I want to write about reading self-help books here.
I wanted to learn about fixing my procrastination so I borrowed a book called: Solving the Procrastination Puzzle: A Concise Guide to Strategies for Change by Timothy A. Pychyl.
A quote from the book about procrastination being a habit:
The conscious use of strategies to overcome our reluctance to act is essential, because procrastination for many people is a habit. That is, procrastination is a habitual response to tasks or situations, and like all habits it is an internalized, nonconscious process.
I never once thought to define what a habit is until reading the last sentence in the quote. It seems helpful to know what a habit is before looking at material that addresses it. I’ve been assuming that habit was something negative that one forces themselves to do until they’re able to do it without mental effort.
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There was an introspection exercise in the Procrastination Puzzle book. It asked the reader to make a table of tasks being procrastinated on and the thoughts and feelings associated.
A few pages later it asked to go more into detail about the mental and physical effects of procrastination:
Next to each of these tasks or goals, note how your procrastination has affected you in terms of things such as your happiness, stress, health, finances, relationships, and so on.
I haven’t had a book asking me to do introspection exercises like this before. Introspection looks scary but only because it seems like I get nowhere after bringing up potential problems in life.
It seems good to bring up the harmful stuff from procrastinating to see how it actually affects others (e.g. being a burden to others for not being able to pull my own weight).
The exercise can also be interpreted as listing problems that are not being addressed when carrying on with tasks(e.g. forcing myself up for a morning routine and feeling too tired afterwards).
It’s important to treat this as gathering information, investigating, not solving. Don’t try to rush to solutions or judgments.
You want to understand your situation with a low amount of emotional reaction. It’s productive if you can introspect without thinking “I suck so much; I have to make huge changes NOW” (which is a common issue).
If you can handle having some understanding of your situation and remembering it for a while without being toxic, then you can feel safer about it and start to think about how to improve something small, then start working on some kind of partial fix. And repeat. And that’s life. You’ll never be done fixing things so you have to learn to live with imperfections.
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Ok that sounds good. I’m thinking if I try to problem solve now then I’ll be coming to conclusions without evidence.
I can see why essays can be so hard sometimes, because it can be literally assuming one position is right and then trying to think of reasons why it’s right. That instead of getting all the info first and then forming an opinion.
I’m on page 77 of the Procrastination Puzzle book and so far a lot of the solutions it’s throwing at me don’t really click with me. I’m ok with that because I feel like I’m gathering more information about procrastination and not trying to find a quick solution to it.
I have been feeling different about reading life advice online lately. Like I read my horoscope yesterday on an app(called Co-Star Personalized Astrology) and I noticed I didn’t take the things it says about me at face value. One thing the app said was:
The general theme of your life during this period is to go hard until you have expended your energies and there is little else to be done. Love is a delicate, violent process of finding truths two people can share.
In the past, I would try to apply the words real quick to my situation and see if it worked.
What horoscopes and that kind of “personalized” app use is called the Barnum Effect. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si2HoscBLIw
Wow, so we all go through like the same struggles? I thought we were all so different from each other. So different that it would be hard to describe what somebody is going through and get it wrong.
People do have a fair amount of similar struggles but I think the larger issue is that people often take ambiguous writing and read it as applying to themselves. The reader does some personalization while reading.
I see how having a good reading skill can help not fall for the Barnum Effect stuff.
The quote below is from the Procrastination Puzzle book. It’s saying people have biases or commit fallacies when procrastinating. Identifying those and giving them a new response(e.g. just get started) is its next step for change:
Knowledge is power. Recognizing that it is human nature to have these biases, and more important, identifying specifically what we tend to do can be the beginning of change. For example, if we typically say something like “Ah, it’s not that important” (trivialization of the goal) or “There’s lots of time yet, so I’d prefer to do it tomorrow” (planning fallacy and intransitive preferences), we can learn to make these “flags,” or signals for change.
Maybe later when I can introspect productively, I can identify my thoughts and feelings when I’m procrastinating. I could learn more about them or learn more about my procrastination. I don’t know if I can start identifying biases or fallacies now. I’m gonna just keep reading and see if I can relate with what the book is saying.
