The Healthy Management of Reality - Stanford University

“Thinking and thinking about this right now is not going to help me now,however. The best thing to do is getting started now. I need to come up with away to avoid procrastinating so much in the future. But focusing on that right nowwill just be a way to procrastinate some more. What I need to do now is beginworking with these materials.” (You begin.)Notice that the process does not involve seeing the world through rosecoloredglasses, or denying the difficulty you are facing. You have something youneed to do. You have procrastinated yourself into a corner. Coaching yourselfmeans starting from where you are, acknowledging the reality of the situation, andtrying to talk yourself through it, as you might do for someone you really careabout.When this approach is used skillfully, it can lead to both short-term andlong-term benefits. In the case above, you have finally begun something you hadto do. In two hours, you will be that much ahead in your project (as opposed tohaving frittered away another two hours). After the project is done, you could usethe same technique to plan a way of changing this pattern or procrastination in thefuture. For example, you could use the self-coaching method earlier in the processnext time. Practicing how to use this skill could gradually lead to lessening theprocrastination pattern you have developed. Since it probably took many years todevelop, it is probably unreasonable to think you can get rid of it immediately.Here is where a probabilistic, gradual approach comes in. The more you practicethis method of coaching yourself, the better you will get at it, and the more patternsyou will be able to relearn.HMOR.July2005.Muñoz.doc 77