Procrastination snips.
Developing and maintaining our sense of competence plays an essential role in our ability to pursue our goals effectively. In fact, to the extent that we feel competent, our fears of the potential for failure are not related to our procrastination.
The question now is how do we foster that sense of competence in our lives that is so essential to our well-being? Competence, sometimes known as self-efficacy or our confidence in our ability, is built on earlier success. It is an upward spiral of confidence in our ability based on previous experience. It's also partly perception. When we recall the past, what do we recall? Where do we put our focus? Are we feeding our fears by remembering times when we did fail (because we all do at times), or are we optimistically and strategically focusing on our many successes to bolster our sense of competence? The choice is ours (ok, there are personality differences here, and we may discuss those at another time, but it is ultimately up to us).
As the image of the sign for this blog post said so clearly, "What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?" The attempt is the "courage to be", and our well-being depends on our moving forward with this courage in our lives.
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Recognizing your own indecision, your own inaction on an intention, you're experiencing existential anguish. You're caught between the future (your ought or ideal self as a result of the action) and the present which is not this future. This is an empty feeling. Existentialist writers say that in anguish we feel like we no longer exist. Our lives fall into the empty space between the anticipation and action.
The space between anticipation and action is where we live with procrastination. In this space also lies our anguish of self defeat, of inaction, indecision, of not getting on with life itself. Sounds pretty ominous when stated this way doesn't it? Sounds sort of true too.
Of course, there are not simple solutions to a problem of procrastination that arises from a sense of meaninglessness. From the existentialist perspective as defined by the theologian, Paul Tillich, the issue is one of courage. This means "being in spite of," for example, courage in spite of anxiety, courage in spite of not feeling like it. In fact, Tillich believed that the courage we really need is the courage to persist and continue in the face of feelings of guilt of meaninglessness.
For chronic procrastination that stems from a deep sense of meaninglessness in life, "being in spite of" defines the existentialist's "therapy." In spite of feeling overwhelmed by the task at hand, in spite of not feeling like doing it, in spite of fearing failure, in spite of seeing little value in a necessary task, the answer is courage to persist and continue. This choice will define you, just as the choice not to persist, to needlessly delay has already defined you through procrastination.
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Participants in the high procrastination group ("procrastinators") had greater discrepancies than non-procrastinators in how they perceived their self-concept characteristics and self-presentational tactics. Specifically, procrastinators had larger discrepancies between actual- and ought-selves as well as actual- and undesired-selves. As the authors note, the results are consistent with previous research ". . . such that actual-ought discrepancy was the best predictor of procrastination.
Procrastinators feel the weight of the ought self, what is expected of them, "what they ought to be doing" instead of what they're actually doing. Even when they finally achieve their goals, perhaps with their typical "last-minute efforts," the emotion is often one of relief as opposed real pleasure in their accomplishments. When they aren't acting, when their actual selves are far off their ought selves, their emotions are typically agitation, guilt and anxiety.
We've seen this form of avoidance in relation to the expectations of others earlier with our consideration of socially-prescribed perfectionism. When we're trying to live up to others' expectations (others' prescriptions of our ought self), we're more likely to procrastinate. We've also discussed this in relation to making the tasks in our lives our own - authentically living our lives in a way where we identify with our tasks in relation to our values and goals (see for example the blog entry about existentialism, self-deception and procrastination.
To the extent that we live our lives in pursuit of our ideal selves (our hopes), as opposed to trying to live up to our ought selves or trying to avoid our feared undesired selves, we may well be on the path to effective, authentic action and less needless task delay motivated by falsely internalized goals.
The question now is how do we foster that sense of competence in our lives that is so essential to our well-being? Competence, sometimes known as self-efficacy or our confidence in our ability, is built on earlier success. It is an upward spiral of confidence in our ability based on previous experience. It's also partly perception. When we recall the past, what do we recall? Where do we put our focus? Are we feeding our fears by remembering times when we did fail (because we all do at times), or are we optimistically and strategically focusing on our many successes to bolster our sense of competence? The choice is ours (ok, there are personality differences here, and we may discuss those at another time, but it is ultimately up to us).
As the image of the sign for this blog post said so clearly, "What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?" The attempt is the "courage to be", and our well-being depends on our moving forward with this courage in our lives.
--------
Recognizing your own indecision, your own inaction on an intention, you're experiencing existential anguish. You're caught between the future (your ought or ideal self as a result of the action) and the present which is not this future. This is an empty feeling. Existentialist writers say that in anguish we feel like we no longer exist. Our lives fall into the empty space between the anticipation and action.
The space between anticipation and action is where we live with procrastination. In this space also lies our anguish of self defeat, of inaction, indecision, of not getting on with life itself. Sounds pretty ominous when stated this way doesn't it? Sounds sort of true too.
Of course, there are not simple solutions to a problem of procrastination that arises from a sense of meaninglessness. From the existentialist perspective as defined by the theologian, Paul Tillich, the issue is one of courage. This means "being in spite of," for example, courage in spite of anxiety, courage in spite of not feeling like it. In fact, Tillich believed that the courage we really need is the courage to persist and continue in the face of feelings of guilt of meaninglessness.
For chronic procrastination that stems from a deep sense of meaninglessness in life, "being in spite of" defines the existentialist's "therapy." In spite of feeling overwhelmed by the task at hand, in spite of not feeling like doing it, in spite of fearing failure, in spite of seeing little value in a necessary task, the answer is courage to persist and continue. This choice will define you, just as the choice not to persist, to needlessly delay has already defined you through procrastination.
---------------
Participants in the high procrastination group ("procrastinators") had greater discrepancies than non-procrastinators in how they perceived their self-concept characteristics and self-presentational tactics. Specifically, procrastinators had larger discrepancies between actual- and ought-selves as well as actual- and undesired-selves. As the authors note, the results are consistent with previous research ". . . such that actual-ought discrepancy was the best predictor of procrastination.
Procrastinators feel the weight of the ought self, what is expected of them, "what they ought to be doing" instead of what they're actually doing. Even when they finally achieve their goals, perhaps with their typical "last-minute efforts," the emotion is often one of relief as opposed real pleasure in their accomplishments. When they aren't acting, when their actual selves are far off their ought selves, their emotions are typically agitation, guilt and anxiety.
We've seen this form of avoidance in relation to the expectations of others earlier with our consideration of socially-prescribed perfectionism. When we're trying to live up to others' expectations (others' prescriptions of our ought self), we're more likely to procrastinate. We've also discussed this in relation to making the tasks in our lives our own - authentically living our lives in a way where we identify with our tasks in relation to our values and goals (see for example the blog entry about existentialism, self-deception and procrastination.
To the extent that we live our lives in pursuit of our ideal selves (our hopes), as opposed to trying to live up to our ought selves or trying to avoid our feared undesired selves, we may well be on the path to effective, authentic action and less needless task delay motivated by falsely internalized goals.