In this 3 part blog we’ll identify What is a procrastination? Why people procrastinate and how to overcome procrastination.
Part 2: Why do People Procrastinate, a Deeper Look
(did you miss part 1? Click here to catch up>>
https://www.internationaltalentacademy.org/2021/01/04/how-to-beat-procrastination_part-1-of-3/)
PROCRASTINATORS LIKE THE CONCEPT OF DOING
It’s not that procrastinators don’t like the concept of doing. They look at the bricks on their calendar and they think, “Great, this will be fun.” And that’s because when they picture the moment in the future when they sit down and knock out a work session, they picture things without the presence of the Instant Gratification Monkey.
But when the actual moment arrives to begin that scheduled brick-laying, the procrastinator does what the procrastinator does best—he lets the monkey take over and ruin everything. Let’s examine this specific challenge of laying a single brick:
THE CRITICAL ENTRANCE AND DARK WOODS CONCEPT EXPLAINED
The Critical Entrance is where you go to officially start work on the task, the Dark Woods are the process of actually doing the work, and once you finish, you’re rewarded by ending up in The Happy Playground—a place where you feel satisfaction and where leisure time is pleasant and rewarding because you got something hard done. You occasionally even end up super-engaged with what you’re working on and enter a state of Flow, where you’re so blissfully immersed in the task that you lose track of time.
Unfortunately, procrastinators tend to miss out on both The Happy Playground and Flow. A procrastinator may never even get started on the task he’s supposed to do, because he never makes it through the Critical Entrance. Instead, he spends hours wallowing in The Dark Playground, hating himself. If you’re a procrastinator, here’s what you need to do to get on the right path, one that will leave you much happier.
HOW TO MAKE IT THROUGH THE CRITICAL ENTRANCE AND THE DARK WOODS
The first thing you must do is make it through the Critical Entrance, i.e., stop whatever you’re doing when it’s time to begin the task, put away all distractions, and get started. This is the hardest part because the Instant Gratification Monkey hates stopping something fun to start something hard.
The Dark Woods is where you are when you’re working. It’s not a fun place to be, and the Instant Gratification Monkey wants nothing to do with it. To make things harder, the Dark Woods is surrounded by the Dark Playground, one of the monkey’s favorite places, and he’ll try as hard as he can to leave the Dark Woods. The Dark Woods leads to happiness and the Dark Playground leads only to more misery. But the Instant Gratification Monkey isn’t logical and to him, the Dark Playground seems like much more fun.
But, if you can power through a bit of the Dark Woods, something funny happens. Making progress on a task produces positive feelings of accomplishment and raises your self-esteem. Once you get 2/3 or 3/4 of the way through a task, especially if it’s going well, you start to feel great about things and suddenly, the end is in sight.
THE HAPPY PLAYGROUND AND THE TIPPING POINT EXPLAINED
This is a key Tipping Point not just because you can smell the Happy Playground up ahead—the Monkey can smell it too. Once you hit the Tipping Point, the monkey becomes more interested in getting to the Happy Playground than the Dark Playground and you lose all impulse to procrastinate. Before you know it, you’re done and it feels great because it’s earned.
The other thing that might happen when you pass the Tipping Point, depending on the type of task and how well it’s going, is that you might start feeling fantastic about what you’re working on, so fantastic that continuing to work sounds like much more fun than stopping to do leisure activities. You lose interest in basically everything else, including food and time—this is called Flow.
What makes procrastination so hard to beat is that the Instant Gratification Monkey has a terribly short-term memory. Even if you wildly succeed on Monday, when you begin a task on Tuesday, the monkey has forgotten everything and will again resist entering the Dark Woods or working through them.
That’s why persistence is such a critical component of success.
Check back on Friday for part 3 of this blog – How to Overcome Procrastination.
