Don't Delay

Such an insightful post. Thank you for sharing the letter -- and thanks to the letter writer for sharing these thoughts.

Gina Pera, author
Is It You, Me, or Adult A.D.D.?

Coming of age in the 70s I grew up with the idea that it makes sense to feel good, 'do your thing.' This is a fall back even when I have applied myself to a career and responsibilities. This shows up when I have uncommitted time and free to do whatever. I end up distracting with the 500 tv channels, the infinite WWW and then necessary entertainment. What needs to be done? This is often approached in a very nihilistic fashion. Nothing!!

[My appologies in advance for misspellings, english is not my native language, and if I wait to do it perfect I'll never do it! This is also an interesting opportunity for me to "aim for imperfection", since it's not comfortable at all for me to submit this message without a deep double-check and perfect spelling... but anyway here it goes!]

Dear Dr.Pychyl,

First of all, let me congratulate you for your amazing work, your communication skills (not easy to explain what you explain in easy terms!), and I specially want to sincerely THANK YOU (as many other readers) for your consistent efforts and generosity to share all this amazing info openly with all of us. Your work is having a big impact (and inyecting hope) in thousands of people worldwide, and I'm certainly one of those. Although I still have a long way to go until I manage to change in a sustainable way, for the first time I feel certain I'm moving in the right direction, after wasting (mostly) many years trying all kind Time Mgmt techniques and tools (I thought I had a Time Mgmt problem), then finding out I have ADHD (or so it seems) and trying the European equivalent of Ritalin, then reading (partially, as usual) several ADHD books, etc, etc. I've also been recently to a few psycologists, but I don't think they really understood the roots of my issues (not easy), some said "just do it" and similar things, which didn't work. All in all, one decade trying to gain control of myself and my life, with little or no success. In fact, I think I've been getting worse, probably because these years I've been so strongly focused and determined to solve my procrastination (and related) issues (to "fix" myself!) that often I procrastinate at work and home by doing research about procrastination related topics (feeling I'm investing on my #1 priority now which is a good excuse to not do other things), planning my own therapies to test, etc.

Like the writter of this letter, I seem to also have several other issues (don't know which issue caused the other ones, perhaps some sort of "fear" is the root of everything in me), in my case: clear perfectionism since I was a kid, fear of negative evaluations (my self esteem depends too much on being admired and recognized), intolerance to discomfort, over-optimistic view of my "capabilities" in some aspects (e.g. "I know I can do that in about 1hr") but "helpless" in other (like waking up early in the morning or controlling my urges), and recently I realized I don't have a well defined SELF either. Perhaps because my perfectionism doesn't let me DECIDE (and COMMIT TO) what I stand for or who I am until I'm 100% sure about it, which of course never happens... plus my fear of failure and/or social rejection which makes me compare myself to others constantly, often highly selfconscious. I also realized thanks to you, that I constantly practice Self Deception, like something inside me trying to get me away from painful tasks by telling my "I can do this tomorrow much better than today", or "I need to be clear on that other thing before I can do this task"...

As additional background, my family raised me saying I was almost a genius, capable of great things in life, with many "gifts" from god, and giving me very strong praise for small nice things I did (I maybe got "addicted" to "strong+immediate praise/rewards" for the tasks I did?)... and as a result I clearly have hopes and dreams inside me of being some sort of "hero" one day who makes great things for humanity. My ideal self seems way up... Compared to those dreams of almost "saving the world", most of what I do professionaly lacks motivation. I have a nice job in a great company (been lucky so far and able to hide my issues to most colleagues), involved in what others consider very exciting projects,... but after the first couple of years, I quickly got demotivated, and for some years now I view my job as a temporal thing, not very motivating, without any clear alternative that motivates me, other than the dream of doing something BIG (I do have some "big" ideas in my mind), saving/helping lots of people and/or becoming rich (which would reduce my worries and allow me to become a "hero" in theory by helping others).

Anyway, I think I digressed a bit now. But anyway I wanted to share with you and your readers my situation and context (particularly since I found very useful to hear details about this reader), before posing my key comment and question. I've been reading and hearing you for almost 1 year, and have been wanting to write you for months, but guess what... always procrastinated! Until now, that I thought about sending you a "quick question" (did I mention I usually "over-do" every task??), and finally got started now, after many months. God, will I ever CHANGE??? I have more hope now (and tools) thanks to you... but I certainly don't feel sure that I'll succeed this time, after so many failed attempts my self confidence in change is lower now.

