文章转自我最最最最喜欢的Blog: Wait But Why 

https://waitbutwhy.com/
每篇文章都有中英文两个版本
如果你们喜欢,告诉我哈
这个是拖延症系列的第二篇文章,请先阅读👇的文章

人为什么会拖延-著名Ted Talk-中英版
如何打败拖延症
拖延症：pro-cras-ti-na-tion |prəˌkrastəˈnāSHən, prō-|
名词：
释义：一种没有任何理由毁掉你自己人生的行为。
我首先想说，非常讽刺的是，我在写这篇“战胜拖延症”的时候，自己就正在被拖延症虐的死去活来。我觉得自己就像是在介绍枪械安全时开枪打中了自己的脚趾一样。我和广大拖延症患者一起，衷心希望未来的帖子能够不受拖延症的困扰。
开始讨论几点注意事项：
  • 我不是什么有心理医师资格证的专业人士，只不过是一个一辈子都在和拖延症作斗争的普通人罢了。虽然我还没有完全战胜拖延症，但是我在过去的几年里已经有了明显的进展，我这篇文章就是向大家介绍那些我使用过的证明有效的方法。
  • 这个帖子里面，我说的拖延症人群包括“真性拖延症”和“假性拖延症”。这两种拖延症患者的界限其实没那么分明，我认识的人经常从假的变成真的，再变回去。但是如果你已经是“晚期拖延症”患者，那么可能这篇文章的内容就不太足够够能解决你的问题了。
  • 这个帖子没有按时发表，不是因为我写了几千年。而是因为昨天晚上当我本来应该打开电脑写这个帖子的时候，我却打开了谷歌地球，然后在全世界飞来飞去，最后在印度的上空逛了好几个小时。没什么理由，大概只是因为我觉得我应该“多了解点印度“。我真是病的不轻。
这个帖子里面我会更加专业严肃一些，因为虽然大家都很喜欢开拖延症患者的玩笑，但是对很多人来说这是个实实在在的，非常影响幸福感的问题。
那么让我们开始。上个星期我们深入拖延症患者的内心挣扎，仔细观察了拖延的心理机制是怎么样子的。但是这个星期我们想要解决拖延症这个问题，我们需要进行深入的观察。让我们首先解开拖延症患者的心结，思考一下到底拖延为什么发生：
我们已经知道了即时奖励猴子，也知道这只猴子能够打败理智占领人们的行为控制中心，最终让我们拖延，但是真实情况比这个还要复杂。
拖延症患者拖延已经成了习惯，甚至到了成瘾的边缘。他们一直习惯于让那个猴子赢得战斗。虽然他们觉得自己在和拖延症进行着斗争，但是用的都是每次都失败的老方法。其实内心深处，他们知道猴子最后会赢的。他发誓要改变现状，但是这些誓言最后都付诸东流。那么为什么一个有理智的人，要这样子一遍遍重蹈覆辙？
这个问题的答案是，他对于战胜拖延症没有信心。所以他一遍一遍地被这种自我奴役击败。拖延症犯病的一般套路是这样子的：
那些“需要做的事情”，我要等到最后一分钟再去着手。然后这种紧张让我惊慌失措，导致我要不是不能做出最好的工作，要不就是直接崩溃什么都做不了。至于“想要做的事情”，我要不就坚持不到最后，或者，哦我们就诚实点吧，我根本就不去开始。
拖延症这种病的发生并不是毫无理由的。想要解决它，光是“自律“或者”改掉坏习惯“这种没用的字眼都是不够的。他问题的源头深深植根于他们的犯病套路中，所以要想改掉拖延症，就必须改掉他们每天的套路。
在我们试图改变拖延症患者的套路之前，我们首先要搞明白，拖延症患者最终的康复目标。正确的做事习惯到底应该是什么样子的，而拖延症患者都是在哪里遇到的问题呢？
完成一件事， 开始：计划。

计划

拖延症患者最喜欢计划了！为什么？很简单，因为计划不需要你去真正的做什么事情，而做事就是拖延症患者的死穴。
但是在拖延症患者做计划的时候，他们喜欢用一种模糊而且不考虑现实和细节的方式来计划，所以他们的计划最后导致他们什么都做不成。拖延症患者的计划就是行动者的噩梦：
计划里都是模糊不清，吓人的任务和事业。

