Advancing While Others Procrastinate I 165

• Practice truth, sincerity, and integrity in dealing with people.

• Discover yourself by practicing positive values.

Franklin said he practiced the virtues of resolution, temperance, order, industry, sin-
cerity, moderation, and tranquility. For resolutions he noted: "Perform without fail what
you resolve." For tranquility he says to not feel disturbed "at trifles or by accidents com-
mon or uncommon."
He took his ideas seriously. He used worksheets to record experiences. He used
numbers and charts to measure his progress. These worksheets are similar to those that
behavior therapists use today to measure their clients' progress. Through his book, Ben
Franklin established himself as America's first personal-change self-help author, and per-
haps its first behavior therapist.
Franklin tells us he never arrived at perfection especially about orderliness (keeping
items in their place). He tells us, "Yet I was by this endeavor a better and happier person
than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it."
Ben Franklin strove to act like a model person. His efforts paid dividends. He made
important contributions as a scientist, thinker, and diplomat. Still, by his admission, he
was not perfect. In Franklin's world, different conditions may require different responses.
Like Franklin, you will never overcome all limitations and faults. You will never
actualize all your potential. Yet, as you strive to build a model you, you can make signifi-
cant gains. You can go farther than you have traveled before and you may enjoy the trip.

Kelly's Model Person

Psychologist George Kelly's Role Construct system (1955) complements Franklin's
ideas. In the 1950s, Kelly shed light on how to build a model person. He tells us to play
different roles to discover what we can do.
This is how Kelly's system works. Begin by devising new roles you can play that
can help you build your positive attributes. List the attributes you want to build. They
can be anything, including becoming an active listener, a conflict manager, more easy-
going, meticulous, confident, imaginative, venturesome, or persistent.
To start, pick one attribute you want to develop. Write an advertisement for yourself
that highlights that attribute. Create a script around the attribute. Plan the scenes. Pick
your nonverbal activities. Decide where to play out the role. Decide how long the scene
will be. You can always change the scene, time, and content once you start. Then give
your character a name that suits the part you plan to play and keep it to yourself. Test
out your role in the real world.
If you're not sure what to do, take on the role of a person who uses aspiring words
such as "prefer," "want," or "desire." These terms crowd out requiring words such as
"expect," "demand," or "insist." Requiring ways create inner tension.
When you think in aspiring ways and take on new roles, you may find that the lan-
guage you use to express yourself will reflect these new positive actions. You may also

Although you can never achieve perfection,

by striving for excellence you can achieve beyond the ordinary.
 166 I The Procrastination Workbook

Testing promising new behaviors can feel clumsy at first.

However, when you start to get positive feedback for
these efforts, you are likely to want to repeat what works.

find yourself using active verbs to foretell your actions. Active verbs seem to be associ-
ated with a can do attitude.
Kelly does not suggest that you develop a practiced phoniness. His idea is to help
you break negative patterns by testing out new behaviors that compete against the
negatives.
Kelly believes that when we play different roles, we learn more about ourselves.
Still, this type of change is like wearing new shoes. It can feel uncomfortable until you
have walked in them for a bit.

The Will to Change

Franklin tells us to pick attributes we want to develop and practice developing
them. Kelly tells us to test them in the roles we play. French educator and psychologist
Jean Payot (1893) says we need to assert our will to change for the better. Payot thought
that will, effort, and sweat nourish the taproot of change.
Payot wrote that strenuous and persistent efforts, unless directed, are not enough.
To make a worthwhile effort we would wisely seek a direction and work toward some
important end. When you do this, he says, "ideas and work will draw nourishment from
everything." Here are some of his observations:

• We fuse the bonds between ideas and conduct "by the heat of emotion." He cor-
rectly implied that emotionally charged ideas motivate action. What we think,
the way we feel, and what we do bind together. By implication, when we change
one part of the trilogy, we change the other two.

• People who spend their time undermining other people's efforts waste their
energy. It's far wiser to work to accomplish something meaningful.

• Our minds fill with ideas that contradict one another, and often we don't see the
incongruity. The implication is that multiple perspectives are possible within
each of us.

• "The smallest evidence of fact will always outweigh authority." Search for the
facts, look for evidence, and avoid thoughtless acquiescence to official-sounding
statements.

