What is cessation and how to deal with it
Productivity / / January 06, 2021
A huge number of books, articles and posts on the Internet have been written about what procrastination is, how it is dangerous and why it should be tied up with it, including on our Lifehacker. But often, trying to raise their productivity and overcome the habit of procrastination, people rush to the other extreme.
The term "preexisting" was coined by the Pennsylvania State University psychologist David Rosenbaum. According to him, this is the opposite of procrastination.
Termination is a compulsive desire to start immediately and complete your task as soon as possible, even if it takes a lot more effort.
Prekrastinators constantly busy. They are uncomfortable with putting off anything for later, even if the matter is not at all urgent. And if you think this is a good habit, you are wrong.
How this concept appeared
David Rosenbaum came to the concept of termination by accident. He studied the features of the motility of the human body, conducting the following experimentPre-crastination: hastening subgoal completion at the expense of extra physical effort
. Researchers David Rosenbaum, Lanyune Gong, and Corey Adam Potts recruited a group of 257 students and asked subjects walk a certain distance, pick up any of the two buckets filled with coins on the way, and bring it to finish. In this case, one bucket stood farther from the finish line, and the second was located closer to it.Contrary to expectations, most of the participants picked up the former, despite the fact that they had to drag it for longer. As David found out, the reason for their behavior is this: the students divided their mission into two tasks: to raise the capacity and carry it to the finish line. And we tried to fulfill the first point faster, ignoring the fact that the second bucket is closer.
This is what is called preexisting - the desire to quickly put all the checkmarks in your checklist (no matter whether on paper or in thoughts), regardless of objective reality and your own resources.
What are the reasons for termination
Internal anxiety
David Rosenbaum claimsSooner Rather Than Later: Precrastination Rather Than Procrastinationthat the human brain is more willing to remember those things that have to be done, and not completed. When we have finished something, we immediately forget it, throw it out of our memory. But the unfulfilled task hangs in our head and annoys us. Therefore, people are trying to get rid of it as soon as possible.
Desire for cheap pleasure
ResearchThe mere urgency effect show that people get more satisfaction from small tasks that do not take a lot of time than from more important, but prolonged projects. By ticking the checklist, you feel pleasure and enjoy your "productivity". Even if they were doing nonsense.
The instinct of self-preservation
Clinical psychologist Nick Vinyall also suggestedPrecrastination: The Dark Side of Getting Things Donethat the reason for termination lies in the instinct of self-preservation. For thousands of years people tried to do everything as soon as possible, until they were eaten by a saber-toothed tiger.
Do not put off anything until tomorrow, because you can die - such an idea wedged into the subcortex of the human brain. And it has survived to this day, even when the saber-toothed tigers on the planet ended.
Therefore, most people prefer to get as much as possible right now, without investing in projects with a long-term perspective. This is confirmed by the classic experimentAttention in Delay of Gratification scientists from Stanford: "Get one marshmallow now or two, but then."
It's funny that preexisting is manifested not only in humans, but, for example, in pigeons.Pre-crastination in the pigeon. It is unlikely that these birds can be called very smart, so do not take an example from them.
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Excessive conscientiousness
Kyle Sauerberger, a researcher at the University of California, Riverside, linkedThe Opposite of Procrastination certain personality traits with a tendency to stop. He found that diligent, obliging, and responsible people tend to have this habit. This is how they try to live up to their own high internal standards.
Society approves of this, but workaholics themselves suffer from excessive stress, an exaggerated sense of responsibility and burnout.
What can termination lead to
Inability to concentrate
You are working on an important project trying to fully immerse yourself in it. Suddenly, you receive a message from a colleague. It is not particularly important, and it would be better to pay attention to it only at the end of the day.
But the prestinator cannot postpone anything for later. He immediately starts typing an answer, and when he is finished, it takes a long time to switch back to the main task. So a lot of time is wasted just moving from one case to another.
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- Why, distracted from work for 2 minutes, we spend all 25
Emotional burnout
It comes from constant distraction. As known, multitasking - the thing is more harmful than useful. Trying to chase several birds with one stone at the same time, prestinators spend too much energy, get tired faster and become disillusioned with their work.
Inability to prioritize
Pre-crustinators start with the simplest and fastest-doing things first. We can say that by nature the rule of 5 minutes of the creator is laid in them GTD David Allen: If you can do something immediately, do it.
But among such fast-performing tasks, there are rarely really important ones.
As a rule, higher priority issues cannot be resolved so quickly. Therefore, it often happens that the prestinator was busy all day, redid a bunch of everything, but in the end it turned out that the time was wasted.
Frequent mistakes
The desire to get the task done as soon as possible naturally leads to mistakes and negligence. The pre-crustinator is unable to put off work halfway through, even if he is tired, and then recheck everything with a fresh look. Therefore, the number of completed cases, perhaps, is at its best, but the quality suffers.
How to stop stopping
Do fewer tasks
StudyThe mere urgency effect Psychologist Christopher Hsie has shown that people who do not keep themselves busy are less likely to stop. Therefore, learn to say no to those tasks that are not particularly important to you. It is better to complete one important task in a day than to waste energy on a bunch of little things.
Track quality, not quantity
Psychologist Adam Grant of the University of Pennsylvania reportedPrecrastination: When the Early Bird Gets the Shaft in The New York Times, that prestinators tend to pay more attention to the quantitative aspect of their work: for example, how many files they double-checked or characters printed. Do not follow this desire and evaluate the quality of your work: less is more.
Plan your tasks
The problem with prestinators is that they are tormented by unfulfilled tasks hovering in their heads. Don't let them overload your brain and write them down on paper. Set deadlines and prioritize tasks, and start when you plan - not earlier, not later.
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Break down large tasks into smaller ones
As already mentioned, prestinators zealously take on small matters and give in to large-scale projects. So when you are faced with a daunting task, create a list of sub-items for it and do them one by one.
Practice emotional resilience
Psychologist Nick Vignall of the Cognitive Behavioral Institute in Albuquerque in his articlePrecrastination: The Dark Side of Getting Things Done on termination recommends whenever you want to take on another task, stop and reflect: is it really so urgent or can it wait? You need to prioritize objectively, not emotionally, whether itβs the satisfaction of another tick on a checklist or guilt about being idle.
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