I was talking to Andrew about procrastination the other day, which in turn led me to do some further musings about the topic. As I was saying to Andrew, one thing that gets my goat is the tendency of people to treat procrastination like it is a trivial problem, which should be easily eliminated. This is connected to a tendency to characterize procrastination as an irrational behaviour- which seems to make people think it should be easy to eliminate, once a person has acknowleged this fact. It is characterized as irrational because procrastinating tends to make a situation worse, not better, and it seems strange that a person would make such a choice.
I do agree that there are no doubt some perplexing beliefs underlying procrastination, but I don’t think the irrationality of procrastination lies at the point where a person decides to put off doing the task. People who play the irrationality card often make it sounds as if there are, in fact, no tasks which a rational person would postpone. However, I can think of several situations or tasks where postponement would be a rational choice.
Execution, for example. Postponing your execution has many benefits, and few detriments. It is similarly the case with revealing an unpleasant truth. It might be argued, for example, that someone who has had an affair has no good reason to reveal their behaviour as soon as possible (if ever!). Basically, in any situation where the occurence of the event in question will only serve to make your life worse rather than better, it does not seem irrational to choose to have the event occur later, rather than sooner.
Now, I’m not saying that this works as a precise analogy for a situation where a person is avoiding doing something that they need to do for school or work, but I think it is at least relevant. It also leads to another analogy that may be more in keeping with the actual situation. Imagine a scenario where you are instructed to create the instrument of your doom- for example, where you are instructed to make the noose for your upcoming hanging. In this case, it hardly seems surprising that you would not put all of your time into creating the noose. Nor would you probably be motivated to do an especially great job on the noose itself. Again, in this case it is mainly to your benefit to put off making the noose, and, even if pressed to do so, put as little effort as possible into making the noose. And similarly, in the case of the revealing of the affair, it would be unlikely for someone to put a great deal of effort into making a power point presentation of the details of the affair, complete with photos, in preparation for revealing their infidelity. Making that sort of effort in such a situation could hardly be seen as a personally beneficial use of time and energy.
So basically what I’m saying is that, in some situations, so called ‘procrastination behaviour’ is just the behaviour you would expect. Therefore, I think the question we procrastinators need to ask is- why do we view the procrastination situation as similar to these other situations? First of all, I think that, for various reasons, which may vary from person to person, procrastinators view the completion of the task, or handing in of the project, as somewhat analogous to the reception of some kind of corporal punishment. In other words, you will be judged, and you will be judged severely! In such a case it makes sense to put off the judgement and punishment for as long as possible. Second, I think that procrastinators tend to view the project itself as the noose that is going to hang them, which hardly leads them to want to spend a lot of time working on it- the instrument of their doom. For one thing, said instrument just reminds them of their impending doom, and for another, even if done well, it’s just going to be used to hang them.
So, the question we must ask ourselves, I think, is why do we view these
situations as being analogous to corporal punishment situations, or, more
generally, situations which change our life for the worse? And what
can we do to change that view? I don’t have an answer for that one yet! In
the meantime,
here’s a link to
the procrastination research group at Carleton. Lots of fascinating
information and research articles on procrastination!
posted at 22:04 on Mon, 10 Apr, 2006 |
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All material copyrighted by Jen Schellinck. All rights reserved.