这样子一个充满矫情吓人的任务的计划，真是让即时奖励猴子呵呵了。当你这么列计划的时候，猴子会说：“哦呵呵，这样子真是完美的不得了。而且超界简单呢！”就算你的年幼无知的良心觉得自己能够在某个时候能够完成这个列表，但是猴子心知肚明，在你的潜意识里面，你根本就不想去完成这些任务。
但是事物的另一面，有效的计划反而能够帮助你成功的完成任务。有效计划的需要你能够做到“模糊而吓人”计划做不到的：

有效计划越长越好，并且要有优先级：

一个有效计划刚开始应该越长越好，但是在计划的后期，你应该给每一个任务都进行分级，直到最后得到一个最重要的任务。这个任务应该是对你最重要的，具体一点，这个任务应该是最能够增加你的幸福感的。如果有其他要紧的任务需要尽快完成，那么就尽快完成这些任务，以便给那些重要的任务留下足够的时间。拖延症患者非常喜欢用那些“紧急任务”来当作借口，把重要的任务一直往后拖。

有效计划能够让那些模糊不清的任务变得清晰起来。

我们都清楚那些所谓的“模糊”任务是怎么回事。一个模糊的任务含糊不清，模棱两可，你既不知道应该从哪里下手，也不知道有了问题应该去哪里寻求答案。
假设你的梦想是做一个属于自己的手机应用，因为你知道如果你作出了这个应用你就有可能炒了你的老板，变成一个全职的程序员。你肯定不会花钱去把这个程序外包给别人，因为你也觉得不会编程在21世纪就算是文盲了。所以你决定把“最重要任务”这个桂冠给予”学编程“。真是让人为之一振是不是？
呃，其实一点都不让人为之一振。因为”学编程“这个任务实在是太模糊了。每次你觉得你应该开始做这项任务的时候，你同时会觉得你应该检查一下你的邮箱收件箱，或者你的厨房地板该清理了。你永远都不可能靠着“学编程”真正开始学习编程。
为了使我们的这个条目变得清晰，你需要通过阅读，研究，问问题来搞清楚到底如何学习编程，你需要清楚学习编程需要哪些必须的步骤，而且你需要知道每一步需要多长时间。于是搞清一个任务就让“学编程”：
变成了这个：

有效计划把吓人的项目变成可以实现的，清晰，便于管理的小任务：

模糊任务加上吓人项目就变成了即时奖励猴子的大补丸。就算你把任务变得不那么模糊了，这并不代表你的任务就变得不吓人了。让任务变得不那么吓人，需要明白以下事实：
一个伟大，光辉的成就从长远来看，都是由一系列很多平凡，不光辉的任务组成的。
没有人能够“造一座房子”。人们只能一块砖一块瓦地垒，最后才能得到一座房子。拖延症患者都是伟大的梦想家，他们最爱幻想自己未来有一天能够建造的别墅，但是他们真正需要做的，是做一个灰头土脸的建筑师，每天有条不紊地垒一些砖块，直到有一天房子赫然出现在面前。

基本上所有庞大的事业，都可以被分解为一个核心的步骤，也就是房子的砖块。真正的作家每天都写几页东西，放几块砖头，但是那些急功近利的作家什么都不写。这两类作家的每一天98%都是相同的，唯一不同的就是者几页作品。但是一年以后，真正的作家已经完成了书的初稿，但是急功近利的作家还是什么都没有。
所以最后事情都归结于着小小的砖块。
不过好消息是，垒一块砖并不是什么吓人的事情。但是垒砖块这种事情需要计划，所以计划的最后一步是把垒砖块整合到你的日历里面去。每一个垒砖块的计划都必须完成，没有任何商量和妥协的余地。毕竟，这项任务是“最重要的”，最能给你带来幸福感的，不是么？开始执行任务的第一天是最重要的。你没办法计划“九月份开始学编程”，但是你可以计划“九月21日7:00－8:00学编程“。
好了，现在你已经学会了如何进行有效的计划，那么就让我们开始考虑如何继续”行动“：

