Towards the tail end of last week I got round to doing something which I had been putting off. During the process of “getting round to it”, doing it and then afterward, I did some thinking about the problem of procrastination.
None of this is particularly original, but I noticed a few things:
- The (irrational) anxiety which was present while I was putting the task off,
- The tension which I felt when trying to force myself to do it, and
- The way the resistance increased as I tried harder and harder (The “Law of Reversed Effect”).
You’ll be pleased to hear that I got the task done, and that it was less of a challenge than the anxiety I felt implied. In fact, part of it turned out to be a complete non-event.
The techniques I used to help myself over this particular little incident (which really was not that serious), were:
- Simple “Self-Induced Relaxation”
- Dividing the problem into very small parts, and then starting one!
- Using the momentum gained to propel me into making further progress
- Congratulating myself (with positive “self-talk”) as I completed each part
- Rewarding myself with something at the end.