Full disclosure: I didn’t like this book very much, because there were 10-15 pages out of several hundred that I found relevant or interesting, and I resented marching through so much book. However, the parts I did get were useful.
I also liked that the author is not someone who himself struggles much with PB:
I almost hesitate to tell you that I keep my desk clean and organized, that I rarely strain to meet deadlines, that I am almost never stymied in my work. I hope you won’t hold those things against me; I do them with only a modicum of self-righteousness.
The larger part of my interest in PB, however, came of necessity and caring. As a professor I have struggled to understand why so many students put off studying and writing until they must work in a rushed, superficial, and miserable fashion. As an adviser, I have shared the anguish of graduate students who could nor get past the immobilization of writing blocks to finish dissertations and whose careers consequently were ruined. I have labored to comprehend the reasons why most new professors work in an obviously inefficient, maladaptive manner and so undermine their potentials of success and happiness.
Most self help books are written by people close to the problems, obviously, and I feel suspicious about how skewed self help in general might be as a result.
Some quotes on people prone to procrastination and blockage
(Boice calls these people “PBers”)
- “PBers’ own interpretation of what they do (for example, supposing their problems consist of inborn, somewhat admirable tendencies to perfectionism)”
- “Chronic PBers … remain unskilled at seeing that their PBing is not sporadic and unique… treat each new deadline as novel, each new challenge as unlike the others… quick starts, in contrast, show more accuracy in noticing PB and its general patterns”
- “pessimistically assumed that accepting a mentor would be too great an imposition on any colleague worth working with or they took the stance that they needed no help to survive the tenure process”
- “People obsessed by time aren’t just hard on themselves but also on co-workers, whom they see impatiently, as slow-moving obstacles”
Pillars of PB
Boice differentiates between procrastination (delaying work at all) and blocking (mind blank when actually start) but does not have different models/prescriptions for those two problems. He thinks the three pillars of both behaviors are:
- Impulsivity, which is combated by exercises for calming, slowing, ‘active waiting’
- Mindlessness (“a readiness to move into habitual patterns of easy, mindless acts … including withdrawal from the confusion”), which is combated by working in a process mode: small regularly and timely bits of chores that ensure timely starting, momentum, and stopping, with clear goals
- Pessimism (a byproduct of the first two that worsens future problems)
He thinks impulsivity is a failure of self management and mindlessness is a failure of task management – of solving the wrong problem .
A model of how self regulation fails:
- Standards are vague, unrealistic, or inappropriate
- ⇒ impatient thinking takes over to suppress rumination
- ⇒ self-monitoring is reduced as discomforts are put out of mind
Things non-PBers have in their workflow
- (everything unsurprising to me in one bullet point) Organization (such as use of outlines), seeking information, goal setting, seeking social assistance, self evaluation, good initial task representations
- Rehearsing: “They rehearse the whole process of important things they will do, including the solution, beforehand” (I’ve heard this about painting but have never managed to do it)
- Summarizing and reviewing records
- Quickly turning to the task itself
- Writing sessions that are not hypomanic or binge-y
- “Finding the ideal pace for each task”
- (so, try both slowing down and speeding up if the pace doesn’t seem right)
On binge work
- Bingeing has a powerful attractiveness due to the short term rewards
- Procrastinators are probably forced into the pattern by not knowing how to work in a steady regular way
- There’s less self monitoring during bingeing (and work quality may be lower)
Boice says non-PBers recognize that hypomania as motivation is often followed up by depression.
I’m going to register skepticism. I think you can just be normal after creative hypomania – or rather, that any subsequent depression is due to attachment to the hypomania rather than any intrinsic ‘crash’
While I agree that relying on creative hypomania is not a good path to success, I expect that, usually, embracing hypomania when it does come is not going to harm your productivity – because whatever drop there is afterwards is more than compensated for by the productivity of the hypomanic episode, regardless of your baseline.
