Lemonade from lemons

Problem

Dear Young Tim,

Looking back over the past year, procrastination has been our constant companion and problem. For this discussion, we’ll define procrastination as either of the following two conditions. Condition one: having a plan for our time, yet hesitating to do what we planned, AND feeling that such hesitation was not in our long-term best interest. Condition two: hesitating to make a plan for our time, AND feeling that such hesitation was not in our long-term best interest.

Given the definition above, procrastination can be viewed as a detrimental practice, to be stopped as soon as possible. To this end, one straightforward strategy is to try to stop hesitating on one’s planned tasks or on planning.

However, pause briefly and imagine a complementary way. How could we respond if we viewed our hesitation as having a positive intent? Per our definition above, a second strategy to ‘stop procrastinating’ is to take action such that our hesitation still supports our long-term best interests. Then hesitation would be free of guilt and detrimental qualities; it would not be procrastination. Practically, how can we design a set of actions that together transform our hesitation from procrastination into production for our long-term interests?

Most comprehensively, our problem can be stated as follows. Given that we sense many aspects of our physical and social environment, when we interpret one or more of our sensations as indicating our unmet needs, then we commonly feel intense emotional activation, and we hesitate to do that which we planned or we hesitate to plan. Meanwhile, we anxiously observe the racing of our polarized thoughts. Finally, we then feel secondary guilt for ‘spending’ our time with nothing to show for it, i.e. acting against our long-term best interests.

Of course, despite our actions, we prefer to avoid feeling anxiety or guilt, if possible. What we really want or need is a way to productively channel our thoughts and feelings, if and while we hesitate, so that we identify, assess, and eventually satisfy our unmet needs. THAT would be in our long-term best interests.

Solution

So, what can we do? One hypothesis is that if we use communication templates, then we will increase the percentage of time that hesitation leads to production rather than procrastination. The idea is that we can design the template with cues for information we need to contextualize and respond to the problems that motivated our hesitation. Then, instead of being lost in thought while procrastinating, we can combine our thoughts with the template, crafting a story that serves as a record of the problem for ourselves and anyone else who might help us. We can write, type, or speak our message based on the template, and we can store the resulting document / file for later.

What might such a template look like?
As a useful example, consider the following template for “emotional problem-statements”:

I observe that GIVEN {{these-circumstances}}
WHEN {{this-happens}}
THEN [facing {{these-concerns}}]
I decide to FEEL {{these-feelings}},
as opposed to {{these-other-feelings}},
in order to satisfy {{these-NEEDS}},
while accepting {{these-downsides}}.
So far, I have taken {{these-steps}} to fulfill my needs,
and for further help, I am REQUESTING {{these-actions}}.

Elements in curly-braces, i.e. ‘{‘ and ‘}’, are to be replaced with our own descriptions. Clauses with rectangular-braces, i.e. ‘[’ and ‘]’, are considered optional and to be included at a communicator’s discretion.

Outcomes

So far, using this template has helped in the following ways. Since adopting it, the majority of times I hesitated to plan or execute my plans, I generated multiple, actionable, requests. Typically, I’ve generated one or more requests per activated inner part, and when hesitating, it’s almost always the case for me that two or more inner parts are activated and polarized. Accordingly, I come away with a collection of requests, and as I slowly fulfill them, I’ve experienced less frequent bouts of hesitation. This helps accomplish the first procrastination reduction strategy of not hesitating so much.

Simultaneously, by producing these records of what happened, what I’m feeling, and what I need and want, I document the mindfulness and emotional regulation work described in therapeutic modalities like dialectical behavior therapy. By creating such templated documents, i.e. by standardizing and tracking emotional data, I bypass feeling the guilt of procrastination, and I instead feel proud of translating my raw emotions into information that can then be acted upon and analyzed. This helps accomplish the second procrastination reduction strategy of making hesitation productive. These emotional problem-statements enter the top of a productivity funnel that starts with problem logging, continues with problem observation, hypothesizing, and experimentation, and then hopefully ends with problem resolution.

Rationale

Beyond the beneficial outcomes observed and described above, how and why do I think using this template should be helpful? What do I think are the mechanisms behind the magic?

At the most basic level, we can ask why we believe templates will help at all. Needing to communicate effectively, especially in the difficult context of multiple heightened emotions, is a common problem that numerous thinkers have addressed. Across fields from architecture to software engineering, design patterns “describe a problem that occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem.” Templates are patterns, and they are typically created with purpose. For instance, communication templates solve recurring communication problems.

In particular, the emotional problem-statement template is based on the Non-Violent Communication (NVC) template of Dr. Marshall Rosenburg. In describing the NVC template, Rosenburg writes:

We can apply NVC to resolve the internal conflicts that often result in depression.
In his book The Revolution in Psychiatry, Ernest Becker attributes depression to “cognitively arrested alternatives.” This means that when we have a judgmental dialogue going on within,
we become alienated from what we are needing and cannot then act to meet those needs. Depression is indicative of a state of alienation from our own needs.

The applicability of this template to our situation is immediate. We noted above that procrastination almost always involves two or more polarized inner parts within us, i.e. a judgmental dialogue. Moreover, in December’s post, we noted that ‘all encompassing procrastination’ is often how our depression manifests itself. Accordingly, the NVC template stands out as a communication pattern directly aimed at the emotional disturbances that drive my procrastination (both moderate and depression-level).

Next, I further combine the NVC template with three other communication patterns. The first additional pattern is the Given-When-Then template for stating one’s obervation of what is happening. This template is frequently used in software design and business to describe a system’s desired behavior after creation of a product. I have also found it useful for describing the current behavior of a system, as is called for in the first step of the NVC template. Since the Give-When-Then template is useful in business when trying to solve people’s problems, my a-priori assumption is that it will remain useful when trying to solve personal problems.

The second additional pattern is the Y-statement template. Here, we follow the research of Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, who reminds us that emotions are constructed / predicted. I.e., our emotions are our choice, and we have influence in choosing what emotions we experience. As noted by Rosenburg in his book, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life,

NVC heightens our awareness that what others say and do may be the stimulus, but never the cause, of our feelings. We see that our feelings result from how we choose to receive what others say and do, as well as from our particular needs and expectations in that moment. With this third component, we are led to accept responsibility for what we do to generate our own feelings. —emphasis added

Of course, others can cause our feelings to an extent, especially through physical violence. However, the overall message is clear. We all make decisions that impact the emotions we experience. Using the Y-statement template for describing one’s decision-making makes this choice explicit. We also reduce secondary guilt by consciously accepting that we are investing time in order to process the emotions fueling our hesitation.

Finally, the third additional pattern we’ve adopted is a template for asking for help. It follows Jim Rohn’s advice that when asking for help, it’s useful to inform people of what we have done and what we have read/learned about solving our problem. The idea is that we increase our chances of getting help, by helping ourselves. Moreover, as advised on the famous question-asking website, StackOverflow and in its linked-to resources, including what we have unsuccessfully tried helps people understand what differentiates our problem from already solved problems. This increased clarity also helps us secure effective assistance.

Well-wishes

Young Tim, hopefully this post makes it clear: there are great practical and logical reasons to use communication templates like the emotional problem-statement. For years going forward, we hope such tools continue to helps us turn procrastination into production— to make lemonade from the lemons of our emotional disturbances.