These two articles are part of a group of articles about procrastination, all written by an outpatient psychologist. Previous articles explain the relationship between conflicts, ambivalence, anxiety, avoidance, etc.; all of which might be read in order to fully understand the content of the current article.
To continue...
Sometimes, people go through lots of therapeutic steps and still procrastinate. They understand the conflicts, the ambivalence, the anxiety and everything else and still procrastinates. Then what?
The answer is that we missed something. There is some dynamic or other behavior that is not visible, still gumming up the works. In one of the previous articles, Jim (an adolescent) didn't want to clean his room or do his homework. What other issues might there be that could explain. It turns out there are several major possibilities.
One is ADHD. This is Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder and is a neurological disorder that manifests as the inability to pay attention to consistently low stimulation activity. Other symptoms are distractibility, disorganization, usually impulsivity and often some hyperactivity (fidgeting, constantly moving or climbing, etc.). The ADHD mind set does not easily lend itself to cleaning rooms and paying attention to homework. Paying attention and being still for ADHD kids is actually painful and is usually avoided by self-creating stimulation, usually not of the parent-approved kind. If this is the underlying cause of procrastination consult with a behavioral health professional. While ADHD behaviors look like procrastination on the surface, they are really reflective of an underpowered braking system in the brain. In Jim's case, he couldn't stop distracting impulses from taking him off task. This looks like procrastination because "things" aren't done on time, but the culprit is not so much suppression of underlying conflicts, but faulty wiring.
Another possible cause of procrastination is ODD. This is
Oppositional Defiant Disorder. ODD is also a behavioral condition,
characterized by excessive negativity, non-cooperative behaviors other
than those normally ascribed to certain ages (think "terrible two's," or
teen rebellion, which are normal). ODD, like ADHD, is frequently seen
as a co-morbid condition; that is, one that co-exists as a separate
disorder alongside another disorder such as ADHD or depression. In this
case procrastination-like behavior might really be the expression of a mood disorder, or some chronic, deep-seated environmental stressor, like a pesky younger sister who lives to frustrate her older brother, or parents who prefer such a sibling over Jim. If this is the case, see a behavioral health professional or read "How To Change Children's Behavior (Quickly)."
-Dr. Griggs
http://www.psychologyproductsandservices.com/page192.html
Showing posts with label procrastination sollutions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label procrastination sollutions. Show all posts
Friday, September 2, 2011
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Practical Theory to Resolve Procrastination
This article was written by a clinical psychologist who has been in private practice 27 years. It is one of a host of articles on procrastination, many of which should be on this blog. Please read the other articles to understand the basic terms of this one, specifically ambivalence and its relation to procrastination.
The trick with all forms of ambivalence is to make conscious the various out-of-awareness conflicts that gum up motivation and undermine behavior. Procrastination is not paying attention to something out of awareness, or making something be out of awareness that should be in focus, consciously.
The way you best do this is how you best master procrastination.
Some people just sit and listen to themselves, until the offending memory, association or blocked impulses surfaces. This is what I do whenever I'm ambivalent. Others are more deliberate in their search within. They meditate, or practice mindfulness, which is really not that complicated in theory, but hard for many to practice. Mindfulness is simply listening and watching your every thought, feeling, physical sensation and impulse, with an eye towards making all your internal activity fully conscious as you move through time.
When this occurs, associations to your experiences also surface, and
there is the link to what's in the back of your mind, causing the "pause." (Someone also said, this is also "pausing the cause."
Cute.) Regardless, the goal is to find the ambivalence, which is masked by anxiety. There is indecision somewhere in your mind, conscious or not, probably sponsored by the existence of some approach-avoidance or double approach-avoidance conflict. Your task is to examine yourself sufficiently to find this kernel, this hotbed of avoidance, suppression or repression.
When the source of the conflict is discovered, the anxiety shifts from one born of avoidance, to one born of having to deal with the conflict. Remember, ambivalence is a sign of indecision over some contesting ideas, values, feeling, memories or thoughts. By definition, it is not pleasant to have to deal with these "things," or else there would be no justification for suppressing or repressing them in the first place. Now, you have to deal with the forbidden, displaced, relegated material that caused you discomfort. The anxiety that emerges from this process is not that of hiding and having to discover the hidden material. The material is now in view, so now what do you do with it?
