Page 39 - End Procrastination Now Get it Done with a Proven Psychological Approach

Perspectives on Procrastination and Awareness for Change 7

personally relevant activities, such as facing a needless inhibiting
fear. You stick with a stressful job that you want to ditch. You feel
timid, and you promise yourself that you’ll take an assertiveness
class someday. Instead of engaging in self-improvement activities,
you watch TV and read tabloid magazines.
Because self-development activities are just about you, and
because they are open-ended with an indefinite start date, this may
not seem like procrastination. However, it meets the definition.
The following chart is a classic framework for identifying your top
self-development priority. The process involves defining your most
pressing and important self-development goal or priority and other
activities that are worth pursuing. Engaging in activities that are
not important and nonpressing before all the activities above them
are done may waste your time and resources. If you emphasize
not important and nonpressing activities over your number one
priority, you’re procrastinating by using the bottom-drawer activi-
ties as diversions. For example, if you face a health risk and you
read Hollywood scandal magazines in lieu of taking steps to stop
smoking, you need to think about what you’re doing. The follow-
ing chart is an example.

ACTION Important Useful Not Important

Pressing Quitting smoking Dealing with Neighbor
to reduce high risk snake phobia, pushing you to
for emphysema as garter join local poker
and cancer. snake spotted club for social
in park. purposes. Nice to
do, but far from
top of list.
Nonpressing Dealing with fear Organize Keeping up
of flying. No trips computer files with news about
currently planned to access Hollywood
that require flying. related data. scandals

Now it’s your turn to define what are the most pressing and
important things for you to do.