More on Procrastination: the Un-Schedule

[mousme]

The more I listen to Tim Pychyl's podcast, the more I like it. I wish I had the intellectual focus to not only retain what's being said, but to synthesise it properly in order to explain why I like it so much.

I tried a trick he suggested today (not his own idea, but a good one nonetheless), that he calls the "un-schedule." He did give the attribution for the idea, but I can't remember it. My memory is crap these days, which is a post for another day.

This notion rests on a couple of premises. The first is that we ("we" being "procrastinators" for the sake of this post) are poor predictors of our own future affect. "I'll feel more like this tomorrow," or "I'll get up early in order to get this project done," are things we tell ourselves when we procrastinate, but we're deluding ourselves in the process. We're predicting that our mood will somehow magically change in the future to suit the aversive task at hand. This is, of course, patently untrue.

The second premise is that we are also poor predictors of the future in general. Procrastinators tend to view "tomorrow" or other days as a blank slate, as if we don't have any commitments at all and the day is just one giant, gaping void of free time. The truth is that our days are filled with smaller commitments (and sometimes larger ones!) that take up a lot more time than we like to think.

The "un-schedule" therefore suggests that we schedule ourselves backward. Think about tomorrow, list ALL the things you do every day and how much time they take, and then work out how much time is actually left over. So if I were to list a day off work, I'd have to factor in, say, showering and breakfast and lunch and dinner and washing dishes and helping to wrangle Bean and all that stuff that doesn't even register as a to-do list. It's just stuff that needs to get done no matter what.

I've done it for tomorrow as an exercise, since I want to get my Ontario driver's license and health card organised before I go to work for my night shift. I've devoted the entire morning to it, leaving myself some free time in the afternoon as a contingency plan, even with everything else I need to do as a matter of course on a work day. I think the health card needs an appointment, but I'll take one when I'm there if I have to. What's more important is the driver's license and changing my car registration. Then I'll deal with switching my insurance over, hopefully after the claim goes through for the last little fender-bender I was in (*sigh*).

The un-schedule was an interesting exercise, and one I'll probably repeat in the future, to see how well it works for me. I don't think I can adequately judge how efficacious it is after just one attempt.

I'll likely be posting more about procrastination and other personal/mental health stuff in the future, since that's what's on my mind these days. Don't be surprised if that's the majority of what you see here for a while. At least I'm posting, right? :P

Comments

[pkwench.livejournal.com]

I think that's the same approach I just took with my budget for the this month & January when attempting to factor how much I cold spend. Xmas.

Makes sense really - you're budgeting your time. :) My procrastination all lies within the realm of "yeah, don' wanna." Because i suck like that. Mew.

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's where my procrastination lies too, make no mistake. It's just that I also tend to tell myself that I can always do it later, as if "later" will magically be a better time in which to do it. "Later" becomes this phantasmagorical time when I won't be tired, when the task will somehow become pleasant, when I'll have the time to do it "properly," etc. Basically, insert self-delusion here. :P

It is pretty much budgeting. Which is also a thing I need to do with money. I was doing okay for a while, there, but I need to start paying attention to my spending again. Christmas sort of threw me for a loop this year, which I don't think has ever happened before.

[jmathieson-fic.livejournal.com]

Thank you for recommending these podcasts! I downloaded the first few, and listened to the first and second this morning while doing 30 minutes of brisk walking on the treadmill (being doubly productive!) They are academic/intellectual enough to satisfy me, and I really like the fact that he lives on a small farm in Eastern Ontario, so he (hopefully) won't be assuming/suggesting things that only work for people who live in cities/have a certain type of lifestyle/etc.

[mousme.livejournal.com]

The podcasts are great to listen to while attending to other things that don't require much concentration (like the treadmill!). Like you, I really appreciate the mix of academic/intellectual material along with the more practical suggestions. This is less of a self-help podcast than serious and rigorous academic thought on the psychological issue of procrastination, which I find much more useful than any of the other pop-psychology materials I found before.

He talks more about his hobby farm and his sled dogs later on, which is a lot of fun to hear about as well (though it's obviously not the focus of his podcast). I hope it remains enjoyable for you! I'm still working my way through them, as each podcast varies from 15 minutes to about an hour, and I find I want to take the time to try to absorb the message in each one thoroughly before going on to the next.