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MAIN IDEA
Despite the fact procrastination is a known drain on personal and organizational productivity, very few people ever take the time to define precisely what procrastination is.
A good working definition of procrastination is: “Procrastination is a mechanism which people use to cope with the anxiety or stress involved in starting new tasks or completing old ones.”
When you adopt this definition, it then becomes clear the key to overcoming procrastination isn’t the usual collection of cliches:
Instead, to genuinely overcome procrastination you’ve got to deal with your more deeply seated inner dialogues and your own personal definitions of “failure”, “perfectionism” and “work ethic”. Instead of a collection of how-to advice and tactics, you need to have a strategic system in place which will give you the tools needed so you can mentally shift gears into a higher level of functioning. Once you take more control over the way you think about your work and motivate yourself, you will then naturally become more efficient and productive.
“The procrastination habit catches people in a vicious cycle: get overwhelmed, feel pressured, fear failure, try harder, work longer, feel resentful, lose motivation, and then procrastinate. The cycle starts with the pressure of being overwhelmed and ends with an attempt to escape through procrastination. As long as you’re caught in the cycle, there is no escape. Instead, you can cultivate the Now Habit: the ability to put aside the fear of failure, the terror of feeling overwhelmed, and low self esteem, and focus your mind on what you can start now. The skills and strategies of the Now Habit program will let you think of yourself as a producer, feel like a producer, and act like a producer. To overcome procrastination you need a positive attitude about the human spirit.”
– Neil Fiore
NEIL FIORE is president of his own business consulting and executive coaching firm. Trained as a professional psychologist, Dr. Fiore has also served as a Lieutenant with the 101st Airborne Division, as a manager with Johnson & Johnson, as a Statistical Analyst for Shell Oil, and as a psychologist and career counselor at the UC Berkeley. As an executive coach, Dr. Fiore has worked with companies such as Bechtel, AT&T and Levi Strauss. He is the author or co-author of three books Awaken Your Strongest Self, Conquering Test Anxiety and The Road Back to Health. Dr. Fiore is a graduate of St. Peters College and the University of Maryland.
The Web site for this book is at www.neilfiore.com
This is a summary and not a critique or a review of the book. It does not offer judgment or opinion on the content of the book. This summary may not be organized chapter-wise but is an overview of the main ideas, viewpoints and arguments from the book as a whole. This means that the organization of this summary is not a representation of the book.