Daily Social MediaTeasers Snag You?

Ever hit a formidable wall once you begin to write? If I’m writing with great inspiration, I’m highly motivated to stick with the topic and further insights seem to keep coming to mind. Writing flows easily.

On the other hand, if I’m writing because I need to, I often begin, but distractions fill my mind, which keep taking me elsewhere. In this highly charged social media era, many tempters like email, Twitter or Facebook tease me to take just a quick peek. Before I realized it I'm snagged for half an hour.  The time slips away!

Piers Steele, University of Calgary psychology professor in the Haskayne School of Business on procrastination explains this phenomenon in a recent interview for The Toronto Star:

We’ve always tended to go for the short-term pleasure instead of something more rewarding but longer term. So we do a lot of things like Facebook or video snacking at the cost of long-term and larger goals. What predicts procrastination is not just who you are, but also your environment — the amount of temptation around you. We now live in a world supersaturated with powerful short-term temptations. Our environment has become motivationally toxic.

Steel, author of The Procrastination Equation (2011), has analyzed why we habitually put things off...  They are:

1. Confidence in your ability to finish a task. The less confident you are, the harder it is to get motivated.
2. Rewards you get as you work on the task. If it’s boring, your mind slides off the task.
3. Rewards not experienced until task is complete.

But that's not all...  he’s researched ways we can train ourselves to choose today over mañana. Steel suggests strategies to help you overcome each temptation that may snare you. Intriguingly, all might overwhelm you at once...

1. Low confidence - "...Take cues for what is possible by watching what other people do. Inspiration and confidence tend to be contagious. If you hang out with people who are positive and doing things, it’s easier to be infected." 
2. If you hate the task - You can artificially pack some rewards for yourself at the end for completing the work. Or you can mentally reframe it. You don’t like cleaning your house, but you like socializing with friends. So you reframe it: I want an inviting place for my friends. You add extra motivational oomph from seeing the task from a better angle.

Put your mirror neurons to work since as you try using the same tactics as people who inspire you, the doing of rewires your brain as you sleep that night. When you try using the tactic again it becomes much easier for you.  Later you can add your own special touches to it.

Another method you might consider comes from Peter Gollwitzer's "If-Then planning" strategy. For those of us who always slide off course when we list a New Year's resolution, it's often because we make these fairly general. You might say, for instance, you want to exercise more to lose some pounds.

"For starters, it's not nearly specific enough," Heidi Grant Halvorson (Feb. 2011) points out. "You would need to say what exercise you plan to do and how often per week you plan to do it. "The if-then version of this plan spells out exactly what you will do in the critical situation."

Halvorson shows the formula in a way that's easily remembered:

If X happens, then I will do Y.

These plans work so well because they speak the language of your brain: the language of contingencies. Humans are very good at encoding information in "If X, then Y" terms and using this process (often unconsciously) to guide our behavior. Deciding exactly when and where you will act on your goal creates a link in your brain between the situation or cue (the if) and the behavior that should follow (the then).

I've already stayed on track when temptations hit, by saying the If-Then approach to important tasks I want to accomplish. If I picture myself at the end of a work day with a desk piled high with tasks undone and and incomplete To-Do list, I have to work later. Instead I picture myself reading a book I'm enjoying as I enjoy a cup of herbal tea.

Through mental contrasting, people can contrast a “desired future with the reality that impedes its realization…” (Oettingen, 2000). By thinking through these opposing realities, not only do people begin to problem solve what steps need to be taken to make the desired future happen, but also to avoid harsh realities in store when we're snagged by social media tempters.

Thoughts?

What Causes People to Procrastinate, then Rush?

"What causes us to procrastinate, then rush," Frank Roche of KnowHR, asks. He'd like to sort out the ambiguity. No doubt he's seen every form of delaying tactics in the field of human resources. "Is this a brain-related issue," he wonders. "With all the GTD-related advice out there, it tells me that a lot of people are procrastinators...or they don't multitask well. Is procrastination hard wired?" Great questions, Frank, since procrastination increased 39% in the last 25 years...

Thanks for posing these for the Question Train Series.

Causes... Interestingly, Piers Steel of the University of Calgary just finished a 10 year study which concludes that temptation is one of the most pervasive causes of procrastination. When you stop to think there are so many fun activities available such as computer gaming, Internet messaging, which are just a click away at work. Add to that, TVs in every room, online video, Web-surfing, cellphones, video games, iPods and Blackberries.

Genes Play a Part Rewards and instant gratification highly affect procrastinators. In a study prepared by researchers, Liu, Richmond and Ginns of the National Intstitue of Health, found that dopamine, a brain chemical that functions as a neurotransmitter, suppresses a gene helps a circuit in the brain absorb the chemical messenger dopamine, which is involved in the brain's memory and reward system. Amazingly, they can turn monkeys into the kind of nonstop worker you are not likely to find in the next cubicle.

Dopamine has many functions in the brain, including important roles in behavior and cognition, motor activity, motivation and reward, sleep, mood, attention, and learning.

Without the dopamine receptor, the researchers found monkeys "consistently stayed on-task and made few errors, because they could no longer learn to use visual cues to predict how their work was going to get them a reward." The monkeys were like other primates, they're "in no hurry to do work any sooner than it needs to be done."

Procrastinators are made not born On the other hand, leading procrastination experts Joseph Ferrari, and Timorthy Pychyl note procrastination's due to upbringing...

Procrastination is learned in the family milieu, but not directly. It is one response to an authoritarian parenting style. Having a harsh, controlling father keeps children from developing the ability to regulate themselves, from internalizing their own intentions and then learning to act on them. Procrastination can even be a form of rebellion, one of the few forms available under such circumstances. What's more, under those household conditions, procrastinators turn more to friends than to parents for support, and their friends may reinforce procrastination because they tend to be tolerant of their excuses.

Why the rush? Most people are self-regulated and want to avoid the consequences. But there's more... some folks actually get a rush from putting things off and working fast at the last minute...

"On the one hand, procrastinators enjoy the pleasure that accompanies jittery nerves before a deadline," according to Ferrari, "but they also have less self-confidence than their peers." He notes that procrastinators may exert less effort because they want people to think that they're not trying rather than believe that they are incapable.

In experiments reported in the European Journal of Personality, procrastinators completed less of a task than nonprocrastinators when given a strict time limit, but fared almost as well with more time. Ferrari believes that this reflects scaled back efforts under pressure.

I can remember classmates in college telling me they actually get a rush from doing work at the last minute. We also see it on the job. Sadly, procrastinators do not perform at optimum... But there's hope.

Hard-wired? Since the human brain has amazing plasticity, it can be wired differently. But, it takes rewiring a lifetime of habits. Even procrastinators can rewire to work ahead, but it takes doing, doing, doing it over a period of time. The more we do something the more our brain rewires for that activity.

Ellen Weber claims human nature's lazy and requires rewiring...

What you do shapes the routines that define you as unique. Victims who see themselves as stuck in their problems, will stay stuck … because they will build victim routines into their basal ganglia daily. We each get hit with 22 stressors daily … and victims sink with these while high performance minds fight back.

Here’s how it works. Each time you set clear targets, and motivate yourself to follow through and do one concrete strategy to reach them, you set your “human nature” for example, to become more successful, alive and timely.

Thanks for such great questions! With procrastination on the increase, your work's cut out.. I'm wondering what strategies work best for you and others to avoid procrastinating?