Can Overcoming Procrastination Be Boiled Down to a Formula?

Can your chances of overcoming procrastination be determined by a simple mathematical formula? According to an article in Times Online Formula for overcoming procrastination ... what are the chances? a business professor in Canada claims you can.

Professor Piers Steel collected "hundreds of studies on the art of delay" for his book, The Procrastination Equation: Today's Trouble with Tomorrow. The professor claims that there are two prevelent opinions about people who practice this "art of delay." People are either of the following:
Extremely careful
Do-nothings

Steel proclaims that procrastinators "have a vice all of their own. His "evidence suggests that chronic procrastinators, who make up about 20% of the population, are more impulsive and erratic than other people and less conscientious about attention to detail and obligations to others."

This is all very interesting. However, I do not think that procrastinators should be merely catagorized as "extremely careful" or "do-nothings" or "erratic" or "less conscientious" nor do I think that a person's chance of sucess can be or should be boiled down to a mathematical formula. I like to think that human beings are capable of endless posibilities. I do admit that there are many variables that have an effect on whether we overcome our procrastination or not.

Because the book is not yet at Amazon, I have not been able to read the elements of the formula. If some of the variables in the equation are: how clearly we can see what we want accomplished; how strong our desire is for that which needs to be accomplished; how determined we are, then perhaps there may be an element of this equation that I can believe. If the professor takes into account that our brains have a hard time processing when our desires conflict with each other, perhaps I may ponder his formula. But, I think he would have to do some really great explaining to convince me that to overcome procrastination, all one needs to do is work on the variables of a simple mathematical equation.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this catagorization of procratinators.

Tips from Australia on Overcoming Procrastination

According to the Herald Sun's, February 02, 2009 article,
Seven steps to overcoming procrastination Herald Sun: "Procrastination is a big business killer.
Avoiding the job often takes up more time"

The author, Megan Tough, goes on to explain, "If you're constantly leaving work to pile up on your desk, there's a very good chance you might just be on the avoidance treadmill... It happens to the best of us. And we rationalise our action, or lack of action in this case, in so many ways. "

Megan then equates procrastination to avoidance and explains that we practice avoidance simply "because we don't enjoy them, or because they take us out of our comfort zone." She offers tips to address our procrastination avoidance as follows:

1. Be honest about why you are avoiding the activity.
2. Commit to doing it at a certain time.
3. Prepare!
4. Just do it!
5. Reward yourself when you are finished.
6. Appreciate the feeling.
7. Consider whether you should actually be doing this job.

Interesting tips! I am sure there are many more actions that each of us utilize to overcome procrastination. Please share your attempts and successes.

I am taking action by posting this blog - finally!