行动

并不是拖延症患者不喜欢“行动”这个概念。他们看着自己日历上面搬砖的计划，心里想着“太好了，一定很有意思”。他们这么想，完全是因为他们在心中描绘未来完成任务的情景的时候，完全忘记了吧即时奖励猴子这个元素加入他们的考虑之中。拖延症患者的未来愿景中似乎从来都没有猴子。
但是当日历上需要搬砖垒砖的时刻真正到来了，拖延症患者就开始做他们最擅长的事情了——把控制权拱手交给猴子，然后让猴子把一切都玩坏。
既然我们刚才已经得出了结论，完成某件事最后都可以分解成一件件小任务，我们似乎已经确定并且孤立了问题所在。让我们画个图来描述垒砖块时刻的具体挑战：
这个图展示了每次你开始任务时的挑战，不管你是要为了明天的展示做PPT，还是去慢跑，写剧本，或者其他什么你想要做的事情。”关键入口“是你正式开始着手于任务。“黑暗森林”是正在做任务的过程。一旦你完成了任务，你就到达了”快乐游乐场“这个地方。在这里，你能够享受到完成任务的如释重负和满足感。有时候你做任务无比专注，以至于你进入了所谓的”心流“，在心流中你完全沉浸在任务中，忘记了时间的流逝。
这些应该走的路径看起来应该是这样子的：
看起来挺简单的，是吧？
呃，可惜的是对于拖延症患者来说，他们一般都看不到“快乐游乐场”和“心流”。
举个例子，这就是某些从来都不会开始任务的拖延症患者，因为他从来都找不到“关键入口”。他一般都在黑暗游乐场之中游荡好几个小时，自怨自艾，完不成任何任务。
Dark woods pro 1
下图是某些开始任务的拖延症患者，纵使他们开始了，他们没法保持自己注意力的集中，而且他总暂停任务开始上网水微博或者做饭什么的。他同样也完不成什么任务：
下图是不能鼓起勇气开始工作的拖延症患者。就算是Deadline马上就要临近了，他还是花了很多时间在黑暗游乐场闲逛，虽然他心里很清楚不开始工作自己的生活就会变得很悲剧。最后，Deadline离得太紧了，惊慌怪一下子冲出来把他吓得连滚带爬冲过黑暗森林，马马虎虎完成任务。
在完成了任务之后，他觉得感觉还挺爽的，因为自己至少完成了应该做的任务。但是他也有点不爽，因为他知道自己是在压力之下突击完成了任务，如果自己早点开始的话，应该能够更好地完成任务。而且，他觉得自己吧一整天地时间都荒废掉了，要是没有这有这么毫无原因地拖延的话，他可能现在已经在外面和朋友吃喝玩乐了。这个心情把他放在了“纠结空地“。
所以，如果你哦是一个拖延症患者，让我们看一看怎样能够把你引到正确的路上去，让你的生活更加快乐。
你需要第一件需要做的事情就是，你必须穿过“关键入口”。这个意味着你必须放下手里一切的那些不重要的事情，屏蔽一切干扰，并且马上开始工作。但是这是最难的一部分，在这里即使奖励猴子的反抗最激烈。
猴子最讨厌的就是停止做开心事，开始做难事。这个时候你一定要坚强，如果你能够成功把猴子拖进黑暗森林，你就消磨了它的一部分意志。
但是它不是太可能马上就放弃。
黑暗森林是你工作的地方。这个地方没什么好玩的，而我们的即时奖励猴子很显然不想再这个地方多呆一分钟。让事情更加困难的是，黑暗森林周围都是黑暗游乐场，一不小心，你就被猴子拉扯着拖进了黑暗游乐场。
有时候你也会撞到树上：比如你慢跑的时候遇到了上坡，你做Excel的时候遇到了你一个不会的功能你需要上网查一查，或者你正在写的歌就是怎么弄都不顺耳。这时候你的猴子就萌生了最大胆的越狱念头。
现在离开黑暗森林到黑暗游乐场去是不理智的。因为他们都是黑漆漆的，人不喜欢呆的地方。但他们的区别是，黑暗森林最后会把你引出这一片没有人性的漆黑地狱。但是猴子没什么逻辑，在他眼里这个黑暗游乐场看起来更好玩。
好消息是，如果你能鼓起勇气在黑暗森林继续前进，一些有趣的事情就会发生。在执行任务的时候一旦有了进展，你的成就感和自尊心都会得到增强。猴子以低自尊为动力，如果你获得了成就感，那么猴子这之后就得到了一个香蕉作为奖励，不那么难以控制了。虽然这个香蕉不能完全消灭它抵抗的决心，但是足够麻痹它很久了。具体的效果就是，你发现拖延的欲望暂时消失了
然后如果你继续下去，你就会发现一些有魔力的事情开始发生。一旦你完成了任务的2/3或者3/4，尤其是任务进展顺利的时候，你突然开始觉得一切都变得棒极了，而完成任务也不再那么遥不可及。这时候就是“临界点”：
临界点的好处就在于，不光你可以闻到快乐游乐场的味道，猴子也可以。猴子根本不管那些即时奖励是哪里来的，不管你是否付出了努力，只要面前有奖励它就要冲过去。一旦你到达了临界点，猴子就不再愿意跑回黑暗游乐场，而是向着快乐游乐场前进。这时候你的实际感受就是，你失去了所有拖延的冲动，和猴子一起冲向终点线。
你还没有意识到怎么回事，你就已经把任务完成了。现在你终于到达了快乐游乐场。经历千辛万苦，你和你的猴子终于齐心协力完成了一件事。你们都想玩得开心，但是这时候你不会再有负罪感，因为你现在玩得就有资格了。当你和猴子能够齐心协力的时候，你总是开心的。
在你突破了临界点之后，具体取决于你完成任务的类型和情况，你可能开始觉得自己在做的事情简直碉堡了，碉堡到你觉得继续工作比停下来玩更加有趣。这时候你已经对任务入迷了，以至于你对其他事情都没有了兴趣，比如时间和食物。心流不但是一种快乐的感受，大多数伟大的事业都是在心流中完成的。
猴子和你一样对心流成瘾，这时候你们又开始同心协力了。
努力穿越临界点试衣间很难的事，但是更难的事却是即时奖励猴子有一个很短的记忆周期。就算你周一工作非常成功，到了周二或者周三，猴子就什么都忘了，又开始阻拦你进入黑暗森林。
这就是为什么坚持是成功最关键的因素。每摆放一块砖头，你就经历了一次内心的挣扎，——直到最后，每天的重复才让获得了对自己和这个世界的掌控。
所以这就是战胜拖延症的必经之路。但是如果拖延症患者读了这个帖子就不治而愈，那么拖延症也就不会是这么大的问题了。只有一个可以战胜拖延症的实实在在的办法：
你需要向自己证明，你可以做到。

