Page 37 - End Procrastination Now Get it Done with a Proven Psychological Approach

Perspectives on Procrastination and Awareness for Change 5

a common view of procrastination. Not surprisingly, deadline pro-
crastination is the act of waiting as long as possible before taking
action to meet a deadline.
Work life is ruled by timelines, processes, and deadlines. Let’s
say you are working on your company’s semiannual advertising
brochure. To get it out at the appointed time, you’ll need to take
certain steps, such as preparing the content and design, getting it
printed, and getting it distributed, in accordance with a schedule.
If these activities were not regulated, the advertising brochure
might be completed in a disorganized manner.
When a timeline and instructions are fuzzy, but the deadline
is clear, you have a special challenge. You may see tasks with vague
instructions as something to do later. When a task’s purpose and
instructions are clear and concrete (when, where, and how), you
are more likely to do it. Thus, if you are not sure, ask. And if there
is no clear structure, invent one!
You may have a deadline for a long and complex project, and the
only reward in sight is the relief you expect to feel when it’s done.
In this case, you may face another set of challenges that has to do
with the distance from your internal reward system. Pigeons will
work for small immediate rewards but slack off for a larger reward
that requires more work. Monkeys will get distracted and procrasti-
nate when the reward is too far in the distance. We’re not far from
our mammalian roots when it comes to putting something off when
the reward is distant and requires a lot of work. Humans will tend
to go for quick rewards and discount bigger future rewards. We’ll
tend to delay starting projects that appear complex or ambiguous,
or that promote uncertainty. Conflicts between our primitive im-
pulses to avoid discomfort over complexity and our higher cognitive
functions to solve problems can interfere with rational decision
making and promote delays. Thus, a complex long-term project may
be like the perfect storm unless you do something else first.
Deadline situations are often trade-off situations. If you want
to get a paycheck, you follow the organization’s processes and