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Perspectives on Procrastination and Awareness for Change 11

of failure, you may omit looking at a probable mechanism, such
as perfectionist beliefs. Fear of success is another form of failure
anxiety that can have the same impact as fear of failure. You believe
that if you succeed, the pressure for you to do more will increase.
In this frame of mind, it is easier to delay now than to risk failure
later. You have other ways to construe these possibilities. Putting
off thinking about these evaluative fears, and taking possible coun-
termeasures, is a form of conceptual procrastination.
You can gain control over the causes of procrastination by ad-
dressing them. However, an automatic procrastination habit may
remain, and you may continue to have an automatic urge to pro-
crastinate.
Habits, even procrastination habits, may operate blindly when
they serve no useful purpose. To respond to an automatic procras-
tination habit, plan on overpracticing your counter-procrastination
strategy to weaken the strength of this automatic habit.
Procrastination is normally a complex problem process. Sepa-
rating procrastination into the three categories of symptom, de-
fense, and problem habit gives you a way to frame what is going
on when you procrastinate. A good assessment for complex pro-
crastination can point to change techniques that you may find
useful. When you target potential underlying mechanisms for pro-
crastination, you can more accurately target corrective efforts that
fit the problem or recognize potentially effective actions through
your own readings and research.

Specific Procrastination Styles

Procrastination comes about for different reasons. Like clothing,
it comes in different styles. If you know your procrastination
style(s), you can mate your corrective efforts to it. This is a big
benefit. When you carefully target your corrective actions, you are
less likely to go down dead-end streets or invest time in diversions
that you may mistake for interventions. Lying on an analyst’s