The answer is to be assertive; that is, to openly address the onflict, preferably by word first, not deed. The answer is to verbalize your conflict, whatever it is, whatever level at which it functions or whichever conflict it represents. The trick is to put words to your feelings and say them, out loud, expressing all the nuances of the ambivalence and resulting indecision.
Does this resolve the conflict? No. What it accomplishes is
changing your awareness from more suppressed or repressed to more open
and flowing. From the latter perspective, dealing with the underlying
dilemma is now possible, because it is no longer buried. But just
because it is in your awareness doesn't mean procrastination suddenly
disappears. You have to act on the feelings, thoughts, etc. in an overt manner, which was not possible before. In fact, because the hidden conflicts were not up front and in your face before, you were rendered incapable of dealing directly with them. Now, you can, but you still have to decide to do it. Usually, the pressure expressed by making such ambivalence conscious is sufficient motivation to deal with the issue.
It is not any more comfortable now that it is conscious than when it wasn't. Because you have a vocabulary to apply in expressing the conflicts (which seems to naturally follow when such items surface) externalizing them is more likely. This is when assertiveness seems to be most effective in resolving procrastination.
-Dr. Griggs
http://www.psychologyproductsandservices.com/page192.html
The trick with all forms of ambivalence is to make conscious the various out-of-awareness conflicts that gum up motivation and undermine behavior. Procrastination is not paying attention to something out of awareness, or making something be out of awareness that should be in focus, consciously.
The way you best do this is how you best master procrastination.
Some people just sit and listen to themselves, until the offending memory, association or blocked impulses surfaces. This is what I do whenever I'm ambivalent. Others are more deliberate in their search within. They meditate, or practice mindfulness, which is really not that complicated in theory, but hard for many to practice. Mindfulness is simply listening and watching your every thought, feeling, physical sensation and impulse, with an eye towards making all your internal activity fully conscious as you move through time.
When this occurs, associations to your experiences also surface, and
there is the link to what's in the back of your mind, causing the "pause." (Someone also said, this is also "pausing the cause."
Cute.) Regardless, the goal is to find the ambivalence, which is masked by anxiety. There is indecision somewhere in your mind, conscious or not, probably sponsored by the existence of some approach-avoidance or double approach-avoidance conflict. Your task is to examine yourself sufficiently to find this kernel, this hotbed of avoidance, suppression or repression.
When the source of the conflict is discovered, the anxiety shifts from one born of avoidance, to one born of having to deal with the conflict. Remember, ambivalence is a sign of indecision over some contesting ideas, values, feeling, memories or thoughts. By definition, it is not pleasant to have to deal with these "things," or else there would be no justification for suppressing or repressing them in the first place. Now, you have to deal with the forbidden, displaced, relegated material that caused you discomfort. The anxiety that emerges from this process is not that of hiding and having to discover the hidden material. The material is now in view, so now what do you do with it?
The answer is to be assertive; that is, to openly address the onflict, preferably by word first, not deed. The answer is to verbalize your conflict, whatever it is, whatever level at which it functions or whichever conflict it represents. The trick is to put words to your feelings and say them, out loud, expressing all the nuances of the ambivalence and resulting indecision.
Does this resolve the conflict? No. What it accomplishes is
changing your awareness from more suppressed or repressed to more open
and flowing. From the latter perspective, dealing with the underlying
dilemma is now possible, because it is no longer buried. But just
because it is in your awareness doesn't mean procrastination suddenly
disappears. You have to act on the feelings, thoughts, etc. in an overt manner, which was not possible before. In fact, because the hidden conflicts were not up front and in your face before, you were rendered incapable of dealing directly with them. Now, you can, but you still have to decide to do it. Usually, the pressure expressed by making such ambivalence conscious is sufficient motivation to deal with the issue.
It is not any more comfortable now that it is conscious than when it wasn't. Because you have a vocabulary to apply in expressing the conflicts (which seems to naturally follow when such items surface) externalizing them is more likely. This is when assertiveness seems to be most effective in resolving procrastination.