Well, and now to my main point/question: Besides your blog/podcasts, the other "tool" that seems to be making a profound/fundamental and positive change on me, is a book/theory I discovered during my hours on the net some months ago, from someone called Steven Hayes, called "Get Out of Your Mind and into your Life". As you probably know (there's tons of info about ACT on the web) this is based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and promotes Mindfulness/Acceptance/Defusion together with Values+Commitment as a way to allow the "observing self" to better cope with feelings/pain and thoughts/worries/etc, and to better "react and act" in life. From what I've read in some articles on the web related to ACT, there might be some controversy about ACT (some say it's overhyped?), but I guess that's the case with every new theory, and in this case there seems to be a lot published in peer reviewed journals about it (I'm not a psycologist, but I have a science background, and this seemed to be a well grounded therapy based on something they call RFT). But regardless of all that, I feel ACT is also helping me tremendously to see life diferently, and even change my existential approach in life. Accepting feelings rather than resisting to them (not trying to "control/force" them, which I've tried hard all my life), together with the tips they provide to do that (defusion exercises,etc), has proven incredibly powerful in several occasions in the past months. Perhaps my perfectionism has made me want to control everything, including my "emotional mind" and feelings, trying to control/avoid pain, and that has made things worse. So "Acceptance" is already helping me quite a bit. And together with your incredible work and recommendations (implementation intentions, not helpful mantra, willpower strengthening, REBT which is helping me a lot too, etc), I think I'm finally very close to a real change! I hope....

However, while I have read about Mindfulness in your blog, I haven't seen anything about ACT, which based on my personal view/experience seems to be fundamentally related to the procrastination issues and many of the topics you kindly share with us. Feeling myself the transformational effect of ACT (at least for now), I'd be extremely interested to hear your view on it. And that Dr.Pychyl was the question I wanted to ask you, and the reason I (finally) wrote to you ;-)

Anything you can share with us about your view on ACT and it's usefulness to address procrastination (and the fundamental issues behind it) will be once again greatly appreciated, and invaluable information.

BIG THANKS again for everything, and I wish you all the best in your professional and personal life,

MM

PS: to the writer of this and the previous letter, thank you for sharing your experience and suggestions! I felt incredibly familiar with many of your comments, feelings, and experiences (e.g. when you said your "ideal self would get tired of actual self and then step in to fix all the issues"!), and I hope one day we again coincide in this or another blog, but this time sharing our success stories after having achieved real and sustainable change!!! I'm convinced it IS possible (just as I'm convinced humans will land in Mars one day, even if hundreds of years from now), and sometimes I think we might be (or so I hope) at the tipping point in human history, when finally we know "just enough" about the human mind and behaviour to achieve such a huge transformation of our selves. Lets keep the hope!

PS2: a scary thought just crossed my mind: can you imagine my computer crashes right now before hitting "send"?? Well... I just told myself "not helpful"! But still, I then did copy&paste and saved it in Word just in case! ;-) God... I'm back to my self!

Thanks MM for your well-written, thoughtful comments. I will blog about ACT in the future. Good suggestion. At the moment, I'm into some other reading, but I won't forget your request.
all the best,
tim

This article resonated with me, like the author was sitting in my living room and has been watching me my entire life. I am 23 with adult ADHD. It's difficult to describe to anybody who has not personally been there, the painful self-doubt you feel and the constant disappointment in yourself for your procrastination. Thank you for the advice. I struggle with motivation every day, and self-help myself with bouts of productivity to compensate for the times I am unproductive.

Nike said it best...just do it.

On that note, I have a memorandum to write that I've been putting off for some time now. Excuses for not working on it:

-Valentine's Day
-Headache
-My neighbor's loud music
-Tiredness
-The self-created obsessive compulsion I talked myself into believing I have to justify cleaning my apartment over doing homework

Guess who suffers? Me, and me alone.

Thanks for the reality check. I've been needing one.

I had a similar sense to LegallyBlonde in that I felt like I could identify so well with the reader who submitted that letter. I also definitely saw myself in MM's comments. I was just about to decide whether to take a nap or keep reading random psychology articles instead of the massive amounts of work I have to do, and reading this made me realize I was procrastinating without even realizing it. In fact, no sooner had I had that thought than I read MM's comment and thought, gee, maybe I'll google ACT now. I will sometime soon, but right now I'm off to the library! Thank you for this reminder!

Heres the thing, I know I have adult adhd and i know i had it as a child. I was diagnosed when i was a kid but my dad did not believe in psycology. He felt as though it was a bunch of bs to take peoples money. I know myself very well....i know i am struggling with this. In fact it may even be a worste case scenerio. Now heres the thing; i see a psychatrist and he decided to label me bipolar..his reason for doing so is because my mother at one point was labled this. I also want to mention he labled me this do to information i was giving him while i was pregnant....hmmmmm, now any one with a brain cell knows your mood goes up and down while pregnant...hormones remind me a little of bipolar symtoms. Anyway i would love to start treating my adhd that i have always known i have to see what life could really be like. It may be the answere i have always been searching for. The problem is that i am 24yrs old and he knows my mother is an addict,...so how do i comfront him with out sounding like i want drugs? I have never honest to god taken anything adhd related to get high or at all. My old psyc just retired so now i will get a new one, i feel like this could be my chance to get the appropiate treatment i know i need...We know our bodies...I have always known...I just want the help!!! Any suggestions?..

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This is definitely an article that I will archive. Right now, instead of studying like I should be, I'm researching on coping with ADD. :-\ I don't know how long it'll last but, reading this article has at least sparked the motivation to return to my work as soon as I leave this comment. Thanks for sharing!

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