你需要向自己证明自己可以做到，而不是告诉自己明天自己大概可以完成任务。直到你向自己证明了这一点，你永远都不相信自己有能力做到更好，有能力改变自己。
那么你怎样才能开始向自己证明呢？
  1. 你要开始让自己相信，所有你做的事情都源于你的自由选择。
    你要开始思考我们在这个帖子里面提到的各种术语，如果你觉得在理，那么就把它们写下来。我给这些现象起名字，比如即时奖励猴子，理智，惊慌怪，黑暗森林，转头，关键入口什么的，是因为这些术语能够帮你更加清晰地理解你正在做出什么选择。这些术语能够帮你了解那些你做出的错误决定，也能帮助你明确自己什么时候在做正确决定。
  2. 创造一些击败猴子的方法。
    一些可行的方法：
    通过告知朋友家人来寻求外界鼓励。告诉他们你想要完成的目标，请求他们帮你记录下来。

    如果没有惊慌怪，就自己给自己一点惊慌失措的理由。如果你想要自己完成自己的专辑，那么就策划一场几个月之后的演出，然后定一个地方，给周围的人发出邀请。这样子你就没有办法拖延了。

    如果你真的想要开始自己的事业，那么就辞职好了，这样子惊慌怪天天都会和你住在一起。

    如果你想要开始写你的博客，就在首页上写“每周二发新文章”

