Befriending procrastination

Audio is here.

One evening, I came back home and found about fifteen Astérix cartoon albums spread open on the floor. My son told me that he was working on an assignment, on Racine, for his French class. Racine being a 17th century playwright, and Astérix recounting the adventures of a village of indomitable Gauls resisting Roman occupation in 50 BC, needless to say that the link was not obvious to me.

It was getting late, and I needed everyone to move on with the evening activities. So I may not have been that understanding, when he explained that his assignment was to write a scene, and that he had chosen the Astérix characters, therefore he was looking for precise references in the fifteen albums.

However, when I was his age, in similar circumstances, I would open a volume of the family encyclopedia to consult an article, and then I moved on to another, and another. A few hours later, I could be found on my bed, several volumes open, next to the original assignment, which was slightly less advanced, than my mother would have wished it to be.

I have the kind of curiosity which makes links between subjects, tantalizing me to jump from one to the other. I favor a global view of a subject, taking it into account within its context, or possibly within the context of the context. I also have a tendency to tangentially flee a given task.

To illustrate, as I was thinking about procrastination, I visited the comfort zone, time management, the evolution of time management from the middle Ages to now, before concluding that it was, indeed, another subject. I could then focus, which made me think about Astérix.

Was it necessary, for my son, to look into fifteen comics albums, to write a two page text? Probably not. Is it procrastination?

Procrastination is defined as the action of delaying or postponing something. It is derived from Latin and translates into postponing to tomorrow. Oscar Wilde is said to have stated that “he never puts off till tomorrow what he can possibly do - the day after.” The key point here is possibly.

The subject is abundantly covered in management literature. There are many articles with various propositions. Therefore, I could read that, if you must swallow a frog, swallow two, first thing in the morning, and start with the biggest.

I am not tempted. However, it can work, either because you like frogs, or you are not subject to procrastination, or because you put yourself under pressure using the deadline.

Is that a problem? After all, what matters, is that tasks are done and by the deadline. Is it not?

Let’s take a step sideways before addressing that.

Procrastinators tend to be interesting people, and they tap into amazing resources of creativity and innovation to deal with it. You may have seen the Ted Conference that gave Tim Urban. With 17.6 million views, it is the 15th most popular talk, and it is, very funny.

He explains how three characters live within the procrastinator’s mind. They are the rational decision maker, the instant gratification monkey, and the panic monster. Just before the deadline, the panic monster puts the rational decision maker back in control, and things end up being done. But, at what cost?

He also talks about the suffering, that face people who cannot get things done without external deadlines, and he mentions procrastinating, when faced with that universal final deadline, that is the end of our life path.

This mechanism, through which we postpone something difficult, generates suffering. And this suffering is linked to the difficulty to act toward one’s own goals, the individual becomes a spectator of his or her own life. Therefore, it is a problem.

For me, it is the anxiety that rises when faced with the task, that is the trigger. This anxiety may have various sources. They are generally linked to (1) fear, the fear of not doing well enough, of not being able to do better, (2) self-criticism, and (3) a guilt that is both cause and consequence, I am not good enough, I don’t do or I do poorly, I therefore hold the proof that I am not good enough. Fear, judgement, and guilt are linked. And that double dynamic, avoidance / frenetic action, causes an exhausting internal battle.

I need all my available energy to go where I wish to go. So, one day, I have decided to try something different. For starters, that meant not fighting with myself. And then, like the fox to the Little Prince, I heard my procrastination murmur, “Please… befriend me!”.

If you have read this story, The Little Prince, you may have seen the use of the word tame rather than befriend. However, I hear a hint of domination in taming, and in that story, befriending feels closer to the French word, apprivoiser.

Procrastination is linked to fear, an archaic fear that makes you choose between fight or flight, to stay alive. However, when you are filling your tax forms, or working on any task, it is rarely a matter of life and death. Therefore, we are faced with a powerful emotion, which has its place, but the place it takes, at that moment, is out of proportion. So, as is often the case, the issue is to put things back into perspective.

Befriending procrastination, starts with welcoming it as it is, and therefore welcoming a part of oneself. It is about accepting that fear, and accepting a result, even if it could be a teeny tiny bit better. It is about being kind to oneself, and realizing that imperfection and unexpectedness may open the door to something new. It is about letting one’s mind fly.

Acceptance reduces anxiety and fear. It is the big me that takes the little me by the hand, saying that everything will be alright. The play becomes clearer, and you can then see the shades between black and white. For instance, looking into the family encyclopedia has not contributed directly to my homeworks, however it has nurtured my curiosity and contributed to building my general knowledge.

When I coach people around procrastination, we go through the four following steps again and again, focusing on very practical things. They are:

1.      Befriending procrastination: what it allows, what it prevents – welcoming oneself and one’s reactions;

2.      Connecting action and meaning: why it makes sense to do that and to do it now;

3.      Building an effective path that is realistic, both in terms of what there is to do and in terms of what is needed to do it;

4.      Connecting and reconnecting action to joy and pride.

It is crucial to be able to do things when needed. However, we are not machines with production rates, and maintenance periods. Alternative paths, daydreaming, are also a source of efficiency. Sometimes, those paths lead to a wonderful albeit unknown destination.

Cartoon albums have helped my son do his homework. The characters have inspired him, and have taken him by the hand, to reach the destination, with a slight detour. But, to go somewhere, it is always faster to take a detour, than to stay in place.

Antoine de Saint Exupéry, airplane pilot, journalist, world traveler, and poet, has traveled many roads, before creating this unique masterpiece, which today still inspires so many children, big and small, the Little Prince.

It is our ability as human beings, to combine day dreaming and wandering, with a rational and structured dimension, that allows us to realize our potential, to dream effectively.