[The Rewards of Procrastination][The Perfectionist Procrastinator][All or Nothing Procrastinator][Catastrophic Thinking]

Procrastination is putting off for tomorrow what you should be doing today.  Procrastination represents one of the principal reasons for personal failure as you never accomplish your potential.  The more severe the procrastination tendencies, the more difficult it becomes to produce anything of lasting value; your life becomes empty, devoid of accomplishment, replete with mediocrity, and neutralized for any positive legacy to your children or posterity.  Procrastination can effectively neutralize a life turning it from a potential of accomplishment to one filled with the guilt of lack of achievement.

Certainly, the failures associated with procrastination should not represent a surprise to anybody.  Yet, procrastination has become an epidemic in this country.  We all run around with to-do lists, but forever seem to be putting off today's items into tomorrow's list.  We have more technology to make our lives easier and potentially more productive, yet we let this productive time become squandered on non-productive pursuits.  I have often observed my own procrastination behavior under the microscope of personal scrutiny, trying to determine why so much precious, irreplaceable time is lost.  I have come up with several reasons why procrastination has become such a part in my own life, and probably why it becomes important in most people's lives.

The Rewards of Procrastination

Procrastination is self-perpetuating because of its short-term reinforcement.  With procrastination, you avoid the work associated with getting a task accomplished; you put it off for tomorrow -  perhaps hoping tomorrow will never come.  The delay of pain certainly is a very powerful motivator, especially when exchanged for something more pleasureable.  Because some unpleasant task is displaced in time, you now have more time to do other more pleasant activity (watch television, go out shopping, etc.) that becomes possible only because the unpleasant task has been delayed.  This becomes particularly easy to do when that unpleasant task does not need to get done immediately, which is the case with most tasks in general.  I can think here of one of my friends in high school who seemed to be an expert at procrastination.  Stanley had a book review due for English class.  For this review, he was allowed to pick whatever book he wanted, as long as it had some literary merit and was not pornographic or otherwise improper.  The book report was due in two weeks from the assignment date.  This posed a particularly problem for Stanley, since the freedom this assignment offered was tailor made for procrastination.  First, he had to pick a book that was not too difficult, but not too easy either because then his report might be rejected.  After much thought and consideration lasting for 12 days, he picked To Kill a Mockingbird, certainly a classic book that could be read by the average high school student in about three or four days.   The only problem was that now he only had two days to read it.  Now, of course Stanley did not just sit down and begin reading the book but rather had to put that off for another day - after all, the stress of picking the book in the first place demanded some time off.  Now, Stanley's procrastination was beginning to have some serious consequences since the book was due the next day and it hadn't even been read yet.  He then quickly read the book from cover to cover staying up late into the night.  The report was quickly hand written (this was in the ancient times before computers and word processors) and turned it in the next day.  It received a poor grade which might be expected, as it was obviously hastily put together without much thought by an exhausted student who had mostly scanned the novel and which showed no real insight into the book nor understanding of its deeper meanings.  Stanley was a very intelligent student who has gone on to do some good things with his life.  But his procrastination habits had become well learned by the time this book report was written and have sadly followed him throughout his life.  The rewards that are received through procrastination are generally miniscule compared to the lost opportunities from a job poorly done.

This reward from procrastination makes future procrastination more likely.  Gradually over time, procrastination can even become a learned behavior; displacing unpleasant tasks into the future becomes an effective way for dealing with stress of any nature.  You just decide not to deal with the problem, since tomorrow never comes - at least you hope not.  By procrastinating unpleasant activities, you open up wide possibilities for the day, because now you have freed up time that otherwise might have been lost.  You can go out and play, realizing that tomorrow you will get to work, for there is always time later to get the job done.  Procrastination can be an effective means for dealing with all sorts of problems, from the personal problems dealing with other people, to problems at work.  The only difference is that at work, you might actually eventually have to be productive (if you want to stay employed), whereas at home, you can put off things indefinitely because there might not be a superior authority waiting for your job to get done.  The adolescent procrastinator is seldom a success with work as he lacks the necessary discipline to be as productive as his job competitors.  It is a competitive world, and procrastinators generally lose out.