-Dr. Griggs
http://www.psychologyproductsandservices.com/page192.html
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Introduction to Procrastination, Part I
Procrastination manifests everywhere, most of the time, in every
aspect or part of your life. You wait until the last minute to do
things, buy Christmas or birthday presents, visit the chiropractor or
dentist or file your taxes. You forget to make that hair or other
appointments or register to vote. The car needs an oil change.
The house is a mess but you haven't picked up the clothes or done the
dishes. The messes grow but you don't do much about them. Shouldn't
you do some of these things now so you don't have to waste a weekend or
vacation day cleaning or repairing everything you own? Sure, but do you?
The conflicts are about choices, which have different valences,
considering for the moment only the conscious ones. These can be relative to time or value. If the choice is between going to the gym or watching a video, you might choose the movie. You might make this choice because of the activity or whether it takes less time. At a restaurant, you choose a fatty entree over a lean one, perhaps because of taste, but perhaps because of price. The delays and poor choices continue, probably becoming more frequent, but you keep saying you'll "get around to" these things. Maybe you'll think about these things later, like next week. How about Tuesday? But next Tuesday turns into two Tuesdays from now, or even the week after you get back from vacation. Your intentions are good but your behavior suggests something else is going on.
The misconception about procrastinators is that we are lazy and can't
well manage our time. By definition, procrastination exist and functions
relative to time. You should do something now, but in reality, you will
approach it later, and probably not do it then, either. What we are not
managing causes conflict, bred by indecision, later anxiety. Our behavior is how we manage this chain of events at the end of the process, which is what distinguishes whether we are procrastinating, or whether we simply feel indecisive, or worse, guilty.
Procrastinators often have great difficulty in seeking help, or finding an understanding source of support, due to the stigma and profound
misunderstanding surrounding extreme forms of procrastination. In reality, procrastinators are neither lazy nor time-incompetent. But, we are told we are, so we "compensate." How? We fight back. We surround ourselves with instruments to make life more efficient. We buy a daily planner and a to-do list application for our phone. We write ourselves notes and fill out schedules. We buy books on procrastination. However, these tools add to the problem, because now they need to be managed, in addition to the things we should actually be doing. (You have to actually use the daily planner or open the phone application. You have to read your own notes and follow your own schedules.) There's a growing list of things to do, and now a growing
army of tools to do them. We think the tools will compensate our internal failures. Yes, we are bad managers of our time, but not because we are bad people. It turns out we are bad tacticians in the war inside our brains. Our tools reflect our feeble attempts to overcome the conflicts, but in the end, the tools also fail. Like the saying goes, we succumb to a "death by a thousand cuts."
-Dr. Griggs
http://www.psychologyproductsandservices.com/page19.html
aspect or part of your life. You wait until the last minute to do
things, buy Christmas or birthday presents, visit the chiropractor or
dentist or file your taxes. You forget to make that hair or other
appointments or register to vote. The car needs an oil change.
The house is a mess but you haven't picked up the clothes or done the
dishes. The messes grow but you don't do much about them. Shouldn't
you do some of these things now so you don't have to waste a weekend or
vacation day cleaning or repairing everything you own? Sure, but do you?
The conflicts are about choices, which have different valences,
considering for the moment only the conscious ones. These can be relative to time or value. If the choice is between going to the gym or watching a video, you might choose the movie. You might make this choice because of the activity or whether it takes less time. At a restaurant, you choose a fatty entree over a lean one, perhaps because of taste, but perhaps because of price. The delays and poor choices continue, probably becoming more frequent, but you keep saying you'll "get around to" these things. Maybe you'll think about these things later, like next week. How about Tuesday? But next Tuesday turns into two Tuesdays from now, or even the week after you get back from vacation. Your intentions are good but your behavior suggests something else is going on.
The misconception about procrastinators is that we are lazy and can't
well manage our time. By definition, procrastination exist and functions
relative to time. You should do something now, but in reality, you will
approach it later, and probably not do it then, either. What we are not
managing causes conflict, bred by indecision, later anxiety. Our behavior is how we manage this chain of events at the end of the process, which is what distinguishes whether we are procrastinating, or whether we simply feel indecisive, or worse, guilty.