    给自己留一些字条，告诉自己要做正确的决策。

    给自己设定闹钟，提醒自己应该开始完成任务了。

    无论如何都要消除干扰。如果电视让你欲罢不能，那就把你的电视卖了，如果上网让你欲罢不能，那就在工作的时候吧网线拔了，并且把你地手机调整到飞行模式。

    给自己办一些不可退款地会员制课程或类似的东西，让你自己没有退路。

    如果你定下的这些方法没有用的话，那就变一变。设定一个一个月之后的定时提醒，到时候问问自己：“事情是不是有改善了，如果没有，调整策略！”
  3. 定下慢速长期的目标——事情不是一蹴而就的。
    就像伟大的事业都是一块砖一块瓦垒起来的一样，像是拖延症这样子难以改变的习惯不是一天就能改过来的。记住，这些努力都是为了向你自己证明你能够做到，所以关键并不是做到事事完美，而是简单的比原来好就行了。每天写一页文章的作家一年到头就有了一本书，每天改变一点点的拖延症患者一年之后就焕然新生。
    所以不要想着从A到Z，只要从A到B就好了。把你自己的情况从“我所有事情都拖延“到”我每周可以不拖延地完成一个任务“。如果你能做到这一点，那么你就有了进步的趋势。我虽然仍是一个悲惨的拖延症患者，但是今年的我已经比去年的我强了好多，所以我对我的未来充满信心。
    为什么对这个问题思考了这么多，为什么我花了这么久写了一万字的文章 ？
    因为击败拖延症实际上和努力控制你的生活是一件事。那么多让人欢喜让人忧的事情，自我成就和自我满足，自尊心，内心的悔恨，他们需要维持一段关系需要付出的时间，这些事情都受到拖延症的显著影响。所以我们需要非常严肃地面对这个问题。我们需要现在就开始面对这个问题
英文版本 （没有图片哈）
pro-cras-ti-na-tion|prəˌkrastəˈnāSHən, prō-|
noun

the action of ruining your own life for no apparent reason

Let me start by saying that I’ve had just about enough of the irony of battling through crippling procrastination while trying to write posts on procrastination and how to beat it. I’ve spent the last two weeks being 
this guy, who shoots himself in the foot while talking about gun safety, and I look forward to getting back to irony-free procrastination following this post.
A couple notes before we begin:
  • I’m not a professional at any of this, just a lifelong procrastinator who thinks about this topic all the time. I’m still in a total battle with my own habits, but I have made some progress in the last few years, and I’m drawing my thoughts from what’s worked for me.
  • This post was posted late, not only because it took me 2,000 years to do, but also because I decided that Monday night was an urgent time to open Google Earth, hover a few hundred feet above the southern tip of India, and scroll all the way up India to the top of the country, to “get a better feel for India.” I have problems.
Alright, so last week we dove into the everyday inner struggle of the procrastinator to examine the underlying psychology going on. But this week, when we’re actually trying to do something about it, we need to dig even deeper. Let’s begin by trying to unwrap the procrastinator’s psychology and see what’s really at the core of things:
We know about the Instant Gratification Monkey (the part of your brain that makes you procrastinate) and his dominion over the Rational Decision Maker, but what’s really happening there?
The procrastinator is in the bad habit, bordering on addiction, of letting the monkey win. He continues to have the intention to control the monkey, but he puts forth a hapless effort, using the same proven-not-to-work methods he’s used for years, and deep down, he knows the monkey will win. He vows to change, but the patterns just stay the same. So why would an otherwise capable person put forth such a lame and futile effort again and again?
The answer is that he has incredibly low confidence when it comes to this part of his life, allowing himself to become enslaved by a self-defeating, self-fulfilling prophecy. Let’s call this self-fulfilling prophecy his Storyline. The procrastinator’s Storyline goes something like this:
For the Have-To-Dos in my life, I’ll end up waiting until the last minute, panicking, and then either doing less than my best work or shutting down and not doing anything at all. For the Want-To-Dos in my life, let’s be honest—I’ll either start one and quit or more likely, I just won’t ever get around to it.
The procrastinator’s problems run deep, and it takes something more than “being more self-disciplined” or “changing his bad habits” for him to change his ways—the root of the problem is embedded in his Storyline, and his Storyline is what must change.
___________
Before we talk about how Storylines change, let’s examine, concretely, what the procrastinator even wants to change into. What do the right habits even look like, and where exactly will the procrastinator run into trouble?
There are two components of being able to achieve things in a healthy and effective manner—planning and doing. Let’s start with the easy one:

Planning

Procrastinators love planning, quite simply because planning does not involve doing, and doing is the procrastinator’s Kryptonite.
But when procrastinators plan, they like to do it in a vague way that doesn’t consider details or reality too closely, and their planning leaves them perfectly set up to not actually accomplish anything. A procrastinator’s planning session leaves him with a doer’s nightmare:
A big list of icky, daunting tasks and undertakings.
A big list of vague and daunting things makes the Instant Gratification Monkey laugh. When you make a list like that, the monkey says, “Oh perfect, this is easy.” Even if your gullible conscious mind believes it intends to accomplish the items on that list in an efficient manner, the monkey knows that in your subconscious, you have no intention of doing so.
Effective planning, on the other hand, sets you up for success. Its purpose is to do the exact opposite of everything in that sentence:

Effective planning takes a big list and selects a winner:

A big list is perhaps an early phase of planning, but planning must end with rigorous prioritizing and one item that emerges as the winner—the item you’re going to make your first priority. And the item that wins should be the one that means the most to you—the item that’s most important for your happiness. If urgent items are involved, those will have to come first and should be knocked out as quickly as possible in order to make way for the important items (procrastinators love to use unimportant but urgent items as an excuse to forever put off the important ones).

Effective planning makes an icky item un-icky:

We all know what an icky item is. An icky item is vague and murky, and you’re not really sure where you’d start, how you’d go about doing it, or where you’d get answers to your questions about it.
So let’s say your dream is to make your own app, and you know that if you build a successful app you could quit your job and become a full-time developer. You also think that programming ability is the literacy of the 21st century, and you don’t have money to spend outsourcing development anyway, so you decide to anoint “Learn how to code” the winning item on your list—the number one priority. Exciting, right?
Well, no, because “Learn how to code” is an intensely icky item—and every time you decide it’s time to get started, you will coincidentally also decide your inbox needs to be cleaned out and your kitchen floor needs to be mopped, ASAP. It’ll never end up happening.
To un-icky the item, you need to read, research, and ask questions to find out exactly how one learns how to code, the specific means necessary for each step along the way, and how long each one should take. Un-ickying a list item turns it from this:
Into this:

Effective planning turns a daunting item into a series of small, clear, manageable tasks:

Icky combines with Daunting into an Instant Gratification Monkey steroid potion. And just because you un-icky an item, it doesn’t mean it’s still not horribly big and daunting. The key to de-dauntifying an item is to absorb this fact:
A remarkable, glorious achievement is just what a long series of unremarkable, unglorious tasks looks like from far away.
No one “builds a house.” They lay one brick again and again and again and the end result is a house. Procrastinators are great visionaries—they love to fantasize about the beautiful mansion they will one day have built—but what they need to be are gritty construction workers, who methodically lay one brick after the other, day after day, without giving up, until a house is built.
Nearly every big undertaking can be boiled down to a core unit of progress—its brick. A 45-minute gym visit is the brick of getting in great shape. A 30-minute practice session is the brick of becoming a great guitarist.
The average day in a wannabe author’s week and a real author’s week looks almost the same. The real author writes a couple pages, laying a brick, and the wannabe author writes nothing. 98% of their day is otherwise identical. But a year later, the real author has a completed first draft of a book and the wannabe author has…nothing.
It’s all about the bricks.
And the good news is, laying one brick isn’t daunting. But bricks do require scheduling. So the final step in planning is to make a Brick Timeline, which slots bricks into the calendar. The slots are non-negotiable and non-cancellable—after all, it’s your first priority and the thing that matters most to you, isn’t it? The most important date is the first one. You can’t start learning to code “in November.” But you can start learning to code on November 21st from 6:00 – 7:00pm.
Now you’re effectively planned—just follow the schedule and you’ll be a programmer. Only thing left is to do…

