Page 20 - End Procrastination Now Get it Done with a Proven Psychological Approach

xviii Introduction

11. Arriving at work, she decided to get the busywork out of the
way. By the time she finished her phone calls and e-mails, it
was time for lunch.
12. Jane skipped lunch, rushed to meet the 4:00 deadline, and
ran out of time.
13. Frazzled, she asked her boss for an extension because of
“complications” and got an extra day.
14. She blocked out everything else and finished.
15. Annoyed, Jane blamed herself, thinking that she could have
done better had she started earlier, and swore, “I’ll start
earlier next time.”
16. With the next report, she repeated a similar pattern.

Jane’s style of procrastinating suggests that procrastination
can be both automatic and extensive. (We’ll revisit Jane’s procras-
tination problem habit in later chapters, where I’ll show you how
Jane used a basic cognitive, emotive, and behavioral approach to
prevent procrastination.)

Who Procrastinates?

Procrastination is an equal opportunity habit that interferes with
the productivity of people from every economic level, profession,
age, or other demographic category. Practically everyone has at
least one (and probably more) serious procrastination challenge
to meet, especially workplace procrastination. A 2007 salary.com
survey suggests that U.S. workers, on average, waste 20 percent
of the workday. Procrastination researchers Joseph Ferrari and his
colleagues surveyed white- and blue-collar workers living in such
diverse countries as the United States, England, Australia, Turkey,
Peru, Spain, and Venezuela. They found that about 25 percent
persistently hinder themselves through workplace procrastination.
Does this mean that the others are relatively procrastination-free?
Hardly! Few, if any, workers are procrastination-free.