Page 131 - End Procrastination Now Get it Done with a Proven Psychological Approach

Act Decisively 99

yourself over threatening and catastrophic possibilities that you
have no knowledge of actually happening.
This cognitive and emotional distraction may prompt procras-
tination.
Worry and procrastination share certain features. Both have a
specious reward. When the catastrophic possibility doesn’t hap-
pen, you feel relieved. Relief is a reward for a worry where the
dreaded results don’t happen. A decision to act later can feel reliev-
ing and rewarding. Relief is a reward when it increases the fre-
quency of the act that it follows, making worry or procrastination,
for instance, more likely to recur in similar circumstances.
Here is a brief proactive coping exercise for defusing worry-
stimulated procrastination.

Awareness: If you worry too much Action: Beliefs are convictions, but
about making wrong choices, conviction doesn’t make a belief
you have a false belief(s) that true. To put matters into perspec-
underpin(s) worry. You may believe tive, think about the best and worst
that you need certainty under things that can happen and many
uncertain conditions. in-between results. Think about
what you’d have to do to achieve
each. What is the most probable
outcome that you can control?

Perfection and Equivocation

If mulling over pros and cons puts you in a procrastination holding
pattern, this equivocation can set the stage for a perfect cognitive,
emotive, and behavioral storm for making an impulsive decision.
For 15 years, Willow looked for her perfect soul mate. Equivocating
over one potential mate after another, she couldn’t decide. As a
skilled defect detector, she found flaws in everyone, angered her-
self over their imperfections, and eventually unceremoniously
rejected all of them.
Then the time came when Willow’s biological clock was wind-
ing down. She singled out the issue of having babies, and that