Avoidance behavior and three types of procrastinators …

There’s a one-line joke that asks, “Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?”

While we all occasionally “put off until tomorrow” some things, often with little negative impact, allowing the habit of avoidance behaviors to grow into a practice of procrastination can become a form of self-sabotage that results in serious negative consequences. One such example was recorded in Our Daily Bread …

An incident from the American Revolution illustrates what tragedy can result from procrastination. It is reported that Colonel Rahl, commander of the British troops in Trenton, New Jersey, was playing cards when a courier brought an urgent message stating that General George Washington was crossing the Delaware River. Rahl put the letter in his pocket and didn’t bother to read it until the game was finished. Then, realizing the seriousness of the situation, he hurriedly tried to rally his men to meet the coming attack, but his procrastination was his undoing. He and many of his men were killed and the rest of the regiment were capture.

Nolbert Quayle said, “Only a few minutes’ delay cost him his life, his honor, and the liberty of his soldiers. Earth’s history is strewn with the wrecks of half-finished plans and unexecuted resolutions. ‘Tomorrow’ is the excuse of the lazy and refuge of the incompetent.”

Our avoiding the things we know we should do often has consequences that extend beyond ourselves to other people in our lives. Someone (source unknown) humorously captured this reality in the following story …

A farm boy accidentally overturned his wagonload of corn in the road. The farmer who lived nearby came to investigate.

“Hey, Willis,” he called out, “forget your troubles for a spell and come on in and have dinner with us. Then I’ll help you get the wagon up.”

“That’s mighty nice of you,” Willis answered, “but I don’t think Pa would like me to.”

“Aw, come on, son!” the farmer insisted.

“Well, okay,” the boy finally agreed, “but Pa won’t like it.”

After a hearty dinner, Willis thanked his host. “I feel a lot better now, but I just know Pa is going to be real upset.”

“Don’t be foolish!” exclaimed the neighbor. “By the way, where is he?”

“Under the wagon.”

In the midst of rationalizing our proscratination, we may actually admit to avoidance behaviors, but even procrastinate about changing them! Gloria Pitzer penned the poem:

Procrastination is my sin
It brings me naught but sorrow.
I know that I should stop it
In fact, I will … tomorrow.

Once we allow the practice of procrastination to take root in our lives, it can be difficult to uproot our avoidance behaviors. To that end, Richard L. Evans once noted, “The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.”

While procrastination is often made fodder for jokes, adopting a pattern of avoidance behaviors is no laughing matter. According to Joseph R. Ferrari, a professor of psychology at DePaul University in Chicago, some 20 percent of us are chronic procrastinators. “That’s very high,” Ferrari said, adding that research reveals there are more chronic procrastinators in the United States than there are people with clinical depression. A survey in 2015 found that on average, a person loses over 55 days per year procrastinating, wasting around 218 minutes every day on doing unimportant things. Here’s the math: 218 minutes/day x 365 = 79570 minutes = 55.3 days.

AVOIDANCE BEHAVIORS
Before we go any further, let’s gain a basic understanding of what is meant by the term “avoidance behaviors.” Erupting Mind provides a simple definition:

• Avoidance behaviors are the things we do to distract ourselves from an activity or task to which we have associated an unpleasant emotion with. Usually, this emotion is fear, which can include things such as worry, anxiety, and panic.

By doing something else instead of what we know we should be doing, avoidance behaviors allow us to momentarily escape our uncomfortable feeling, and by so doing, help to bring psychological relief.

For example, a friend of mine recently began experiencing the physical symptom of dizziness. Initially, being dizzy startled him and at first he thought he would make an appointment with his physician to determine what he was experiencing. Instead of doing that, though, he began to entertain in his mind terrible causes for his dizziness, creating a powerful fear response that led him to avoid going to see his doctor. His irrational thinking was that if he didn’t go in to see his doctor, he wouldn’t get a negative diagnosis! This is a classic example of avoidance behavior.

Erupting Mind noted, “In order to become a more productive person who focuses their thoughts and efforts on activities of meaning and value, and away from activities of distraction and insignificance, it’s important to recognize when you are using avoidance behaviors so that you can stop them and return back to your primary task. Some examples of avoidance behaviors include:

• • Cleaning your desk, browsing the internet, or checking your emails when you should be making a phone call or writing a report.
  • Taking long breaks instead of promptly returning back to work.
  • Chatting with friends instead of working.
  • Looking up at the ceiling, looking out the window, or daydreaming when seated at your desk.
  • Claiming you are too busy and don’t have the time when you do have the time.
  • Saying you will do it later or do it tomorrow.
  • Claiming you have changed your mind about something when, in reality, you haven’t.
  • Downplaying the importance of your task so that you feel less guilty for not doing it.”

THREE TYPES OF PROCRASTINATORS
To help us better understand our propensity to procrastinate, a research project recently conducted in Turkey identified three types of procrastinators: the indecisive procrastinator, the avoidant procrastinator, and the arousal procrastinator. Let’s look briefly at each type …

Indecisive procrastinators are those people who feel overwhelmed with too many choices and simply can’t make up their mind because they struggle with deciding what is best for them. This type of procrastinator is afraid of committing to a choice for fear of losing their other choices; and committing to a choice may feel threatening because they then must perform.