The quote below is from the Procrastination Puzzle book in chapter 8. The author started the chapter saying that willpower is a limited resource and it should be used strategically. He goes further to say that the self-regulation to do important tasks goes down over time:
In a practical real-life example of this, one study showed that after coping with a stressful day at work, people were less likely to exercise and more likely to do something more passive like watching television. This takes us back to where we began, with Rachel. No wonder she cannot muster the “get up and go” to exercise. She has exhausted her willpower.
The takeaway I get is that there’s a mental power resource being exhausted when carrying out tasks throughout the day. I also think there is a part of the self that is like “ok, I’m done doing difficult tasks and I will only do something not as mentally straining”.
An example I can think of is when I made a seven hour trip by car. It was easy, at first, to drive in the fast lanes. Around the end, though, I was done with being fast so I drove the slow lanes home.
In the Procrastination Puzzle book(ch.10), the author makes a suggestion to fix procrastination behavior here:
Minimizing distractions is an important part of curbing our online procrastination. To stay really connected to our goal pursuit, we need to disconnect from potential distractions like social-networking tools. This means that we should not have Facebook, Twitter, email, or whatever your favorite suite of tools is running in the background on your computer or smartphone while you are working. Shut them off.
Ouch. I know—it is really tempting to find some excuse to keep it a “business as usual” approach here, but if you are committed to reducing your procrastination, this is something you really need to do.
It makes me think it would be useful to have judgement skills to see if it works or not. One part of me is saying, “Don’t follow this suggestion it sounds so wrong.” But the other part of me is like, “Hey hey, don’t brush it off so easily there might be something useful to learn here.” I see how there can be some truth to the things the author says and it’s not just flat out wrong or right.
Like one example I can think of about not letting things run in the background is when a friend is text messaging me a lot, and I just gotta tell them, “Hey man, I’m busy right now let’s talk when I finish.”
I read Solving the Procrastination Puzzle: A Concise Guide to Strategies for Change.
I liked it because it talked about real-life procrastination problems like avoiding the task, having negative feelings about it, and using outside distractions. It’s nice to be more aware of those things.
The author gave some solutions to fix procrastination even though I don’t know how good or bad they are. I at least know they exist.
One solution was an “if…then” statement called an implementation intention. It treated tasks as “If I don’t feel like doing the task then that means I should get up and go do it right now”. An example from the book about implementation intentions(around the end of ch. 3):
For now, I just want you to think about the following as your first step in an antiprocrastination strategy: THINK: IF I feel negative emotions when I face the task at hand, THEN I will stay put and not stop, put off a task, or run away.
It’s nice to read a book about procrastination because it’s there for me to interpret and I can take my time on it. That instead of a video or talking to someone where those things need to be remembered or you gotta keep going back and scrolling through the video.
It seems like there’s a lot to learn about procrastination and reading one book isn’t going to cut it. That’s fine because I don’t want to rush to solutions. I don’t want to do that and just fail again.
I read ch. 1 of Procrastination: Why You Do It, What to Do About It Now by Jane B. Burka Ph.D. & Lenora M. Yuen Ph.D.
The book has me thinking more about framing the problems with procrastination. Like the author brings up cycles of procrastination and the continuum of procrastination. On one end people procrastinate and can lose their jobs or their way of living and on the other end people procrastinate and it’s not a big deal(e.g. didn’t do the laundry for one night).
There seems to be more reading between the lines than the last book I read. It’s a little intimidating cuz there’s a lot of info to go through, but it’s also nice cuz there’s more info to be open to. I don’t know yet how I feel about reading it.
Did you disagree with some parts of the book?
I think so. I probably have to read it again cuz I don’t remember the parts I didn’t like.
One quote was saying intelligence didn’t matter and I didn’t know what to think about that:
One cause can be put to rest: research has shown that intelligence
bears no relationship to procrastination, so you can forget the idea
that you’re putting things off until your brilliance kicks in, or that being a procrastinator means you’re stupid.
I think intelligence has to matter because why would I be doing it in the first place. I also think don’t think too highly about myself because I could miss something.
I’ll add more tomorrow. I have something to do right now.