Today we began chapter 5 of Feeling Good which is about procrastination; pages 81 - 110. Burns begins the chapter by identifying that not only do we think we act. The problem when we feel depressed is that it can remove our feeling of wanting to do things as well. Changing how we think affects how we feel but also changing how we act will substantially affect how we feel.  One of the worst parts of depression is how it reduces our motivation which can create self-hatred and insolation. The things we love the most can be ruined because of the state of being depressed. (81) 

          Being isolated for anyone, even animals who are confined in cages, would cause depression. Having the attitude of self-help seems to make the biggest difference and try to help themselves make the most improvement. When depressed, people can refuse to make any effort to try and help themselves. The cause of this paralysis is their attitude of procrastination and self-defeating behaviour that is contrary to one’s self-interest. (82-4) 

          Believing that being lazy is in your nature, a desire to hurt oneself or suffer through depression, frustrating others with one’s depression, or some kind of benefit from doing nothing are all flawed ways of thinking about the problem. First, seeing oneself as lazy is a trait model of one’s personality but is clearly an example of the distortion labeling. (84) The second belief has the assumption that the person likes to suffer but this is very much so in contrast to a health model of human nature. The third belief is a passive aggressive attitude or a sense of internalized anger but depressed people rarely have anger towards themselves or others but most often are in fear of displeasing others. Lastly, there is some attention that people get from others when they are suffering but people who are depressed usually disqualify these forms of attention and hence depression has no real reward. (85-6) 

          Ultimately, distorted thinking is the cause of a lack of motivation. On page 87, Burns offers a diagram of the lethargy cycle where self-defeating thoughts lead to either self-defeating emotions or actions that leads to the negative consequences of the cycle of being isolated, negative beliefs about oneself and feelings of inadequacy. (87) Burns states, “The relationship between your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours is reciprocal - all your emotions and actions are the results of your thoughts and attitudes.” (88) If we change our behaviour it will also have an effect on our thinking. When you behave even though you may not feel like it, the result of acting that way will give you evidence against the negative thoughts you have. Ultimately Burns wants us to transform a lethargy cycle into a productivity cycle. (88) 

          Burns then identifies 13 different types of mind-sets with procrastination and do-nothingism. (88-93) 

 

          1. Hopelessness: Being stuck in the present with a negative state can make it seem like all states will be just as negative, making us forget when we were happy and believing that we will never be happy. (88)

 

 

          2. Helplessness: Believing that how we feel is caused by things that are out of our control like other people, our biology, or bad luck. (88)

 

          3. Overwhelming Yourself: Sometimes we can magnify tasks so that they are impossible to complete. Instead of breaking tasks down into smaller steps, we believe it must be done all at once. This overwhelmingness can lead us to distract ourselves from how we feel but end up not attempting the task at all. (89) 

 

          4. Jumping to Conclusions: People can make negative assumptions about the process or outcome of a task that demotivates them from doing it at all in the first place. (89) 

 

          5. Self-Labeling: The more one puts things off the more one can see themselves in a negative way. Our self-efficacy is reduced more and more as we stop doing things we lose our ability to believe that we can. (89-90)

 

          6. Undervaluing the Rewards: Not only does the task seem difficult but the outcome or reward loses its desirability. We don’t feel like putting effort into a task from disqualifying the positive in the reward. This can create a state of anhedonia where we diminish our ability to be satisfied or pleased.  Disqualifying the rewards can cause us to not even try. (90) 

 

          7. Perfectionism: Developing inappropriate goals or unrealistic standards can make things so impossible that we don’t even try. (90)

 

          8. Fear of Failure: Paralysis can be created if we believe that we will fail no matter what we will do and do nothing at all. The distortion, overgeneralization, can prevent us from wanting to try a task if we believe we will fail at all tasks. Having a product vs a process oriented mindset can prevent someone from wanting to do things. Focusing on the outcome and not the effort we put into things can make it seem like any effort is meaningless unless certain outcomes are reached. We cannot control the outcome necessarily but we can control our contribution to the process. (90-1) 