The Perfectionist Procrastinator

For some people, the rewards associated with procrastination are more complicated than merely displacing work into the future.  There is a whole group of people who like to consider themselves perfectionists. These people will tell you to your face that a job is not worth doing unless it can be done perfectly.  They want to devote whatever time and effort it takes to complete a job right, because lack of perfection is somehow evil and dishonest.  They can look around at others and note (often with some glee) how others are sloppy, untrustworthy, and generally reprobate for not doing the job "right" like they would have done.  Often, the perfectionist jumps from job to job looking for a perfectionist employer, only to find that no employer can meet their standards - they are all dishonest.  The perfectionist sees with disgust the compromises that are often required to complete a job - because compromise means lack of perfection - a substandard job.  It could have been done better if only they weren't so money hungry and willing to compromise away integrity and honesty.  Note that the perfectionist is usually the employee - not the employer, because the employer realizes that some compromise is often necessary or else they would go out of business.  There are always imperfections and imperfections on this side of heaven - it is a part of living.  The perfectionist refuses to recognize this fact of life and clings to a belief that what cannot be done to perfection either should not be done in the first place or must be worked on more in an attempt to get it as close to perfection as possible.

Unfortunately, there are very few jobs that can indeed be done perfectly, because we are by nature imperfect beings; we all make mistakes.  The perfectionist refuses to believe this in their own life, for they will not be satisfied with their work until they are sure it is perfect - or at least as perfect as time will allow before some unreasonable external influence demands the work be finished.  This is the ploy used by the perfectionist procrastinator; they wait until the last minute and then go all out on the project, only to do a mediocre job at best when the deadline comes.  They put off the work realizing full well that they are inviting disaster, but they are, after all, very busy and with their workload, who can get to this project anyway?  Even though they would like to have done a perfect job, the time constraints under which they work, and the incredible work load they are laboring under precludes doing a perfect job - and they will just have to settle for less.  But their less than perfect work is not, after all, their fault - they could have done better had they only been given more time.  These excuses are used frequently by a procrastinator to cover-up their poor performance, often just before quitting and searching out another job where the employer maybe won't be so "unreasonable."

The perfectionist procrastinator has a particularly difficult time at home, because at home there might not be any significant authority over him demanding performance with time limited to a deadline.  Things can be put off forever, or until the consequences of delay become so overwhelming that the job finally gets done.  If single, the procrastinator must do all the household work by themselves, meaning that their home is usually unkempt, dirty, with dishes in the sink and clothes overwhelming the hamper.  This lack of tidiness in the house proves so overwhelming to the perfectionist procrastinator that many unhealthy emotions come to the surface, such as guilt, depression, and anxiety.  Guilt is especially prevalent because the procrastinator feels as though they must be a failure to live in such disarray.  They certainly won't allow friends over to see their apartment because it is so dirty and unkempt.  It would take too long to fix up - just too much energy.  They didn't grow up in squalor, yet they can't seem to get things together - no matter how much they tried to fix the house, they just can't do it.  Nothing they do is perfect so why do anything at all.

All or Nothing Procrastinator

As the last illustration showed, the perfectionist procrastinator often feels that the entire task must be done now - or else the job just can't be done right and they should therefore do nothing.  This time imperative puts even more stress on the perfectionist because not only must the job be done perfectly, it must all be done at once.  If the garage has to be cleaned out, the entire garage must be fastidiously cleaned, rearranged, catalogued, straightened, and displayed at once, or else the garage would be less than perfect during the interim.  This all or nothing attitude toward the job turns what should be a relatively simple task into an overwhelming drudgery that would better be put off until later.  Any intermediate stage of garage cleaning just isn't acceptable - the whole job must be done at once, and done perfectly - or just not done at all.  The whole task becomes just so painful and overwhelming that it never gets done.  Yet, what the perfectionist procrastinator is left with is a dirty, unkempt garage that will speak volumes of guilt and impose diatribe every time the garage is entered.  The procrastinator will begin to feel more and more like a failure, and eventually begin to feel that they are totally inadequate and experience increasingly lowered self-esteem.

The Procrastinator and Catastrophic Thinking

Catastrophic think is when the consequences of an event are blown out of proportion to the probable outcome - any small failure might have huge consequences that could prove devastating for himself or his family.  The person in this difficult situation feels that no matter how hard he tires, there is the possibility however remote, that disaster might occur which might entirely ruin his life.  The procrastinator will become so overwhelmed with the possibilities of failure that he just can't deal with the problem and it is put off because he is so sure that disaster is immanent - or at least possible.  These people won't get a report done because they are sue that they might fail and get a bad grade.  Or they won't call up their special girlfriend because they are sure they will get turned down, or go for a job interview because they are sure they won't be hired.  Eventually, this catastrophic thinking becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because they do become failures - simply because they don't do anything.  Often, these people can become so withdrawn and helpless that their effectiveness as a person is totally neutralized.

Admittedly, these are extreme cases, but each one of us I am sure has some trace of procrastination in their past - some more than others.  Procrastination in its mild form can be a way of temporarily dealing with problems when they might threaten to overwhelm and could even be appropriate under certain circumstances.  Yet, procrastination is too often used inappropriately as a means for delaying work into the future somewhere rather than getting the job done now.

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