DON’T PUT OFF till tomorrow what you can do today – can you recall how many times your mom or dad told you this when you were in school? How many times they pleaded with you to not put off studying your daily lessons daily? To not while away time till your exams are just a week away? To not procrastinate?
Chances are you didn’t listen to them. Children generally don’t. Years later, as full-grown adults, chances are such people won’t try to sort out compatibility issues in their marriages. They’d sit put for years, hoping things would work themselves out. They’d put off what they anticipate would be unpleasant, and live with postponement anxiety and discomfort.
Welcome to procrastination, or what can loosely be called “the art of avoiding today”.
How it works
In his 1976 bestseller Your Erroneous Zones, American psychiatrist Dr Wayne W. Dyer terms procrastination the “closest there is to a universal erroneous zone”. Very few people can honestly say they are not procrastinators, he says, though such behaviour is unhealthy in the long run.
“This is how it works. You know there are certain things you want to do, not because others have so dictated but because they are your deliberate choices. However, many of them don’t get done, despite your telling yourself that they will.
“Resolving to do something in the future, which you could do now, is an acceptable substitute for doing it, and permits you to delude yourself that you are really not compromising yourself by not doing what you have set out to,” he writes.
What fuels it?
Very often, the reason for putting things off is the fear that you might not do it well or the sense that you won’t like doing it. For instance, the student who hates math is scared he won’t do well, so he avoids practising it. Or, the man with a marital problem doesn’t want to face the unpleasantness of sorting it out, so he hopes things will work themselves out.
“For most people, procrastination is really an escape from living present moments as fully as possible,” writes Dr Dyer. “By putting things off for a future moment, you are giving in to escapism, self-doubt, and most significantly, self-delusion. Your putting-it-off zone is a movement away from being strong in your now, and toward the direction of hoping that things will improve in the future.”
According to him, hoping that things will work out or wishing they would be better are neurotic constructs that procrastinators cling to so they can persist with their behaviour. “They are merely convenient escape clauses from rolling up your sleeves and taking on the tasks that you’ve decided are important enough to be on your list of life activities.”
Saving grace
But there’s one point that Dr Dyer makes, which could offer procrastinators some comfort: the “putting it off” erroneous zone can be cleaned up without too much mental effort. This is because “it is one that you have alone created for yourself, without any of the cultural reinforcement that is the hallmark of many other erroneous zones.”
In other words, procrastination cannot be blamed on outside forces. “It’s all yours – both the putting off and the discomfort you endure as a result of it,” he writes.
Typical examples
Listed below are some common instances of procrastinating behaviour. Check out how many of them sound familiar to you:
(i) Carrying on in a job where you have no growth prospects.
(ii) Clinging to a relationship gone sour or a marriage gone bad.
(iii) Avoiding working on relationship problems such as shyness, sex or phobias in the hope that they will miraculously get better.
(iv) Not tackling addictions like smoking or alcoholism or drugs. Claiming that you will do it when the time is right, but actually putting it off because you’re scared you’ll fail.
(v) Using sleep or tiredness as reasons to put off something difficult or uncomfortable.
(vi) Falling ill when tasked with something troublesome.
(vii) Being scared of making a move towards someone you’re attracted to and hoping that Providence will bring you together.
(viii) Always saying that you’ll start dieting or exercising from next week.
COMING UP IN OUR NEXT POST: Reasons why people keep putting things off; techniques to get rid of procrastination.