Is this you?

If you cannot get organized then you need to ask yourself why...

In quite a few of my hubs I make reference to Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and the reason for this is that this book charts out a number of important insights that have wide applicability.

Among these is the discussion he includes in the book about what causes procrastination.

Now most people would claim that they procrastinate because they lack self-discipline.

However Covey debates this. For him the reason you put things off is that you DO NOT HAVE A BIG ENOUGH "WHY."

In other words, most of us, most of the time, are unclear about why we do what we do most of the time we do it.

Nevertheless, if there is ever any emotional "push" (pleasant or unpleasant) felt, then there must be some logic somewhere in the mind that makes us think THAT THERE IS SOME GOOD REASON FOR DOING THIS.

Now let us take quitting smoking. You smoke, there is a "push" to smoke, because somewhere in your mind there are beliefs that you will get BENEFIT from doing so. Most likely, one of those beliefs is simply -- SMOKING WILL GIVE ME PLEASURE.

There is no point arguing aganst such a belief, because it is probably in fact true! (Imagine this example with chocolate or sugar -- try convincing yourself that you don't really enjoy chocolate!)

But this is, in essence, what we mean by "wilpower." -- trying to convince ourselves of something we know is false!

Covey stresses the importance of getting clear about LONG TERM GOALS.

For example, if you are motivated to smoke because of the pleasure, than thre is no arguing with that truth, that fact.

BUT, if you have carefully, thoughtfully, and repeatedly taken the time to map out the things that are truly important to you over the long term, it is possible that it will start to sink in that there might be things that YOU YOURSELF actually value MORE than the pleasure of smoking.

For example, if you have small children they will likely grow up into adults and have graduations, weddings, careers, and children themselves. But continuing to smoke severely increases the chance that you will not be there to see these things - and that your children will not have you there, present at these events either.

This, then, too, is a fact -- ie, you value being there to see your children grow up.

So Stephen Covey's theory is that willpower will not stop you doing something self-destructive (ie., you cannot argue yourself out of the fact that something is genuinely pleasurable if you truly do find it genuinely pleasurable). For him, the trick is to take the time to really hammer home to yourself the LONG TERM GOALS that YOU YOURSELF TRULY WANT to achieve in the end, and then to consider whether what you are doing now will help you get to these ends, or stop you getting there.

Procrastination is frittering away time. In one of my other hubs I point that if you live to be a hundred you still only get about 5 000 weeks. Let me put this another way. If you are now forty, and you live to be eighty YOU ONLY HAVE 480 MONTHS LEFT.

That is not a lot! For this reason, Covey recommends getting extremely clear about what it is you really want out of life, because every second counts!

To do this you should think about the various areas of life (home, family, work, love, health, money, spouse, self-development, charity, community, etc) in terms of what you want to have achieved by the time you die. Then do the same for 10 years from now, then also 5 years from now.

Finally, decide what you should do on a weekly basis, AT THE BEGINNING OF EACH WEEK, that will BRING YOU CLOSER TO THESE GOALS.

In short, procrastination is robbing yourself.

But if you are doing it there must be some pleasure, or some logic that tells you it is a good thing to do in somesense.

These things may be truths (it certainly can be pleasurable, after all!).

But if you taken a lot of time, consistently and deeply, to get clear, not about what things you like and dislike, but WHAT THINGS YOU DEEPLY WANT OVER THE LONG TERM, and then remember that if you are, for example, 30, then you may only have another 600 months left(!), then hopefully your bad habits (procrastination being chief among them) may start to FEEL less attractive.