 

          9. Fear of Success: A lack of confidence will reduce a person’s belief in their success and unfairly judge oneself based on the expectations of others perceptions. The fear of others' perceptions of us can reduce our motivation to do things. If we do not believe we can amount to the expectations of others we can lose our motivation to even try. This can also reduce our commitment or involvement in cooperating with others. (91-2) 

 

          10. Fear of Disapproval or Criticism: If we believe that others will disapprove of our decisions and not accept our accomplishments that can demotivated us. We can aim low and not challenge ourselves because of the value we place on the approval or fear of criticism from others. (92)

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          11. Coercion and Resentment: To be motivated, some will attempt to force themselves with ‘should’ or ‘I have to’ beliefs. This can create intense internal or external pressure in performance that can take away any motivation to even try. A sense of obligation, burden, resentment and guilt become associated with tasks, making them even more difficult.  (92)  

 

           12. Low Frustration Tolerance: Obstacles can create panic when we attempt to solve our problems from a sense of entitlement that things are supposed to be the way we expect them to be or how we want. The comparison of reality to the ideal version in our minds makes us condemn reality. The ‘should’ attitude on reality, ‘it shouldn’t be this way,’ creates unnecessary frustration and increases the feeling of giving up. (92-3)

 

          13. Guilt and Shame: If we feel like a bad person or that we disappoint others, it can lead us to being demotivated in life. It is important not to engage in the personalization distortion, where we are unfairly taking responsibility for things outside of our control. (93) 

 

          All of these mind-sets show how the irrational, distorted way of thinking is creating the sense of being demotivated. Any meaningful activity is worth doing to create a better mood. If we do nothing, we can become flooded with negative thoughts. (94) This is a lifestyle where we have to learn to switch towards taking action that is meaningful even if we don’t feel it. At the very least, doing something meaningful will distract us from the negative thinking pattern and internal dialogue. We will develop a sense of mastery that, through our experience, will disprove these thoughts. (94) 

 

Burns now goes through 13 different Self-Activation Techniques to motivate us out of procrastination. (94-125) 

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          1. The Daily Activity Schedule: On page 95, Burns gives a chart where we compare our prospective to retrospective activities. We plan out what we would like to do during the day and after completion, we determine if it was pleasurable and if we achieved a sense of mastery from it. Just making a plan for the day can give us the foresight into our near future to help guide us to accomplishment. The activities we feel accomplishment are designed with an M for mastery whereas P is for those that make us feel good via pleasure. We can then rate our projected mastery or pleasure for different tasks then rate them after completion to see how accurate our predictions of our activities really are. 

          Doing the activity schedule will reduce any tendency to obsess over what value an activity has and counterproductive ambivalence on whether we will do it or not. Doing part of our plan is better than nothing and will give us some sense of accomplishment. It is important to balance out enjoyable and work-related activities. The more we stick to our schedule, the more we will feel motivated to do things and disprove any negative beliefs that we can’t. We will develop a sense of awareness of how we spend our time and give us a greater sense of self-control. We will learn which activities give more mastery of pleasure after recording them and can plan days in the future that are more balanced. 

          Just being alone and doing nothing can cause depression in anyone. Even if we do not have plans with others, we can make plans for ourselves and feel good about life. If we are alone, that in itself is a great reason to schedule things. As we show self-love by caring about ourselves through doing constructive activities, other people will notice and be more attracted to us. Writing down how each activity makes us feel and scheduling a new one for the next day will increase our sense of self-respect and reliance. (94-8) 

 

          2. The Anti-Procrastination Sheet: On page 99, Burns shows a chart that can train us to test our negative predictions about certain activities. We may not do something because it is perceived as too difficult or having no reward. It is important to test these beliefs by breaking tasks down into 15 minute steps and predicting the difficulty of each step. Once completed, we record the actual difficulty or satisfaction of each step. Our productivity and self-confidence can increase simply by empirically testing our beliefs about how satisfying and difficult each step of our tasks are. (98-100) 