Procrastinators often have great difficulty in seeking help, or finding an understanding source of support, due to the stigma and profound
misunderstanding surrounding extreme forms of procrastination. In reality, procrastinators are neither lazy nor time-incompetent. But, we are told we are, so we "compensate." How? We fight back. We surround ourselves with instruments to make life more efficient. We buy a daily planner and a to-do list application for our phone. We write ourselves notes and fill out schedules. We buy books on procrastination. However, these tools add to the problem, because now they need to be managed, in addition to the things we should actually be doing. (You have to actually use the daily planner or open the phone application. You have to read your own notes and follow your own schedules.) There's a growing list of things to do, and now a growing
army of tools to do them. We think the tools will compensate our internal failures. Yes, we are bad managers of our time, but not because we are bad people. It turns out we are bad tacticians in the war inside our brains. Our tools reflect our feeble attempts to overcome the conflicts, but in the end, the tools also fail. Like the saying goes, we succumb to a "death by a thousand cuts."
-Dr. Griggs
http://www.psychologyproductsandservices.com/page19.html
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Curing Procrastination
Curing Procrastination
While it is not a clinical syndrome; that is, a diagnosis found in a mental health manual, procrastination is still pernicious, psychologically. It can create mild symptoms or some that are chronic, even paralyzing. Regardless, procrastination is something that can be cured.
Procrastination is really a form of ambivalence. This is not widely recognized. Ambivalence is when part of you wants something and part of your doesn’t want that something. It doesn’t have to be two things that directly conflict. One of the "somethings" can be related to the other, just not the same, requiring a choice that is, at least partially, mutually exclusive. Ambivalence can be in awareness, partially in awareness or totally out of awareness. This doesn’t matter, because the subjective experience of it is uneasiness. It actually creates anxiety, but it is of the kind that is not usually associated with anxiety disorders, proper.
Procrastination happens when these conflicts occur in our lives and we don’t want to deal with them. For example, I’m supposed to clean my room but I want to go out to play. I’ll think about the former but want to do the later. The choices are about two things that are relatively mutually exclusive and sooner or later, I have to negotiate the choices. I have to pick one. Either one I pick will have consequences, and I know one of them will have unpleasant consequences.
I usually pick the more pleasant, self-serving behavior, which automatically means I’m putting off choosing the “other.” This appears to be procrastinating, because I’m not doing something, but in reality I’m avoiding a conflict. I am ambivalent, experiencing some level of anxiety and trying to get around the whole thing.
Like I said before, the things we procrastinate about can be big or little, in or out of awareness, and be short or longer term. Those are just the particulars, but the dynamic is the same in each case. We usually choose the more self-serving behavior in the service of either avoiding the conflict; that is, making it disappear from our awareness, or to just avoid the less pleasant of the two choices.
This latter dynamic is often a function of our impulsiveness. As can be seen, this quality has many manifestations, some of which are adaptive, like when we procrastinate in order to glean more information before acting on something. Some dynamics are maladaptive, like when we put off finishing a project for the boss, knowing the impact on our job security.
In order to solve procrastination, we have to penetrate the ambivalence. We have to “pull up” into awareness, the full import of our choices. But for most of us, to do that means we also have to do a little soul searching. You see, ambivalence doesn’t just occur in a vacuum. There are reasons we avoid certain things, other than they may or may not be more difficult to do than something else. Sometimes it’s about not wanting to express a feeling, such as anger. If someone asks you to do something and you feel slighted, it is unlikely you will comply with their request. So, you don’t, on the surface, which is about not dealing with your internal state, expressing yourself and later resolving ambivalence. The superficial behavior then looks like procrastinating, when in fact, its just about avoiding conflict (which is probably at the heart of ambivalence in most cases).
Questions can be directed to author, who is a clinical psychologist.
-Dr. Griggs
http://www.psychologyproductsandservices.com/page192.html
While it is not a clinical syndrome; that is, a diagnosis found in a mental health manual, procrastination is still pernicious, psychologically. It can create mild symptoms or some that are chronic, even paralyzing. Regardless, procrastination is something that can be cured.
