Page 68 - End Procrastination Now Get it Done with a Proven Psychological Approach

36 End Procrastination Now!

• “I’ll do it tomorrow” excuse: I’ll deal with my job stresses after
I research the subject.
Sample question: What actions can I take to deal with job
stress as I do the research?
Sample answer: I can start immediately and use the results
of my stress reduction efforts to shape what I research next.

In the D phase, you refine your critical-thinking skills by ap-
plying them to procrastination thinking.
There is an almost endless number of questions that you can
apply to recognize and uproot procrastination thinking. What do
you tell yourself or believe about the target situation? Does this
belief represent an assumption or a fact? Is there credible evidence
to support the way you view the situation? Can you treat your belief
like a hypothesis and test it? Do these questions help promote a
realistic perspective?
If you prefer to use a tested set of questions, the following
cookbook approach can serve that purpose. Here you apply six
standards for rational thinking that you can contrast with sus-
pected stress thinking and what you believe are examples of do-it-
now thinking (see Table 2.1).
Your answers to these questions become disputes against the
irrationalities of procrastination thinking. Additionally, the act of
pausing and reflecting to interrupt an impulsive procrastination
reaction introduces a change into the system to check your think-
ing about the situation.
Now let’s take a look at the following ABCDE example, which
shows how to use a do-it-now perspective to counteract procrasti-
nation thinking. Do you remember the example of Jane’s procras-
tination pattern from the introduction? Let’s see how she used the
ABCDE approach.
Jane’s procrastination pattern started when she saw her quar-
terly financial report assignment as complicated, difficult, and
uncomfortable to do. Despite having done similar reports before,