Constructive Procrastination

 

Procrastination is one of those terms we define as negative, yet procrastination can be positive when it is used against another negative. In science and math that is known as, “Two negatives make a positive.”

Procrastination is constructive when you put off doing something that’s bad for you until the impulse to do it passes. Impulses by their very nature are short term. The trick is to allow them to pass without acting on them. That’s where self-hypnosis comes in.”

Think of all those candy bars that are stacked up at the checkout counter of the Supermarkets. They are there to tempt you to indulge in an impulse. You may have successfully negotiated all the candy sections in the market but then you come to the checkout where you have to stand in line looking at candy for several minutes. If you are on a diet, chances are that the pull of that sugar will be monumental although when you are not facing a rack of sugar the pull is hardly there at all.

Using self-hypnosis means distracting yourself from an impulse by thinking about something else, something that interests you. It is important to structure what you are going to think about before you are confronted with that impulse. Self-hypnosis is a matter of making the brain busy while you relax. One of the great self-hypnosis tricks is to stupefy the brain with boredom. Any time you are faced with an impulse, you can count from 100 to one, alternating back and forth between the next number down and 100; 99-100, 98-100, 97-100 and so forth. Keep counting until the impulse has passed.

The things people use for self-hypnosis are very different. I think about my “to do” list. I run the list through my head whenever I’m faced with an impulse. Jane, one of my clients, rearranges the furniture in her house. Alice practices a slalom course on a ski slope. I suggest that you pick something you like to do that will occupy your thoughts while you are faced with an impulse.

The thing not to do is to focus on not eating the candy. Focusing on what you don’t want to do keeps the thing you don’t want to do right at the forefront of your mind. It exacerbates the impulse and makes it more difficult to resist. The mind does not recognize words that include no and not. “Don’t think of a green elephant” is interpreted by the mind as “think of a green elephant.”

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