 

          3. Daily Record of Dysfunctional Thoughts: On pages 101-103, Burns gives a chart where we identify the thoughts that are associated with some task we are putting off and write a rational response to those negative thoughts. Once we diffuse the negative thoughts, we immediately remove that from preventing us from engaging with the task. If we wait around to feel the desire, interest or energy to do something, we may never do things that are unfamiliar or uncomfortable. Learning to act without feeling is important in our ability to do what is best for us. Writing down our thoughts is very effective, in contrast to simply thinking about them when we are making an effort to create motivating and rational replacements to negative thinking. (100-104)

 

          4. The Pleasure Predicting Sheet: On page 105, Burns has a chart where we test out negative beliefs about doing activities when we are alone. If we assume we are not productive, we can write down activities when we are alone and with others then record or predict actual satisfaction from those activities. We can quickly learn that we have equal greater enjoyment in doing things by ourselves than with others. It is important to be mindful of self-fulfilling prophecies in leading us to create negative moods by believing that we will be unhappy and behaving in ways that create unhappy situations. 

          It is important to remember that other’s thoughts have no effect on our moods. We cannot read the minds of others. Someone can smile, think harmful thoughts and we would not even know what those thoughts were. We may have some indication of what someone is thinking from nonverbal behaviour but it is important to always communicate and check with people to understand what they are thinking. Ultimately, it is only our thoughts that affect us. It is our thought about what another is thinking that is affecting us, not the actual thought of the other person. Burns states, “It’s your thoughts and only yours that are making you feel terrible; you’re the only person in the world who can effectively persecute yourself.” (107) Always respond to automatic thoughts with critical thinking to develop a rational response. (104 - 107)

 

          5. How to Get off Your “Butt” - The But Rebuttal: On page 108, Burns gives a chart where we respond to excuses we make that prevent us from doing things. As we make excuses to the task we can create more excuses to our response. All excuses can be responded to by objecting to them until we have none left. This way, no matter what automatically comes into our minds, we can object to those ways of thinking until we do the task. (107 -109) 

 

          6. Learn to Endorse Yourself: On page 110, Burns provides a chart where we compare our self-downing statements to self-endorsing ones. This chart is used when we tell ourselves that our efforts don’t count. We feel defeated to do anything before we even begin. We can identify the self-downing statement and replace it with an objective self-endorsing one. It is important to keep practicing this transfer of statements in our minds until it becomes automatically endorsing.

          It is most important that we do not neglect ourselves. Only we can allot others downing to affect us. Irrelevant of other people’s frustrations, combating our own self-downing statements and not allowing their negative attitudes to become ours is up to us. We can create a daily mental list of what we did and give credit for each of those accomplishments. 

 

          7. TIC-TOK Technique: If we find ourselves procrastinating, the first step is to be mindful of our thoughts. Burn’s recommends being aware of TICs, Task-interfering Cognitions, and how we can reduce their limiting effect on us by replacing them with TOC’s, Task-Oriented Cognitions. (110-111) It is important to identify the distortion within the interfering cognition so that we can correct the underlying problem in our thinking. Not only does this work for our self-talk, but we can apply this technique to mental images and visualizations that interfere with our ability to do a task. If we find ourselves visualizing performing negatively at a task, we can actively visualize a successful performance on that task instead. (111)

          Our expectations have a large influence on how we act and what we are willing to do. On pages 112-113 Burns gives several examples of applying the TIC-TOC technique. 

