Procrastination

by Lisa Philippart, Licensed Professional Counselor

ally want to do CrossFit. In this case, procrastination is your mind trying to help. It’s saying, “Stop lying to yourself! Yes, it’s the cool, trendy thing to do right now, but there’s probably a form of exercise that’s much more conducive to your personality...which would make it easier to stick with it long term.”

Or your mind may be telling you that you do want the thing, but you aren’t clear enough about why. Consequently, procrastination is a values problem not a productivity problem. Values help motivate us to stick with and follow through on difficult tasks...but only if they’re really clear and specific. For example, maybe you value creativity, but in the abstract that will not motivate you to write that book you keep thinking about. If you could clarify your value of creativity, it might be more motivating. Saying to yourself, “Creativity matters to me because I feel most alive when I’m creating. I love the excitement and the rush or flow of being so caught up in the moment, I totally lose track of time.” Working harder is rarely the solution to chronic procrastination because it begs the question of why you can’t work harder. The uncomfortable but obvious solution is often that we can only work hard for longer periods of time if we truly value the thing we are working on. The question to ask is this, “Do I procrastinate because I’m lazy or do I procrastinate because I’m not totally honest or clear with myself about how much I value my work?”

Many people grow up with a deep-seated belief that you have to be hard on yourself if you want to be successful. And it seems to work! However, correlation is not causation. Just because you beat yourself up with self-criticism anytime you had a tough challenge ahead, and then succeeded, that doesn’t mean you succeeded because of your self-criticism. In my opinion, most people are successful despite their self-criticism, not because of it. So rather than being critical ahead of a big challenge, try being supportive, like you would for a friend. Remind yourself that it’s normal to feel re- sistance to doing meaningful, hard work. Give yourself a few examples from the past where you felt really unmotivated but still got the job done. It’s simply giving yourself permission to not be a jerk to yourself. You are the only one who can substitute a selfcriticism habit for a selfcompassion habit.

Lisa Philippart is a Licensed Professional Counselor, providing mental health services through her own private practice in Madison, Alabama.