Page 50 - End Procrastination Now Get it Done with a Proven Psychological Approach

18 End Procrastination Now!

By nailing down what goes on when you procrastinate, you put
yourself in the catbird seat to understand the process and disrupt
it with a do-it-now alternative action. However, personal change is
ordinarily a process, not an event. It takes experimenting and time
to test and integrate new self-observant ways of thinking, feeling,
and doing. The new habits will compete with a practiced self-
absorbent procrastination style that may carry on as though it had
a life of its own. However, once you are into a process of change,
you may find building on the process easier and simpler.

From Procrastination to Productivity:
The Five Phases of Change

The five phases of the change process are awareness, action, ac-
commodation, acceptance, and actualization. I first used this struc-
ture for change in my early seminars and group counseling sessions
with people who wanted to stop procrastinating. The process as-
sumes a self-observant perspective. It is a way to organize a coun-
ter-procrastination program into a powerful process.
In this dynamic system for change, the different phases inter-
act. The priority ordering may change. Action may lead to insight-
ful awareness. Accommodation includes seeing incongruities and
contradictions and adjusting to reality. Acceptance may make it
easier to experiment with new ideas and behaviors. In actualiza-
tion, you stretch to discover your boundaries, and you may find
that you broaden those boundaries the more you stretch. This
knowledge adds to a growing awareness of what you can accom-
plish through your self-regulated efforts. The following describes
how the process works.

Phase 1: Awareness

Awareness is listed as the first phase of change. You intentionally
work to sharpen your conscious perspective on what is taking place