Avoidant procrastinators feel like they can’t face the task they have to do, so they avoid it at all costs. They anticipate what they need to do as being something painful, which stokes the emotion of fear within them, and so they procrastinate as one means of stalling as an excuse to build up their courage.

Arousal procrastinators are those people who routinely and purposely postpone doing what they need to do until the last minute. These people are “adrenalin junkies” who attempt to harness panic as a means of motivation. The arousal procrastinator thrives on the “rush” of using fear for motivation. The problem with this behavior is the delay this person creates can also generate stress that is so great it becomes distracting and may prove to be self-defeating.

OVERCOMING PROCRASTINATION
Procrastination doesn’t “happen” to us, it’s a choice we make from irrational thinking that is usually heavily spiked with fear. The result is a waste of one our greatest God-given resources — time — and when we waste time, we fail at becoming fully who God would have us be, and we miss out on experiencing all God would have us experience and do. Chronic procrastination can eventually bring ruin to a life.

One of the first things you need to do in overcoming a habit of procrastination is to forgive yourself for your procrastination! The guilt you feel for wasting time and experiencing failure due to avoidance behaviors can cause your thoughts to spiral downward and result in a negative cycle of irrational thinking that keeps you trapped in patterns of avoidance. To break that cycle, you need to forgive yourself for past procrastination, realizing you cannot go back and regain that time, but you can redeem the time you have! The apostle Paul urged us to redeem what time we have …

“So be careful how you live. Don’t live like fools, but like those who are wise. Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days,” Ephesians 5:15-16.

The root issue of our choosing to avoid what we should be doing, or to procrastinate, is irrational thinking. Such thinking spawns fear, which negatively motivates us toward avoidance behaviors, ultimately resulting in procrastination. That’s why the Bible stresses the need for us to allow God to transform our minds (e.g., Romans 12:2, Ephesians 4:23) so that we can think rationally and tap into the self-discipline God has enabled us with. The apostle Paul described a God-provided antidote to procrastination as follows:

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.” – 2 Timothy 1:7.

When we become a disciple of Jesus, the Holy Spirit immediately indwells and lives in the new believer. God’s gift of the Holy Spirit, and His transforming work on our minds, doesn’t result in things like fear and timidness, that’s how we routinely thought and behaved before surrendering our lives to the Lord. The work of the Holy Spirit in our lives transforms our minds so we can think rationally or rightly, and He enables us with power for living, love as our great motivation, and a genuine capacity for effective self-discipline. That’s a powerful antidote to procrastination!

You can supplement that scriptural prescription for overcoming procrastination with some practical steps …

When we think irrationally, most of what we imagine is usually much worse than the real experience. To help you focus your thinking, you can try exercises of “mental projection” where, instead of focusing your thoughts on potential pain or discomfort, or fears you have stirred, instead think about your task as already being complete. Try to imagine what it would look like, sound like, and feel like. Focus on the benefits you will get and the sense of relief you will feel once it is over.

Part of being able to positively project mentally is overcoming your irrational fears. You can learn to counter negative thoughts that generate fear by challenging them! Make a list of the fears you have that prompt you into avoidance behaviors, then ask yourself what could be the positive outcome from challenging that fear, or challenge how bad could it really be if you acted instead of procrastinated.

Some people, when mentally projecting their task as complete, will then irrationally stoke a fear that getting there will be a monumental undertaking (no matter how small). So in addition to thinking rationally and positive mental projection, break down the task into concrete steps. A recent study suggests that consciously changing the way we think about things we have to do — approaching them as concrete steps rather than abstract ideas — may help even chronic procrastinators. Once you have identified your concrete steps, make a to-do list for each step so you can see clearly how to accomplish each step. Multi-tasking can create distractions, but identifying concrete steps, then focusing on one step at a time, generates progress toward your goal, and progress provides motivation to keep going to the next step and the next step and the next step until you’ve accomplished your task!

One way of turning a task into concrete steps is by creating a list of steps that outlines what it will take to go from where you are to the completion of your task. “Time blocking,” where you eliminate distractions and purposely block out time for each step to be completed, helps you further identify how to realistically accomplish your objective. And you can even “bait” (or motivate) yourself with mini rewards upon completing specific steps along the way.

If you feel overwhelmed from a life of habitual procrastination, let me make two recommendations for you. One, make an appointment with your pastor or church leader and seek their help in developing a greater understanding of how God can transform your thinking and enable a real change in your behavior. I would also recommend that you make an appointment with a skilled clinical therapist who is competent in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT). A competent CBT therapist can be a great help in breaking long-held habits of irrational thinking and deeply ingrained patterns of cognitive distortions.

CONCLUSION
In overcoming your propensity for avoidance behaviors, or habit of procrastination, what hasn’t been singled out is the one thing absolutely necessary to change … and that is action. With God’s antidote to your problem, as well as having these practical supplements, you will eventually have to take action! Take the dive to apply God’s solution and these helpful supplements TODAY, do not wait any longer. Procrastinating about overcoming procrastination is a serious threat to robbing your life of all it should and can be.

Scotty