to help in any way.

What’s required is a clear focus and vision of what needs to be done, how to break seemingly complicated, tasks and projects into something manageable so that eventually, everything gets done.

Reason #8 : Failure to focus on what’s important and needs to be done now

Again, this comes down to experience. If we’ve never tried to deal with or focus on completing a task right now but instead usually procrastinate and leave it until later, we don’t know how to get things done right now. We are comfortable with leaving things to be done later and our brain is used to this regular pattern.

We need to learn to be able to focus on what is important, urgent and requires immediate attention and separate and prioritize those and deal with those that aren’t as important or urgent in a later time (somewhat procrastination if you wish to view it that way but I like to consider it as more “strategic procrastination“. You are actually aware that you are putting it aside for the time being to be able to focus 100% on something that needs to be attended to right away.

What we need to do, is re-wire our brain and re-route the electrical impulses that help us associate our reactions, feelings, and habits to a different route. An analogy would be taking a specific route to work. We drive to work going our usual route and until something happens (ie. major construction that will cause delays for months) which forces us to re-evaluate an alternative. Unless we encounter a change in the environment or situation which forces us to change, we will continue to keep driving that same route. But, once we start changing the pattern, we may discover that the new route is shorter, or faster, or there’s less traffic lights or other things. And our brain starts to make this into a new habit.

Even when the construction is finished, we may not go back to driving the old route because we have now discovered or gotten used to this new habit (hopefully a good one). That is what we will aim to do.

Reason #9: Inaction or not changing our strategy leads to procrastination

It is much easier to accept what we’re given and not act upon it, letting the situation dictate the outcome rather than for us to act upon something and dictating the outcome ourselves. Unfortunately, with many of us, that is the “norm”, or what we tend to do.

It is much harder to do some work to organize, plan, and “do” something that we probably have not done before. We have no idea how to start. Usually we end up giving up long before we’ve even started.

That is usually what happens with most people who procrastinate. They fail to grasp the moment and take charge over the situation and instead let the situation take over them.

Reason #10: Fear of failure

A big part of our avoidance of taking on new tasks, jobs, etc is our fear of failure. As we get older, we tend to worry about how we are perceived by our family and peers. We have a “reputation” to protect. As a result, we try not to tackle or challenge ourselves with anything new or seemingly difficult for fear that we will fail, and how our reputation will be negatively affected, and how others will perceive us.

Failure happens to all of us. We are not perfect (and I am first to admit that). We all fail at some things in some parts of our lives. What we do with the failure dictates how we can either grow and learn or hide in self pity.

After providing the ten (and there’s more I know) reasons I think leads to procrastination, sometimes, we procrastinate not because we have control over it. Some of us procrastinate not because we choose to do so, but because of chemical imbalances in the brain. Unfortunately those of us who suffer from such imbalances in the brain will most likely require special medication to try to help them. No changes we can try to apply to our daily routines can help in this case because we have no control over it.

Regardless of the situations, excuses, and whatever else that persuades you to procrastinate, the end result is the same. You usually end up in a worse situation by procrastinating rather than dealing with the situation properly and completely when you first encounter it. Although sometimes, procrastination may be helpful (ie. when you are working on a major project where you may benefit by waiting until you get other collaborators’ ideas and inputs rather than struggling on your own). But in most cases, by procrastinating, or putting a task off for a future time, you are usually worse off.

And there are many more reasons that anyone can come up with for procrastinating. Most of them are merely “excuses” and deep down inside, we know that we shouldn’t be procrastinating and we should do this, that, etc. But we don’t. Well, at least I’ve covered the idea of what procrastination is and why we do it (somewhat), I will next focus on the “how” to stop procrastinating and some of my ideas.

Since my next posting (being that I am posting every other day) will be on the 25th, Christmas Day, I want to wish everyone all over the world a Very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays (just to be politically correct for those who don’t celebrate Christmas). I will be posting the next part of this procrastination series on Christmas Day.

Please remember to drink responsibly. Please have a designated driver or volunteer as one if you aren’t drinking at a party. By being responsible, you are saving at least your life (and your friends) as well as others who are sharing the road. Thanks.

Thanks for visiting and supporting Palm Discovery. If you are not reading this article from Palmdiscovery.com or palmdiscovery.net, the website you are reading it from is guilty of copying and posting my content without consent. Please visit Palm Discovery for the original source of the material.

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