Doing

It’s not that procrastinators don’t like the concept of doing. They look at the bricks on their calendar and they think, “Great, this will be fun.” And that’s because when they picture the moment in the future when they sit down and knock out a work session, they picture things without the presence of the Instant Gratification Monkey. Procrastinators’ visions of future scenarios never seem to include the monkey.
But when the actual moment arrives to begin that scheduled brick-laying, the procrastinator does what the procrastinator does best—he lets the monkey take over and ruin everything.
And since we just stressed above that all achievement boils down to the ability to lay that one brick during that slot when it’s on your schedule, we seem to have isolated the core struggle here. Let’s examine this specific challenge of laying a single brick:
So this diagram represents the challenge at hand anytime you take on a task, whether it’s making a PowerPoint for work, going on a jog, working on a script, or anything else you do in your life. The Critical Entrance is where you go to officially start work on the task, the Dark Woods are the process of actually doing the work, and once you finish, you’re rewarded by ending up in The Happy Playground—a place where you feel satisfaction and where leisure time is pleasant and rewarding because you got something hard done. You occasionally even end up super-engaged with what you’re working on and enter a state of Flow, where you’re so blissfully immersed in the task that you lose track of time.
Those paths look something like this:
Sounds pretty simple, right?
Well unfortunately for procrastinators, they tend to miss out on both The Happy Playground and Flow.
For example, here’s a procrastinator that never even gets started on the task he’s supposed to do, because he never makes it through the Critical Entrance. Instead, he spends hours wallowing in The Dark Playground, hating himself:
Here’s a procrastinator who gets started on the task, but she can’t stay focused, and she keeps taking long breaks to play on the internet and make food. She doesn’t end up finishing the task:
Here’s a procrastinator who couldn’t bring himself to get started, even though a work deadline was approaching, and he spent hours in The Dark Playground, knowing the looming deadline was drawing near and he was only making his life harder by not starting. Eventually, the deadline got so close, the Panic Monster suddenly came roaring into the room, freaking him out and causing him to fly through the task to hit the deadline.
After he finishes, he feels decent because he accomplished something, but he’s also not that pleased because he knows he did an underwhelming job on the project because he had to rush so much, and he feels like he wasted most of his day procrastinating for no reason. This lands him in Mixed Feelings Park.
So if you’re a procrastinator, let’s look at what you need to do to get on the right path, one that will leave you much happier.
The first thing you must do is make it through the Critical Entrance. This means stopping whatever you’re doing when it’s time to begin the task, putting away all distractions, and getting started. It sounds simple, but this is the hardest part. This is where the Instant Gratification Monkey puts up his fiercest resistance:
The monkey absolutely hates stopping something fun to start something hard, and this is where you need to be the strongest. If you can get started and force the monkey into the Dark Woods, you’ve broken a bit of his will.
Of course, he’s not going to give up anytime soon.
The Dark Woods is where you are when you’re working. It’s not a fun place to be, and the Instant Gratification Monkey wants nothing to do with it. To make things harder, the Dark Woods is surrounded by the Dark Playground, one of the monkey’s favorite places, and since he can see how close it is, he’ll try as hard as he can to leave the Dark Woods.
There will also be times when you bump into a tree—maybe the jog is taking you on an uphill street, maybe you need to use an Excel formula you don’t know, maybe that song you’re writing just isn’t coming together the way you thought it would—and this is when the monkey will make his boldest attempt at an escape.
It makes no sense to leave the Dark Woods in favor of the Dark Playground—they’re both dark. They both suck to be in, but the big difference is the Dark Woods leads to happiness and the Dark Playground leads only to more misery. But the Instant Gratification Monkey isn’t logical and to him, the Dark Playground seems like much more fun.
The good news is, if you can power through a bit of the Dark Woods, something funny happens. Making progress on a task produces positive feelings of accomplishment and raises your self-esteem. The monkey gains his strength off of low self-esteem, and when you feel a jolt of self-satisfaction, the monkey finds a High Self-Esteem Banana in his path. It doesn’t quell his resistance entirely, but it goes a long way to distracting him for a while, and you’ll find that the urge to procrastinate has diminished.
Then, if you continue along, something magical happens. Once you get 2/3 or 3/4 of the way through a task, especially if it’s going well, you start to feel great about things and suddenly, the end is in sight. This is a key tipping point—
The Tipping Point is important because it’s not just you who can smell the Happy Playground up ahead—the monkey can smell it too. The monkey doesn’t care if his instant gratification comes alongside you or at your expense, he just loves things that are easy and fun. Once you hit the Tipping Point, the monkey becomes more interested in getting to the Happy Playground than the Dark Playground. When this happens, you lose all impulse to procrastinate and now both you and the monkey are speeding toward the finish.
