On the surface, the delay seems to be a fairly simple time management problems. If you arrange your time, more efficient use of time, you won’t be delayed, right? With such a cognitive, many procrastinators are to turn to the time management expert. Time management consulting is a huge industry, you might have read a lot of literature in this field, also go to these authors, experts, coaches website. They suggest that you use the schedule system, using the to-do list, setting important task, and making a good choice, you may find the wisdom of the time management. Most of the time management expert will tell you to stop procrastinating, but if you’re reading this book about the delay, you may have found that these seemingly reasonable suggestions are very difficult to put them into practice. If can do it, you would have done, but why you can’t do?
time is one of the biggest challenges for procrastinators to face. On one hand, they had been occupied by the fear of time, or they count time hour by hour, minute by minute or pretended to be indifferent to time. Procrastinators play games with time, and want to win, “I want to see a movie tonight, it won’t affect that I finish my paper tomorrow morning.” “There is always time, time is just the feeling of the subjective.”
But in their game with time, procrastinators’ perception of time is not realistic. Their relationship with time is wishful thinking, they hope to find more time than the objective existence of the time, as if time can be unlimited stretch, and it is not limited.
Time is fixed, measurable, limited, perhaps this is just the hardest thing for a delayer is to accept. According to our observation, the procrastinator like to stay in a potential possibility fuzzy kingdom, and I don’t like a specific, measurable, or within the framework of the limited time. When they finally know have enough time, they will be surprised, disappointed and even feel offended. In order to be able to use your knowledge of the time management skills, you must first change your attitude towards the wishful thinking of time.
It is the time to consider a matter of time
If you have selected an operational target for the next week, have you thought about when to begin to implement? In order to be more realistic to use your time for achieving your goals, the right thing to do is to plan ahead. But we know that many procrastinators can’t accept the idea. We don’t suggest you give up your spontaneity and become a robot on time, also do not encourage you to spend too much time on the plan, this could be a delay in another way, because at some point, you must come up from the plan, to implement, but we suggest you to take a little time to think about this question.
When you do the plan ahead of time, you will have the opportunity to relatively cool head to deal with things, rather than panic at the time of deadline. Do a comparison on you plan to ease the situation and in the final moments anxiously mad, you will understand, increased pressure will have a significant impact on cognitive function when you make a plan, so the pressure before the arrival of planning will be more efficient. On the contrary, no planning will make you more troubles due to time pressure. Just like the first time management expert Alan card Cain (Alan Kakein) puts it: “Want to fail, don’t plan.”
Because plan should consider the future, and people want to live in the moment, so people may resist to do plan. They may feel locked themselves in the future a certain activities like fall into a trap, will limit their freedom. Plan doesn’t mean to put people occupied in every hour of each day, but help you anticipate the accident may happen.
At the same time, you also need to let you have time to enjoy the fun of spontaneous activity, and enjoy a new experience of relaxing yourself. Procrastinators may feel guilty for the passage of time, so they force themselves to effective use of every minute, only to find that they are too high to own request, this is not a problem, but a problem of pressure.
Plan, however, is a link between you and the future. It is your best friend. Please allow us to quote again, Alan card Cain said: “the plan is to turn the future into the present, so that you can do something to immediately create the future.” To make plans to be your friend, the plan should be practical and reasonable. Plan must do things around the core of your issues, instead of the old thinking that how you should do it.
When you selected the operational objectives, plans, let’s take a look at, how do you create time through this a few of the steps for achieving goals. When you think of the upcoming week, do you know how much time can you use? Do you realize that you have promised? Will you often take part in some activities (such as watching the news or writing blogs) arranged in it? This week to see if there is some additional things will come out, such as someone to visit your home, a seminar or a sports championship this weekend?
The plan
Psychologists Neil fiorina (Neil Fiore) is our colleagues in counseling center at the university of California, Berkeley. He knew that many people who have never really make schedule to implement, so they will be disappointed, and eventually gave up the practice. Dr Ferre invented a method, used to keep track of those who do not do things time trajectory, he created the concept of “unplanned”. We found that “the plan” to our customers and procrastinators are very helpful.
“The plan” is a weekly schedule. It lists all the things you have to do. It can help you achieve your goals in two days. First of all, in the early stage people have to know how much time they have already arranged to finish the things they have to do, and how much time is left can be used to achieve your goals, they will know fairly well. Second, it can help people do a review at the end of the week, take a look at your time actually used in where, this is also helpful for people to monitor themselves.
“I don’t know my time ran to where.”
Starting from the second day, you have to think about the following seven days. You have to think about all of the foreseeable activities and write them down, marking them on your time sheet. If you know exactly when you will do something, write it in the appropriate box – for example: a lunch appointment, on Tuesday, in the afternoon 12:00-13:00. If you can’t exactly predicted the work time, then estimate the length of time it occupies, and then you marked the day on which you may do it.
All the matters in your life should be taken into account: work time, scheduled meeting and appointment, class and social activities, physical exercise, meal time, including the preparation and washing time, housework time, such as cleaning, laundry and shopping, specifically for your friends, partners or children free time, sleep time. If you often watch the evening news on Monday night football game, or any other like TV show, and write them down. Don’t forget to extra time spending on reading Sunday newspapers, and time of going to work and travelling. Use a calendar to remind yourself of these events, because it’s easy to forget something. If you think you could remember all the things in the brain, it would be full of yourself.
When you have completed this unplanned form to fill out, carefully check it again. This form represents your life in next week. When you see the arrangement in the next seven days, what’s your feeling? Are you feeling bothering by doing all these things? Are you worried about the time that nothing is arranged? Are you unhappy with limit time?
From this form, you can know how much time can be used to complete your goals. This “unplanned” form shows the biggest time you can use, Spaces between these time are the time isn’t arranged. Of course, no one will put all of the time to complete the target, but “not included in the” table shows you how much time is available for you.
A design engineer will submit a design draft to his clients, which is treated as his operational goal in one week. He plans to spend three hours a day on this project. When he finished this “unplanned” form, he found that he cannot even squeeze out three hours a day!
Seen from his form, his goal could not be achieved. By knowing how much time has already been arranged, he understood that he didn’t have a chance to succeed. He can only modify the target, or modify the schedule.
Maybe you have a lot of time did not make the arrangements, some people are working at home, some people doing a part-time job, some people are in free profession, also some people out of work, many of these people find what they face is a large gap. For procrastinators, such a “blank” time will let them produce a lot of anxiety, because in order to make any one thing, they must arrange their own time frame.