The Olympiad Charter presents the idea of fashioning

"a life based on the joy found in effort."
 Advancing While Others Procrastinate I 167

The I Ching Perspective

We can reframe reality through paradoxes and see our lives from a different per-
spective. When you change your views to fit a reframed reality, you have experienced a
radical change in perspective. The I ching or Chinese Book of Changes offers ideas you
can use to help yourself reframe your views about procrastination.
The I ching contains sixty-four named hexagrams, aphorisms, and accompanying
interpretations. Here are two of the aphorisms that relate to procrastination and time:
"Do not expend your power prematurely in an effort to attain, by force, something for
which the time is not right." "In the chaos of the beginning, order is already implicit."
When you look beyond the mysticism of this text, you can see the merit in the ideas of
the ancients who authored this book of change. Consider:

• To grow wise and to contribute requires accurate timing and pacing, along with
love, patience, perseverance, creativity, and receptivity. It is not possible to
achieve everything at once.

• Time is not a barrier but the medium for actualizing potential.

• When there is difficulty in the beginning, your struggle gives meaning to what
transpires.

• When hindrances happen, patience is often the answer. An unlikely event may
happen to help clear the path. If you feel blocked, you may need to stand back to
see where the power to transcend lies.

• At the time of a standstill, you are nearing the point of change into its opposite.
Times of darkness pass. Times of decay end. The hero or sage within you returns
to power.

• As you examine yourself, measure the effects your actions produce and consider
alternatives if your actions fail.

• If you are to lead others, you must first objectively judge yourself.

Crossing the Bridge

Crossing the bridge to the Voyager's path involves a radical change in perspective.
Here you have to keep your mind open to new solutions to old problems and old solu-
tions to new problems.
As you cross the bridge, keep aware of changing peripheral conditions. Concentrate
on what you are doing. Act this way, and you are on a pathway that is radically different
from the one that most others follow.
You can take comfort in knowing that you have sound resources. You can design a
model person and strive for that ideal of excellence using these resources. You can't be
sure you will triumph in the end. Still, as Ben Franklin learned, he was better off making
the effort than in not trying. Perhaps that part of your autobiography will read the same
as his. Try experimenting with radical changes in perspective, and see.
 1 68 1 The Procrastination Workbook

The Radical Change in Perspective Involves Changing

From To

Demanding success Willingness to risk failure

Constraints Freedom

Crisis Opportunity

Finding oneself Discovering resources

Internalization Experimentation

Risk avoidance Risk management

Reducing malfunctioning Expanding functioning

Need fulfillment Goal attainment

Old boundaries New insights

Key Ideas and Action Plans

The allegorical Eagle and Time Wanderer myth illustrates ways to substitute purposeful
action for procrastination. Through this myth, we traveled five paths and looked for
ways to cross over from those that lead to misery to those that hold hope for taking
charge of your life today and for the days to come. But the Voyager's path we see among
the human trails is not a quick nor an easy path to take, nor is it practical for everyone to
take. There can be no guarantees that the Voyager's path will lead to where you want to
go. But on that path, or a selective modification of it, you can find opportunities, create
valued experiences, and develop a realistic hope for present day and future fulfillment
through the power of your efforts.
Is the myth memorable enough to cause a measurable shift in perspective away
from procrastination habit-pattern sequences to problem-solving sequences? There are
personal as well as scientific ways of knowing that apply. If, in a personal way, the myth
causes you to incubate some more on your future, and you find yourself accomplishing
more with fewer needless distractions, then the myth serves its intended purpose. It may
also be that shifts can be explained by a combination of other factors and forces. If you
do better, the "whys" are of interest, but the actions are more important.
What key ideas from this chapter can you use to further you plan to decrease pro-
crastination? Write them down. Then write down the actions you can and will take to
support a do it now initiative.
 Advancing While Others Procrastinate I 169

Key Ideas

1.

2.

3.

Action Plan

1.

2.

3.

Postscript
Few things in human psychology are fixed. What we know about procrastination contin-
ues to grow. The research is turning up new understandings. I'm learning something
new about the p-factor every day, and I've been writing and working in this area for
thirty-two years at the date of this publication. With that, we've come to the end of The
Procrastination Workbook. But the end is a new beginning for something else. What that
something else might be, only you can foresee through developing clarity, sharpening
your direction, and enjoying your experiences. In that spirit, here is one final thought:

The threads of life are thin and strong.

At first, we see them go on and on.
But with the movement of the clock,
The threads unravel and we are lost,
Like pictures etched in frost.
—Dr. Bill Knaus

We have limited time to learn, contribute, and enjoy our lives. But this pathway to
fulfillment is open to those who risk using their time and resources wisely.