Mindset of Success: The Science of Personal Leadership Development

The Unknown Type of Procrastination: Trying to Do Too Much

Procrastination is often about avoidance of an undesirable activity. It may be that when you do too much, you choose things that are more desirable—even if the less desirable activity isn’t horrible, you just choose to do something else.

Another factor is curiosity. When something comes up (like email messages) we feel like we just have to find out what they’re about. As a result, we end up putting off or procrastinating on something else.

The short-term rewards always outweigh the long-term unless you make a conscious effort otherwise.

So what can we do differently? We can learn a lesson from the simple ABC’s: Antecedents, Behaviors, Consequences

For example, if I tried to squeeze in emails and ended up being late for an appointment, I could write down:

Antecedents:

1) Not giving myself a cushion of time. My 20 minute drive-time calculation was based on an ideal scenario rather than a real scenario. Even if I’d gotten off the computer on time, I would have been late.

2) I told myself that checking and answering 5 important emails would only take 10 minutes, when I know in reality it takes longer.

Behaviors: Checking my email messages and starting to respond to them until I realized I was very late.

Consequences: I was 10 minutes late to my appointment. Experienced a lot of stress rushing there. I felt bad because my whole schedule gets thrown off when my clients are late, so I know how horrible it is to have people be late. I had to wait and ended up wasting time.

Next time you’re faced with a similar situation, you can take out your ABC’s and remember not to make the same mistakes twice.

Whenever you risk cramming too much in and putting off what you really need to be doing, think of the ABC's. You can do them pro-actively about being on time:

Antecedents: Decide that wild horses can’t stop me from being out the door at 12:35

Behaviors: Turn off computer at 12:30 and get everything together. Leave at 12:35

Consequences: Feel great that I’m on time and didn’t keep people waiting. Save time by being seen right away. Check emails when I get home and have more time.

Soon you’ll see that overcoming procrastination is as easy as 1-2-3 (or A-B-C)! Well, maybe it isn’t so easy, but it’s a habit you can break and it will feel great.

Learn more strategies for making important changes in life and business with my book The Confident Leader, about which international bestselling author Kevin Hogan said, “This groundbreaking book will become a classic.”

Achievement Motivation: How to Frame Goals to Increase Intrinsic Motivation

We all face times when we lack motivation. It turns out that there may be something similar about these times: the language we use to set goals. There are ways of framing goals that boost motivation and ways that sap motivation.

 

Today’s article is adapted from the chapter on building motivation in yourself, your supervisees, and your children in my book The Confident Leader.

 

If you’re a parent, this is particularly important for how you frame experiences with your kids because we learn intrinsic motivation early in life.

 

Enjoy and post questions or comments below.

 

You know goals are important, and may have heard that the best goals are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Time-limited. What you may not know how important the language you use to frame your goal is. In 2002, motivation researchers from Rochester, NY and France learned something interesting from how teenagers dribbled basketballs.

 

 

3 Ways to Frame Goals

 

Students were randomly assigned to one of three groups. In the first group called “Performance-Approach,” they were told that their dribbling would be filmed to select those with the best dribbling, and the video would be shown to other students to teach dribbling. The second group, called “Performance-Avoidance” was told the opposite, that tapes of students with the worst dribbling would be selected to help other students learn what errors to avoid. A third group of students, called “Mastery Group” were told that the purpose was to assess the teaching of dribbling, and they would have two attempts to work on improving.

 

The only difference in the 3 groups was these 30-second instructions. Intrinsic motivation was measured by how long students continued to dribble when the evaluator told them they had free time.

 

Which Worked Best?

 

Results showed that students in the Performance-Approach and Mastery Group had equally high levels of intrinsic motivation, significantly higher than those in the Performance-Avoidance group. Three variables explained this:

 

1)   Competence (how capable you feel).

2)   State anxiety (how nervous you are in the moment).

3)   Task absorption (how much you’re concentrating on the activity).

 

When you focus on the prospect of failure (as in the Performance Avoidance group), you feel less confident, become more anxious, and are not engaged in the task.

 

Take Away Points

 

Here are lessons learned from these basketball dribblers:

 

1)   Create Performance Approach or Mastery goals for yourself or others to build optimal motivation and effort.

 

2)   Keep yourself and those you motivate (your supervisees, your employees, your children, your peers) focused on success rather than the prospect of failure. 

 

3)   Boost motivation by recognizing people for what they do well rather than publicly pointing out mistakes.

 

4)   Increase intrinsic motivation by allowing for unstructured time to continue a task.

 

5)   Keep in mind that while mastery goals can be quite motivating, there are times when they aren’t a good idea because they can encourage you to keep going down dead ends, rather than strategically moving on.

 

6)   And if you find yourself going into the Performance-Avoidance mentality, bring yourself back by getting absorbed in the task, and focusing on learning and the process.

 

Experiment with how you frame your goals and see if you feel differently and get better results.

 

Have a look at the book for more research-based tips on improving energy and motivation, making difficult decisions, and being the Confident Leader in your work and life.