Procrastination: The addicted gambler’s second worst habit…
A crash course in the impact of procrastination & how to start taking action
So last time that I wrote a blog post was in August. It is now the end of November.
Where did those months go?
I figured there couldn’t be a more suitable topic that I want to bring to you today than that of procrastination. Because even if I have been busy in clinic and definitely had less time than I had in the previous 6 months (when writing was happening), there is no doubt that the main reason that nothing at all got produced -was that I kept putting it off. Not actually all that intentionally- at least not to begin with. First there was some genuinely great excuses, then there were some less valid ones …and at some point, the prospect of writing anything at all just seemed so distant. About 2 months into it, well…. Then it was also a new habit and the skill of writing was so rusty that even those times when I actually sat down to try, not a single word came to my mind. I was facing a total block. Whilst it definitely became more and more ‘natural’ to just not write, there was also this growing awareness that the excuse-making around the task itself had become a larger energy expenditure than the actual act of doing something about it ….. It is usually at this point that the dislike of my paralysis gets more painful than the ‘pain’ involved with just tackling the task.
Another catalyst, that finally pushed me out of my stagnation- was the sense of sadness and emptiness over not reaching out anymore to people. Something I really value and have enjoyed since starting the blog. It totally makes my day when I hear from people across the globe who express their gratitude and explain how reading some of my material has helped them in some important way. That really matters – and that is my main motivation to keep writing.
So why am I sharing this? Because I am keen to convey that procrastination is a common, yet debilitating, habit that we all take part in from time to time. Sometimes we catch ourselves spontaneously, as we tire out in the way I described to you above. However, there are also those situations when the compounding negativity of the stuff left undone creates a fast-moving vicious spiral and its impact starts affecting mood and well-being on a larger scale. At this point, it is no longer just an undesirable situation, like the one I described that I found myself in, but an actual problem that can cause serious problems to an individual’s life and their ability to function properly. Despite the impact that it can have, I find that procrastination is often overlooked in treatment protocols, or seen as a habit that is a by-product of other issues. I find that it is a habit that deserves its own bit of attention and focus, as it is almost invariably observed in individuals with depression, anxiety and also addictions in a way that is no way reasonable or constructive. Other interventions (i.e. behavioural activation, attempts to enrich life, values work etc) are all hinging on the ability to get things done and the forward push of actually making changes to behaviour. For those who are in the thick of procrastination; the prospect of even making small decisions about what sort of action to take can be daunting- never mind actually doing something!
Procrastination and its consequences
When we procrastinate, we essentially make a decision to postpone taking action. Not infrequently do we also replace the ‘appropriate’ form of action with some other useless form of action i.e. a distraction; all whilst telling ourselves some rationalisations (or shall we just call them lies?) about why delaying the task makes perfect sense.
Although this clearly is both illogical and a form of sabotage- most of us can still identify with this process as something that feels temporarily very compelling. As discussed in many of my previous blog posts, the emotional brain has a clear preference for a nice and easy life, a life where we don’t emotionally have to strain and suffer and can exist in a comfort zone. It is the lazy part of our brain, but simultaneously also the very reactive one. When we decide to delay, we give ourselves a nice moment of emotional relief and comfort from the unpleasant reaction it just had from thinking of taking action. What is not incorporated in this decision, is what emotional experience the aftermaths involve. It takes a bit of logic to think that far.
Gambling & Procrastination
Amongst the gambling addicts that I meet with; it is not at all uncommon that procrastination has come to take over their lives. So strong is the habit that I have seen people who believe they have developed serious disabilities and/or neurological problems due to their felt inability to manage even the smallest task they previously knew themselves quite able to perform. I am sure I don’t need to tell you what impact this has on your life if you a gambling-addicted person reading this; but just in case you need further info about it; here is a little summary of what you might notice:
A sense of things ‘mounting’ up – one thing is left undealt with, followed by another one and another one. Things we avoid don’t just magically disappear (with some exceptions of course).
Stress/agony about the avoided tasks will start to have a compounding effect – leading to a faster-moving vicious cycle of increased anxiety, which in turn leads to a stronger desire to escape from the hell of negative emotions– the result; we continue to avoid the task and feel continuously full of agony about not doing it.