Procrastination is really a form of ambivalence. This is not widely recognized. Ambivalence is when part of you wants something and part of your doesn’t want that something. It doesn’t have to be two things that directly conflict. One of the "somethings" can be related to the other, just not the same, requiring a choice that is, at least partially, mutually exclusive. Ambivalence can be in awareness, partially in awareness or totally out of awareness. This doesn’t matter, because the subjective experience of it is uneasiness. It actually creates anxiety, but it is of the kind that is not usually associated with anxiety disorders, proper.
Procrastination happens when these conflicts occur in our lives and we don’t want to deal with them. For example, I’m supposed to clean my room but I want to go out to play. I’ll think about the former but want to do the later. The choices are about two things that are relatively mutually exclusive and sooner or later, I have to negotiate the choices. I have to pick one. Either one I pick will have consequences, and I know one of them will have unpleasant consequences.
I usually pick the more pleasant, self-serving behavior, which automatically means I’m putting off choosing the “other.” This appears to be procrastinating, because I’m not doing something, but in reality I’m avoiding a conflict. I am ambivalent, experiencing some level of anxiety and trying to get around the whole thing.
Like I said before, the things we procrastinate about can be big or little, in or out of awareness, and be short or longer term. Those are just the particulars, but the dynamic is the same in each case. We usually choose the more self-serving behavior in the service of either avoiding the conflict; that is, making it disappear from our awareness, or to just avoid the less pleasant of the two choices.
This latter dynamic is often a function of our impulsiveness. As can be seen, this quality has many manifestations, some of which are adaptive, like when we procrastinate in order to glean more information before acting on something. Some dynamics are maladaptive, like when we put off finishing a project for the boss, knowing the impact on our job security.
In order to solve procrastination, we have to penetrate the ambivalence. We have to “pull up” into awareness, the full import of our choices. But for most of us, to do that means we also have to do a little soul searching. You see, ambivalence doesn’t just occur in a vacuum. There are reasons we avoid certain things, other than they may or may not be more difficult to do than something else. Sometimes it’s about not wanting to express a feeling, such as anger. If someone asks you to do something and you feel slighted, it is unlikely you will comply with their request. So, you don’t, on the surface, which is about not dealing with your internal state, expressing yourself and later resolving ambivalence. The superficial behavior then looks like procrastinating, when in fact, its just about avoiding conflict (which is probably at the heart of ambivalence in most cases).
Questions can be directed to author, who is a clinical psychologist.
-Dr. Griggs
http://www.psychologyproductsandservices.com/page192.html
Curing Procrastination
Curing Procrastination
While it is not a clinical syndrome; that is, a diagnosis found in a mental health manual, procrastination is still pernicious, psychologically. It can create mild symptoms or some that are chronic, even paralyzing. Regardless, procrastination is something that can be cured.
Procrastination is really a form of ambivalence. This is not widely recognized. Ambivalence is when part of you wants something and part of your doesn’t want that something. It doesn’t have to be two things that directly conflict. One of the "somethings" can be related to the other, just not the same, requiring a choice that is, at least partially, mutually exclusive. Ambivalence can be in awareness, partially in awareness or totally out of awareness. This doesn’t matter, because the subjective experience of it is uneasiness. It actually creates anxiety, but it is of the kind that is not usually associated with anxiety disorders, proper.
Procrastination happens when these conflicts occur in our lives and we don’t want to deal with them. For example, I’m supposed to clean my room but I want to go out to play. I’ll think about the former but want to do the later. The choices are about two things that are relatively mutually exclusive and sooner or later, I have to negotiate the choices. I have to pick one. Either one I pick will have consequences, and I know one of them will have unpleasant consequences.
I usually pick the more pleasant, self-serving behavior, which automatically means I’m putting off choosing the “other.” This appears to be procrastinating, because I’m not doing something, but in reality I’m avoiding a conflict. I am ambivalent, experiencing some level of anxiety and trying to get around the whole thing.