Before you know it, you’re done, and you’re in the Happy Playground. Now, for the first time in a while, you and the monkey are a team. You both want to have fun, and it feels great because it’s earned. When you and the monkey are on a team, you’re almost always happy.
The other thing that might happen when you pass the Tipping Point, depending on the type of task and how well it’s going, is that you might start feeling fantastic about what you’re working on, so fantastic that continuing to work sounds like much more fun than stopping to do leisure activities. You’ve become obsessed with the task and you lose interest in basically everything else, including food and time—this is called Flow. Flow is not only a blissful feeling, it’s usually when you do great things.
The monkey is just as addicted to the bliss as you are, and you two are again a team.
Fighting through to the Tipping Point is hard, but what makes procrastination so hard to beat is that the Instant Gratification Monkey has a terribly short-term memory—even if you wildly succeed on Monday, when you begin a task on Tuesday, the monkey has forgotten everything and will again resist entering the Dark Woods or working through them.
And that’s why persistence is such a critical component of success. Laying each brick yields an inner struggle—and in the end, your ability to win this very specific struggle and lay brick after brick, day after day, is what lies at the core of a procrastinator’s struggle to gain control over his world.
So that’s what needs to happen—but if procrastination could be solved by reading a blog entry, it wouldn’t be such a large problem in so many people’s lives. There’s only one way to truly beat procrastination:
You need to prove to yourself that you can do it.
You need to show yourself you can do it, not tell yourself. Things will change when you show yourself that they can. Until then, you won’t believe it, and nothing will change. Think of yourself like a basketball player on a cold streak. For basketball players, it’s all about confidence, and an ice cold shooter can tell himself 1000 times, “I’m a great shooter, I’m going to hit this next one,” but it’s not until he physically hits a shot that his confidence goes up and his touch comes back.
So how do you start hitting shots?
1) Try to internalize the fact that everything you do is a choice.
Start by thinking about the terms we’ve used in these posts, and if they resonated with you, write them down. Part of the reason I assigned terms to so many of these feelings or phenomena—the Instant Gratification Monkey, the Rational Decision-Maker, the Panic Monster, the Dark Playground, Ickiness, Bricks, the Critical Entrance, the Dark Woods, the Tipping Point, the Happy Playground, Flow, your Storyline—is that terms help you clarify the reality of the choices you’re making. It helps expose bad choices and highlights when it’s most critical to make good ones.
2) Create methods to help you defeat the monkey.
Some possible methods:
  • Solicit external support by telling one or more friends or family members about a goal you’re trying to accomplish and asking them to hold you to it. If that’s hard for whatever reason, email it to me—I’m a stranger ([email protected])—and just typing out a goal and sending it to a real person can help make it more real. (Some experts argue that telling people in your life about a goal can be counterproductive, so this depends on your particular situation.)
  • Create a Panic Monster if there’s not already one in place—if you’re trying to finish an album, schedule a performance for a few months from now, book a space, and send out an invitation to a group of people.
  • If you really want to start a business, quitting your job makes the Panic Monster your new roommate.
  • If you’re trying to write a consistent blog, put “new post every Tuesday” at the top of the page…
  • Leave post-it notes for yourself, reminding you to make good choices.
  • Set an alarm to remind yourself to start a task, or to remind you of the stakes.
  • Minimize distractions by all means necessary. If TV’s a huge problem, sell your TV. If the internet’s a huge problem, get a second computer for work that has Wifi disabled, and turn your phone on Airplane Mode during work sessions.
  • Lock yourself into something—put down a non-refundable deposit for lessons or a membership.
And if the methods you set up aren’t working, change them. Set a reminder for a month from now that says, “Have things improved? If not, change my methods.”
3) Aim for slow, steady progress—Storylines are rewritten one page at a time.
In the same way a great achievement happens unglorious brick by unglorious brick, a deeply-engrained habit like procrastination doesn’t change all at once, it changes one modest improvement at a time. Remember, this is all about showing yourself you can do it, so the key isn’t to be perfect, but to simply improve. The author who writes one page a day has written a book after a year. The procrastinator who gets slightly better every week is a totally changed person a year later.
So don’t think about going from A to Z—just start with A to B. Change the Storyline from “I procrastinate on every hard task I do” to “Once a week, I do a hard task without procrastinating.” If you can do that, you’ve started a trend. I’m still a wretched procrastinator, but I’m definitely better than I was last year, so I feel hopeful about the future.
Why do I think about this topic so much, and why did I just write a 19,000-word blog post on it?
Because defeating procrastination is the same thing as gaining control over your own life. So much of what makes people happy or unhappy—their level of fulfillment and satisfaction, their self-esteem, the regrets they carry with them, the amount of free time they have to dedicate to their relationships—is severely affected by procrastination. So it’s worthy of being taken dead seriously, and the time to start improving is now.
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