We miss important deadlines and mess with our self-image We may end up presenting to the world as a person that we don’t want to be i.e., ‘someone who does not stick to goals, words, promises’ ‘someone who is never on time’ ‘someone who talks but doesn’t actually action anything’ We become less of the person we want to be and more of a person we don’t want to be!! We start living out of alignment with our own value system, goals and directions.
We lose trust in our own ability to make decisions.This one is a big deal as, by itself, it leads to a feeling of distrust in oneself as a person capable of exerting control over one’s actions
It leads to low mood and inactivity followed by further inaction and a sense of behavioural ‘paralysis’ . We will be further away from task completion rather than closer to it.
We partake in tasks that act only as distractions (and therefore bring little value), in order to avoid those that would perhaps be more daunting to tackle but would provide far greater satisfaction and keep us moving in a good direction.
you might feel more prone to gamble or use other forms of self-sabotage as you are already feeling so annoyed with yourself and the avoidance of pain through procrastination gets replaced with an even more ‘powerful’ avoidance strategy
In my clinical experience, this relationship is not straightforward at all, but the anxiety and stress involved with prolonged procrastination are enough to make any person feel less worthwhile and full of difficult feelings. The act of procrastination is an act of avoidance, much like picking up the bottle for an alcoholic or planning for a bet for a problem gambler. For a person who is prone to reaching for a bet to get a respite from boredom, or feels inclined to use it as an escape from stress and depression, it is not hard to see that the act of procrastination- often with the added distractions- can give the short term buzz or relief that is required in a moment of despair.
It becomes a deeply ingrained habit. The more that we procrastinate the ‘easier’ it gets to keep avoiding action. It is self-reinforcing due to the unpleasant feelings produced, which make us want to avoid more, rather than less. We also become more and more creative and fluent in our ability to create excuses that ‘make sense’ to ourselves.
Cognitive dissonance
In order to allow for better understanding, it could be worth familiarizing yourself with the term called cognitive dissonance which essentially refers to the discomfort we experience when we for example want for one thing but do another. Or we have two conflicting beliefs. The brain then compensates by creating rationalisations to reduce the sense of ‘dissonance’ since us human beings feel better when our beliefs, and our behaviours join up and align. The trouble is that acting in accordance with what we believe is best for us is often many times harder than to just try and rationalise why it may be easier to sit idle and not do the task at hand.
The process of procrastination – the ‘art’ down to a T:
After my decade and a half of clinical work, I have constructed a little step by step formula for how to act yourself out of procrastination. It starts with becoming aware of what you are doing. In case you are still unsure it might look something like this;
Trigger: tax return due
The brain makes one emotional assessment which is ‘this is dreadful, boring and complicated. Due to its fast working processes and intuitive knowing, it also has already incorporated the crappy feelings that go with doing the tax return, paying the tax bill and finding all the bits and bobs necessary to complete it in the first place. That part of the brain is that quick and it will process the situation before your more logical brain has a shot at thinking rationally about it, so it mobilises a level of dread and anxiety.
Then there is the more logical assessment; which might be something like ‘this definitely needs doing’ ‘this won’t get any more fun if I wait’
You have a conflict: Cognitive dissonance occurs.
The next layer of thoughts tends to be a range of excuses:
‘it would be really good to wait in case I earn more this year’ ‘I think I will feel more focused on the weekend actually. Perhaps I will do it then’
‘why not wait to January just in case.
Feelings: agony, dread, anxiety, in some cases panic, ‘frozen’ and blocked
Behaviour: We avoid. Or tell ourselves to delay action. All whilst choosing to believe the excuses we constructed.
Consequence: We feel worse, the task keeps eating away at our energy, we keep worrying, dreading, delaying. When this has been going on a while we also start identifying with the process of procrastination ‘I am someone who don’t get things done’. The consequence of that tends to be we get even less done as we now don’t even believe in ourselves to do good for ourselves. This is just a fraction of all the negatives that come of it- this list goes on. For the next few days, your job is to start gathering a list of the things in your life that you are procrastinating on.
So enough about how bad it feels and on to what really matters; how we can break the cycle and start taking action.