Like I said before, the things we procrastinate about can be big or little, in or out of awareness, and be short or longer term. Those are just the particulars, but the dynamic is the same in each case. We usually choose the more self-serving behavior in the service of either avoiding the conflict; that is, making it disappear from our awareness, or to just avoid the less pleasant of the two choices.
This latter dynamic is often a function of our impulsiveness. As can be seen, this quality has many manifestations, some of which are adaptive, like when we procrastinate in order to glean more information before acting on something. Some dynamics are maladaptive, like when we put off finishing a project for the boss, knowing the impact on our job security.
In order to solve procrastination, we have to penetrate the ambivalence. We have to “pull up” into awareness, the full import of our choices. But for most of us, to do that means we also have to do a little soul searching. You see, ambivalence doesn’t just occur in a vacuum. There are reasons we avoid certain things, other than they may or may not be more difficult to do than something else. Sometimes it’s about not wanting to express a feeling, such as anger. If someone asks you to do something and you feel slighted, it is unlikely you will comply with their request. So, you don’t, on the surface, which is about not dealing with your internal state, expressing yourself and later resolving ambivalence. The superficial behavior then looks like procrastinating, when in fact, its just about avoiding conflict (which is probably at the heart of ambivalence in most cases).
Questions can be directed to author, who is a clinical psychologist.
-Dr. Griggs
http://www.psychologyproductsandservices.com/page192.html
While it is not a clinical syndrome; that is, a diagnosis found in a mental health manual, procrastination is still pernicious, psychologically. It can create mild symptoms or some that are chronic, even paralyzing. Regardless, procrastination is something that can be cured.
Procrastination is really a form of ambivalence. This is not widely recognized. Ambivalence is when part of you wants something and part of your doesn’t want that something. It doesn’t have to be two things that directly conflict. One of the "somethings" can be related to the other, just not the same, requiring a choice that is, at least partially, mutually exclusive. Ambivalence can be in awareness, partially in awareness or totally out of awareness. This doesn’t matter, because the subjective experience of it is uneasiness. It actually creates anxiety, but it is of the kind that is not usually associated with anxiety disorders, proper.
Procrastination happens when these conflicts occur in our lives and we don’t want to deal with them. For example, I’m supposed to clean my room but I want to go out to play. I’ll think about the former but want to do the later. The choices are about two things that are relatively mutually exclusive and sooner or later, I have to negotiate the choices. I have to pick one. Either one I pick will have consequences, and I know one of them will have unpleasant consequences.
I usually pick the more pleasant, self-serving behavior, which automatically means I’m putting off choosing the “other.” This appears to be procrastinating, because I’m not doing something, but in reality I’m avoiding a conflict. I am ambivalent, experiencing some level of anxiety and trying to get around the whole thing.
Like I said before, the things we procrastinate about can be big or little, in or out of awareness, and be short or longer term. Those are just the particulars, but the dynamic is the same in each case. We usually choose the more self-serving behavior in the service of either avoiding the conflict; that is, making it disappear from our awareness, or to just avoid the less pleasant of the two choices.
This latter dynamic is often a function of our impulsiveness. As can be seen, this quality has many manifestations, some of which are adaptive, like when we procrastinate in order to glean more information before acting on something. Some dynamics are maladaptive, like when we put off finishing a project for the boss, knowing the impact on our job security.
In order to solve procrastination, we have to penetrate the ambivalence. We have to “pull up” into awareness, the full import of our choices. But for most of us, to do that means we also have to do a little soul searching. You see, ambivalence doesn’t just occur in a vacuum. There are reasons we avoid certain things, other than they may or may not be more difficult to do than something else. Sometimes it’s about not wanting to express a feeling, such as anger. If someone asks you to do something and you feel slighted, it is unlikely you will comply with their request. So, you don’t, on the surface, which is about not dealing with your internal state, expressing yourself and later resolving ambivalence. The superficial behavior then looks like procrastinating, when in fact, its just about avoiding conflict (which is probably at the heart of ambivalence in most cases).
Questions can be directed to author, who is a clinical psychologist.
-Dr. Griggs
http://www.psychologyproductsandservices.com/page192.html
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