 

          8. Little Steps for Little Feet: This technique, pages 114-115, is a means to compartmentalize our task. This means we break every task down into its component, smaller, parts. For example, we can use time limitations, pay attention for 3 minutes and have free distraction for 1 minute, to help with focusing. Or we can set aside a specific amount of time for a task, then even if it is not complete, step away from it so that we can enjoy other things. (114) It is important that we have a balance everyday in the types of activities we are doing so that we are actively pursuing meaningful goals. (115) 

 

          9. Motivation Without Coercion: (116-117) Here, Burns identifies the issue when we have poor motivation by committing the ‘should’ distortion. We can lose motivation to do things by using words like ‘should,’ ‘ought,’ and ‘must’ when we think about things that are important for us to do. Removing these coercive words from our self-talk helps us realize we are not obligated to do anything. Essentially, we want to translate the shoulds into wants, or could. For example, instead of saying ‘I should go to the store,’ we could say, ‘I could go to the store.’ We reserve the decision to do something and not carrel ourselves into certain modes of action. This will give us a sense of freedom, choice and personal dignity. (116)

          We can create a list of advantages and disadvantages for each decision. Burns gives a table on page 117 for this. 

 

          10. Disarming Technique: (117-118) This is one of the most valuable techniques that Burns has that we can use in our daily lives. In this context, Burns is applying it to other people forcing us to do things by telling us we ‘should’ do things. If we feel that people are forcing us to do things, we have a tendency to resist, even if it is good for us. Having a sense of autonomy in our decisions is important for us to feel motivated to do it. Burns states, “Any time you feel shoved … you will naturally tighten up and resist so as to maintain your equilibrium and balance.” (Burns 118) We will make an effort in our own self-control to preserve our dignity in refusing anything we’re being forced to do. 

          If the thing we are being told to do is in our interest, we can resist even though it would be good for us. The first step of the Disarming Technique is to agree with the person but in this context, we are agreeing because we decided to do it on our own accord. The other two steps of the Disarming Technique are discussed in the next chapter. (119)

 

          11. Visualize Success: (119-121) Here, Burns suggests that we list the advantages of a task that we have been putting off. When we think of the positive consequences it will require less self-discipline for us to do the task because we are motivated to go after the positive parts of the outcome. (119) On page 120, Burns gives advantages of quitting smoking for one’s motivation. 

           The second step is to fantasize being in our favorite place, visualize every detail possible and relax. Being in that visualized scene, add the element of also successfully completing the task, like quitting smoking. Using positive suggestions and associating one’s favorite place with the benefits of the accomplishment can help one gain success in achieving goals. (121)

 

          12. Count What Counts: (121-123) Burns reminds us of the power of the self-fulfilling prophecy and how the mental filter and labeling can prevent us from being our best. It is important not to be dependent on others pushing us to do things, because we label ourselves in such a way that we can’t or we view things from a negative perspective. (122) We can learn self-efficacy in our ability to get things done on our own by being empirical and counting all the things that we successfully do on our own. We can log how many tasks we do and observe how, over time, our numbers will increase, showing how we are in control of our lives and not dependent on others. We will also notice our self-confidence will increase as well. (123)

 

          13. Test Your Can’ts: (123-124) Developing a scientific perspective to test any self-defeating prediction about our performance and ability will help us in changing pessimistic thoughts to optimistic ones. When we say we ‘can’t’ do something, we can be stuck in an illusion that we are inadequate or incompetent. (123) Other people can also reinforce these negative attitudes by telling us or believing the negative things we say about ourselves. If we test these negative predictions with experiments as a form of hypothesis testing, we can disprove all the self-defeating ‘I can’t do this’ self-talk. (124) 

 

          14. The Can’t Lose System: (124-125) Sometimes people are scared of testing themselves because they are in fear of failure. If you list all the negative consequences of taking a risk and failing, you can see how even if you do fail, it is part of the learning process. (124) Everything that we take for granted that we do, we learned to do at some point in our lives, which means that we failed at it to some degree. Burns says, “At what age are you suddenly expected to know everything and never make any more mistakes?” (125) On page 126 he had a ‘Can’t Lose’ System expressed in a table format. 

 

          Burns concludes this chapter by explaining that action comes before motivation. People who procrastinate are confused about this, thinking that motivation comes before action. If you wait around for motivation before you do something, you can end up waiting forever and never doing it. (125) Burns breaks down the 14 different techniques in a simplified table on pages 128-130)