Interventions
Wait
Don’t rush. Exercises for calming, slowing, and noticing before and during starts. (At first glance, this rule seems at odds with the second.)
Elsewhere in the book he uses the term ‘active waiting’, which I don’t think he defines, but whose meaning was intuitive to me immediately. When I’ve practiced it, it feels quite a lot like a mindfulness exercise, but instead of e.g. the breath you’re monitoring my own orientation towards the task. Instead of thinking “I wonder what the next outbreath will be like”, I’m thinking “I wonder what idea/feeling I’ll have next about the task”.
Begin before feeling ready
The second rule coaches writers in systematic ways of finding imagination and confidence; writers practice regular bouts of collecting, filing, rearranging, and outlining ideas while making sure they solve the right problems and have the right materials and plans at hand. This second rule, incidentally, is often mastered before the first; there is no necessary chronology.
Work in brief, daily sessions.
Work regularly at prewriting, at writing, and additional things easily.
Stop
Ideally, stop before running out of steam.
Stop when breaks are needed or enough has been done for the day. This most difficult rule is practiced by means of planned breaks, by stopping early (often in the midst of tasks), and with external reminders (e.g. social cues, like a prearranged phone call).
Also: “When I am not working, I must relax – not work on something else.”
Emendation around 2025feb – Stop time should be a range – when stop timer goes off, that’s should be your “stop sometime in the next 10m” timer. Obviously, set that 10m timer immediately. Spend those 10m wrapping up immediate work and jotting down any notes future you will actually appreciate when picking up again.
Pre-work
Balance preliminaries with writing. Schedule periods of delay before actual writing, for collecting, organizing, and conceptual outlining. Attentively notice and plan while getting ready.
Since reading this books, I’ve experimented planning out work blocks where the pre-work is its own step – I gather materials and rehearse what I’m going to do. If I notice there’s some great confusion that keeps me from rehearsing, this is a blocker and the work session actually needs to be about unconfusing myself on the goal or the steps.
others
There were five more items in the interventions section, which I didn’t find as valuable as described by the author, and won’t type up fully:
- supplant self defeating habits
- manage emotions
- moderate attachments
- let critics do some of the work
- limit wasted effort
Cheat sheet
I hand-wrote the following out (it’s a reorganization of everything I’ve already summarized above, nothing new) into a page in my journal and have referred to it 5+ times when I notice I’m procrastinating or blocked.
Why is this happening to me. Why, god,
When standards are vague or inappropriate, I impulsively move into mindless behaviors to withdraw from the confusion, which reduces self-monitoring and efficacy. I want to review the standards / task representation, be more process oriented, and practice “active waiting”
Habits
Do (the most procrastination-inducing) work every day – for me this is house maintenance, responding to emails, and fiction writing
Zooming in
Preparing for work
- Outline ideas, make sure I have the right materials and plans at hand. Make sure I have a task representation, and that I have a clear sense of the methods I want to try to get there
- If goals feel really undefined, then defining them correctly is the work of the work session. (This will probably entail reviewing records of previous work.) That’s fine, just be aware of it so you don’t get frustrated that the pre-work is ballooning
- Rehearse the whole process of important things they will do, including the solution, beforehand
- Decide on the predetermined stopping time
Entering work
- Quickly turn to the task itself. Don’t hesitate. Do it before you feel ready
Work itself:
- Find the ideal pace for each task – so, try both slowing down and speeding up if the pace doesn’t seem right
- 10-50m session
Stopping and resting
- Stop at the predetermined stopping range (between when your initial stop timer goes off and 10m after that).
- If necessary, record the work briefly (minutes, words, the nature of the problem and solution, how I felt about the quality/speed)
Troubleshooting Are you missing any of
- Seeking information
- Goal setting
- Good task representations
- Organization (spreadsheets, outlines)
- Self evaluation
- Summarizing and reviewing records
- Correct pacing for each task
- Asking for help