Piers Steel

Whilst waiting for an Opticians appointment the other day I went into the library to use up an hour and this book caught my eye. I thought that I would give it 30 minutes and if it interested me I would take it out. Well, it caught my attention and so I borrowed it with the hope that it would help improve my procrastination levels a bit.

Initially I found the book fascinating. This is down to that fact that the first sections of the book deal with the psychology behind why we procrastinate. It turns out that to some extent we are hard-wired to and that our ancestors were also guilty of it. The not so good news is that modern life makes it so much easier to procrastinate due to the myriad of distractions available to us

Dr Steel then introduces 3 characters who are different types of procrastinators and says that most of us will have traits of all 3 but will find 1 of these characters is more like us than the others. By carrying out a simple question and answer task a score indicates which one we fit most with. I turned out to a very time specific procrastinator (unless a task needs doing immediately I tend to put it off). This seems about right to me but I read all the information on all 3 types out of interest.

This is where the book starts to slide a bit in my opinion. A lot of the advice is duplicated and ranges from being fairly useful to really unhelpful. One of the things that he says is that people who procrastinate heavily have lower levels of fitness than those who don't. I could have told you that before reading the book. His solution to this is telling you to exercise more and eat a healthier diet. Procrastinators in general know what they should be doing but its getting the motivation to do it which is the hard part so this piece of advice is wasted.

There is some great advice however, and there are loads and loads of different pointers which I guess you could mix and match to suit your individual case. One piece of advice that I know works for me is to just start a task by agreeing to do the first part of it. For example if I knew I should go for a run but I didn't feel like it I would put my running gear on. By doing that first step the next step feels much more agreeable and I always ended up outside running.

A lot of the book is based on the assumption that you work in an office environment (9-5) and what to improve your career prospects. This is a particular bugbear of mine. Almost every book that I have read that could fall under the umbrella of 'self-help' or 'self-improvement' makes this assumption. Health and fitness books also tend to make the same assumption and as a result those who don't fit into this criteria can find the advice ill fitting.

From a personal stand point, there are 2 things which help kick my ass into action. Both are covered in this book but not in much depth and neither is developed upon. If you are still reading up to this point I will share my wisdom (or lack of) with you. For an entire week make a note of what you spend your time doing. I accounted for my time in 15 minute chunks and at the end of the week I ended up with 7 sheets of paper covered in data. Then I assigned everything I did into 1 of 3 categories; Essential (sleep, hygiene, etc), Useful (work, studying, etc) and Wasted (watching TV, Internet time, etc). Once I had added all the time spent doing these things up I was embarrassed by the amount of time I spent in the Wasted category. I am not a new person as a result of this experiment but it has made me far more aware if time I am wasting and revealed a few time leaks that I was unaware of.

The second of these is that to make changes in your life you need to change them gradually. If you want to eat healthily for example, there is little point in going from bad eating to perfect diet in an instant. Statistics show that you will keep this up for 3-5 days and then slip back into your old ways. A better approach is to slowly change your habits. It takes about 21 days for a habit to start forming so making very small changes one a week or fortnight is a much better approach. This makes the whole thing seem much more effortless and is an approach advocated by many high level sports coaches.

All in all I would say that this is a very interesting book but I doubt that many people will take the advice on board to the extent that this book thinks you will.… (mere)

This book is a great example of what an author does when he has a unique idea that can be succinctly explained in 10-20 pages but needs to multiply that by a factor of 10 to make money writing a book. Pretty high amount of fluff (chapters 5 and 6 especially seem like they were included just to fill pages). Lots of pop-sci style references that conflate informal surveys, or even myths, with real meta-analyses. Some explanations rely heavily on bunk evolutionary psychology.

If you're able to look over these downsides, I think that the core equation itself is a great mental model for investigating why you're putting off certain projects or tasks. If I were to come back and re-read this book, I would just read chapters 7-10, and I'd recommend first-time readers do the same thing. Indeed, even the author knows that this is where the meat of the book lies; he introduces the section with "the rest of the book is dedicated to actionable intelligence that puts putting off in its place."

3 stars because Steel wastes half the book with filler before getting to the good stuff.… (mere)

When I started, I thought it would be much more useful but I became rather disilluioned. The begining was "Why Are You A Procrastinator?". Answer is "You Are a Bad person.". Really, that was it. Can't set goals, too impulsive, no time management, easily distracted, lazy. Check, check, check. So, it was not easy to take his sections on how to beat procrastination in the light hearted, positive thinking, tone that he chose. The book just depressed me and made me think I will never get over my procrastination habits. The few tips that he had that I had tried had just made things worse. But, in the spirit of eternal optimism, I have another book on Solving Procrastination (from a reviewer here) on order at the library. Hope springs eternal.… (mere)