Stuck In a Rut – Could it be due to Procrastination ?

Why do we Procrastinate?

The most common response to this question is “because I am lazy ”. Yet even the worst procrastinators have motivation and energy for some areas of their lives – accomplishing a lot in specific areas where they have chosen to devote themselves -  but totally unable to get started in other areas.

Denis Waitely the author of the “Psychology of winning and the Joy of working” defines procrastination as a neurotic form of self-defensive behaviour aimed at protecting one’s self-worth. That is, we procrastinate when we fear a threat to our sense of worth and independence. He says we only become lazy when our natural drive for fruitful activity is threatened or suppressed. No one does it to feel bad, but to temporarily relieve deep inner fears.

Dr. Theodore Rubin, in his book “Compassion and Self-hate” suggests that it is the fear of failure, fear of being imperfect, and the fear of impossible expectations that prevent us from acting on and attaining our goals. He explains them in the following manner:

• Fear of Failure – means you believe that even the smallest mistake could be evidence that you are worthless and an awful person.
• Fear of Being imperfect – means it is difficult for you to accept yourself as you are – imperfect and therefore perfectly human. So you interpret any criticism, rejection or judgement by others as a threat to your grasp on perfection.
• Fear of Impossible expectations - this means fearing that even after you have worked hard and achieved the goals set for you, your only reward will be continually higher and more difficult goals to achieve, with no rest and no time to savor your achievements.

We need to understand that procrastination is not a character defect, rather it is a way of coping with the often, incapacitating fear of having your worth held up for judgement.

The fear of judgement is the key fear that stems from over identifying – who you are, your worth as a person- with your work. From this fear follows the counter productive drive towards perfectionism, severe self-criticism and the fear that you must deprive yourself of leisure time in order to satisfy some unseen judge.

A crucial question to ask ourselves is what was my family conditioning especially during my school going years ?

If you grew up in a home, where praise was often withheld because it might “go to your head”, this would have left you with a sense that your efforts were never good enough.

Early in life, if we learn that all we can expect from finishing an assignment is criticism or so called constructive feedback, on how it might be improved- then what is clearly being communicated is “ you will always need to keep trying ; life and work is hard and it won’t be easy for you; you better get used to things being tough because adulthood is even worse than childhood”. This teaches us to unknowingly use procrastination to escape inner conflict and anxiety. In this way, procrastination is rewarding because it effectively lessens our fear of being judged.

Procrastination reduces tension by taking us away from something we view as painful or threatening. The more painful a situation is, the more we try to seek relief through avoidance strategies or through involvement in more pleasurable activities.

When we identify our worth with our work, that is “I am what I do” , we would naturally become reluctant to face challenges and take risks without self-protective defenses.

If you maintain extremely high standards for your performance and are critical of your mistakes, you will need to defend yourself from risky projects where the chances of failure are high.

Sometimes procrastination can serve in delaying starting your work thus you do not end up doing your best and therefore any criticism will not be a judgement of the real you or your best efforts.

Fear of Success can be seen as a fear of delayed failure – if you succeed in one task, you are sure to be moved right on to a new competitive arena where failure is even more likely. The higher you go, the more competitive it becomes and the greater the likelihood that you could fail. With procrastination you have covered yourself both ways – there is always an excuse, in case you don’t preform as well as you had hoped and on the other hand if you do succeed, success raises the anxiety that still more is going to be expected of you, thus procrastination gives protection against this threat.