Having worked with hundreds if not thousands of procrastinators– gambling addicted or not – I have created a small protocol that combines a number of techniques that I have picked up in various places over many years.
PRIORITISING
This technique will hardly be revolutionary to hear about, but many procrastinators do what I call emotional prioritisation. How that works is that anything that feels important and urgent (at any given moment) becomes the priority. What consequences does this have for the long term? The short answer is; not very good ones. Our feelings, despite being great indicators of certain things in life, are not always a great guide for assessing urgency or importance. Proper prioritising requires a slightly more dry and logical approach, during which we ensure that we are not using feeling to allocate priority to a task, but instead, we rely on what is a genuine sense of importance and urgency, as defined by deadline and consequence to our lives should the task get left undone. Using a time management tool such as the URGENT/IMPORTANT quadrant is one of the better ways that I have found works well. You can download one here. Do make sure you scramble up all of those tasks that are hiding in your mind, also including those being avoided and those that are too painful to think about. It all needs to be allocated to one of the 4 boxes.
Break the task down
This stage is often met with more resistance than you might think. Why should we break a task down? I always say to clients; if a task has not been done so far- is it not smarter to accept that the task in its current size is too big rather than insisting we should be able to do it, yet failing at actually doing it? So even if you believe yourself capable to do a bigger task, just believe your actions over and above the ‘shoulds’ and ‘coulds’ in your mind. If it has not happened, break it down into much smaller chunks and change the method. Aim for a size where the task triggers a bit of resistance but not anxiety or the worst one of them all – ‘behavioural paralysis’.
Schedule the sub-tasks- and be specific
A lot of people spontaneously do number 1 and 2 off of this list and get that part right, but then apply an attitude of ‘now let’s hope for the best beyond that. Things that have to happen typically need to be scheduled. Needless to say, the level of specificity applied depends a bit on your lifestyle. If your typical day contains very few fixed points or routines (which often makes people procrastinate more rather than less) you might not need to allocate tasks to specific times (such as ‘1pm’ or ‘5pm’) but what matters is that the planning is realistic and that there will be a cue for you to pursue the task at that time. Examples could be.. ‘after I have my morning shower I will open 5 old letters and respond to them’ ‘after lunch on Thursdays I will start having a 10 min walk and build up from there..’ ‘repay £50 off my owed debt on the first day of getting paid’
If you run a very busy schedule with few gaps in the day, you need to be specific in terms of the precise time something will take place. The most important thing is recognising that things don’t just happen because we like to see the end result, we need to keep committing every day. When motivation runs low (which it will do for everyone) tight planning can often save us from falling pray for a state of inertia.
Reward yourself for your action steps!
This one is really important for behaviour change in general, and not any less for behaviours that you have been reluctant to take part in for a while. As you are scheduling your specific sub-tasks, make sure to allocate little rewards for yourself. They should be sized according with the task that you are doing, and a bigger reward may be appropriate after the entire task has been completed. Using small acts of kindness towards yourself is a great way to go. Say ‘a coffee when I have done 30 min of admin’ or ‘lunch when I have done some work and also some exercise’. Depending on what you find rewarding you can construct a little list of appropriate short/medium and long term rewards that can be used to incentivise yourself. If you are like many of the gamblers I see in the clinic and your thinking is ‘but I reward myself with everything I want already’ – then no problem; you can use those same rewards but now you have to remove them and only re-allocate them when you do the actual work!
Visualise & revise the plan in your head and prepare practically
As with any behaviour in our life that takes on the tendency of habit – a high level of visualising and revising is often required. Think about those times when you were planning and scheming for how to gather the money to place your next bet. How many times did you go over things in your mind? People often overlook how much repetitive thinking that they take part in when a habit is a pleasant one or one that gives us a buzz- because it does not feel like a strain to think about it. Thinking through how to tackle the morning, what to do first, second etc may not seem like quite the same amount of fun; however, the brain does not necessarily differ in terms of how it learns. We need to ‘train’ it to work for us, and by planning out, visualising and of course also planning practically for the tasks at hand we can achieve greater success in making a tedious behaviour feel more automated and ideally become a part of a good habit.
I hope you found this crash course useful and I wish you the best of luck in moving forwards!
Love Annika X