Keeping the Seat of One's Pants on the Seat of the Chair

When it comes to many of our tasks, keeping the seat of our pants on the seat of our chair is a necessary first step to getting the job done. Once we get up and leave that chair, we leave our work too. I often advocate this to my students as a basic strategy if not an essential volitional skill to stay put and do their work. The thing is, a student who just read my last blog said that sometimes this backfires, and he ends up procrastinating even more. Why?

I've argued that staying put is essential to staying on task. We may be tempted to leave because we're having a lot of uncertainty, negative feelings or stress about the task in front of us. By staying put, I reason, we're more likely to keep at least some focus, make even a little progress and then build on the initial success to keep going. I know that this has worked for many people, and I would still suggest it as a strategy if you're feeling like avoiding a task by leaving your desk.

Well, just this afternoon after reading my previous blog entry, one of my students explained that staying put can, at least sometimes, end up immobilizing him. He stays put, continues to struggle with the paragraph in front of him and only gets more certain that he's absolutely hopeless as a writer. When he finally does leave that chair, as biology will eventually necessitate, he won't go back. It's now even more aversive than it was before. Sometimes he's stayed away for days after he has had such a terrible emotional experience of staying put when nothing was working.

Ah, that's the key issue. Nothing was working. While staying put may be a necessary first step, it won't by itself solve the problem at hand. It just ensures for the moment that you won't give up. The next step has to be a strategic one. That is, analyze why it is you feel the way you do about the task. For my student, as an example, it was his inability to articulate ideas related to a particular paragraph that was causing his distress. He felt incompetent as a writer. The negative emotions associated with the feelings of incompetence and the threat to his image of self as a researcher/writer led him to want to walk away. At least he would feel better. In this case, it's essential to find a new way to keep moving forward.

Of course, any of us can rely too much on a single strategy, and this can get us in trouble, because it's not effective coping. Effective coping includes a flexible approach to problem solving.

So, if we begin by keeping our bums on our seats, the next step to successful task completion requires that we change the strategy we were using that evoked the negative emotions in the first place. In the case of my student, this might mean leaving the "dreaded" paragraph for now and working on something else (returning to it later with a clearer mind and renewed purpose). At times, this might mean even just working on the reference section or formatting parts of the paper, anything to make effective progress on the paper, but not to focus on something for which you really don't know what to do. There is a great deal that we can do when we stop and think about it. There were many other parts of the paper that this student could write, but the focus became fixated on the paragraph at hand, coping flexibility disappeared and stress began to build. By doing something else, something that seems obvious and doable at the moment, we make some progress on our overall goal.

Two things may happen at this point. First, you are continuing to make progress on the project. This success, no matter how minor, can diminish negative feelings and promote an approach motivation over the avoidance motivation that was dominating only moments before. Second, even if you do decide that you can't do any more today as you need to seek out additional information to continue (a sagacious delay, not essentially procrastination), you leave the task having made progress. This is not self-deception. It is compromise with an ending that is on a "winning note."

I do much the same in training dogs on my dog team (for interested readers, see my other life as a musher). Not all training sessions go well. A lead dog may not follow a turn command, for example. So, the performance is not perfect. However, I never leave a training session without a success in the direction of the overall desired behavior. I work out a compromise as necessary to shape the behavior towards the goal and at the same time end up on a positive note emotionally or motivationally. I have to adapt and cope flexibly with the situation as it presents itself and not get frustrated that it is less than my ideal. Of course the discrepancy between what is and what I think is ideal or what I think ought to happen can be disappointing or agitating, respectively, but that doesn't change the fact that what is, is.

My lead dog may not understand what is expected of him. As a writer, I may not know exactly how to articulate an idea. The question then becomes, now what do I do? Work with what you have. Move in the direction of the desired behavior. Don't give up. Keep a positive attitude.

Sound simple? It's not. It takes patience, practice and deliberate choice.

Keeping the seat of your pants on the seat of your chair is a preventative strategy to keep you falling prey to the desire to give in to feel good. After that, it's up to you to apply other strategies to deal with the task at hand. Reflect on why you're feeling upset. Focus on small wins and moving forward. Give up the illusion that it's easy for others. Make the choice to succeed, not an excuse to give up.