What Can You Learn From Squirrels about Motivation, Procrastination, and Intent?

Can squirrels teach you how to use your natural abilities to avoid procrastination pitfalls? How do you put brakes on spinning words that make delays sound appealing?

Squirrel Tales

Scientists have long been curious about squirrels. A 1932 study compared a squirrel to two coati and two raccoons in a food finding test. The squirrel came in last. The researcher sneered at the squirrel's ability: "The flower pot problem was solved, even by the squirrel."

Who will defend the squirrels? We can step forward and say that generalizing from a sample of performances from a single individual is normally unreliable. However, squirrels can ably defend their own honor.

• If you have a bird feeder, squirrels can be tenacious in finding ingenious ways to get the food. Some get past a baffle on a hanging birdfeeder by leaping from a tree to the feeder.
• Some can screw off the caps of peanut containers to get to the nuts. Others lift canister tops to get food. They can raid vending machines.
• In a 1940 study, two squirrels teamed up to get food suspended out of reach on a string. They gnawed the string at the top and solved the problem.

Squeak the Squirrel showed how a motivated squirrel solved complex problems. (The famous Squeak has a Facebook social networking utility.) See Squeak's exploits at:

http://www.archive.org/details/squeak_the_squirrel

The squirrel is resourceful. The British Broadcasting Company Daylight Robbery TV series humorously showed a squirrel master a complex obstacle course to get food. See:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uY9Yf26J4ZM&feature=youtube_gdata

The squirrel is versatile. Squirrels have learned to anticipate a bumper spruce tree seed crop by having extra litters before the seeds come out. California ground and rock squirrels reportedly chew and smear rattlesnake skin on their fur to fool predators. To defend its young, squirrels will go on the offensive to attack rattle snakes. When a rattler is near, the squirrel's tail temperature rises to confuse the snake's heat sensing ability. (They are immune to rattle snake venom.) For an example of a squirrel squaring off against a rattler, see:

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1811772

Acting on the basis of its highest priorities, the squirrel stays focused and takes advantage of accidental discoveries, experiments to solve problems, and demonstrates foresight by preparing for scarce times. When they have incentive, they are persistent. This shows intent.

Do you have an incentive to counter your procrastination urges? If so, what can you learn from the natural responses of squirrels? For example, they act purposefully without doubt-creating judgments.

Use Your Natural Abilities to Trump Procrastination

You won't find a squirrel with a to do list. It doesn't fill out tax forms. It doesn't concern itself about weight control and exercise. It doesn't write term papers or give progress reports. It doesn't renew a tree-climbing license. These are human-type tasks that can be procrastination hot spots.

Is there anything you can learn from squirrels about motivation that applies to stopping procrastinating on responsibilities and for pursuing your self-help projects? For example, a squirrel doesn't burden itself by equivocating over details as humans sometimes do.

When you've identified a procrastination hot spot you have a problem to solve. What lurks beneath your procrastination that motivates this behavior? What solutions do you envision? What's the plan? How do you execute it? What would Squeak the Squirrel do to avoid a procrastination trap?

You have a natural ability to solve problems. Do you have the power to use this ability to shift from procrastinating to solving problems? Can you effectively use procrastination stopping techniques? Like the squirrel, can you:

• Stay in the moment and stay focused on a longer term priority?
• Act to meet a challenge when you come to a surmountable obstacle (like procrastination)?
• Take advantage of accidental discoveries and experiment to find solutions? (Insights more often flash to mind when you act to meet a challenge.)

It is in your human nature to solve problems, innovate, and improvise. However, do your natural problem-solving abilities go into hibernation when not used? They don't. Remind yourself that you have these capabilities and use them.

Procrastination and Spinning Words

You have abilities that squirrels don't. You can shed unnecessary details through abstractions. This natural ability can simplify your understandings of concepts and ideas. For example, the word "red" represents a color but it is a step removed from seeing the color. The word allows you to share your impression of "red" with others who understand the same abstraction. The word "good" can substitute for details about why an act was useful.

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Abstractions remove you from the concrete world of experience. Some unmonitored abstract word combinations can be misleading. You convince yourself that some day following tomorrow's rising sun you'll start to meet today's challenge. That type of vague, non-committal, abstract, phrase is a trick of language that spells procrastination trouble for you. Here is an example of something specific: start in five minutes or burn a $100 bill.

A squirrel doesn't concern itself about its place in the sun. It may fail to get a desired food that is out of reach. The expected bumper crop of spruce tree seed may not come. Following setbacks, the squirrel will not abstractly think of itself as a "bad" squirrel, or as a "failure," or as a "disgrace" to other squirrels. That is a trick of language and belief. Instead, the squirrel continues to live in the moment and prepares for periods of scarcity.

The squirrel's world is concrete and pivots on doing without delaying. The squirrel does not engage in verbal vagaries. It keeps to its priorities.

The squirrel is not burdened by complexity. It either finds solutions, or moves on.

You have an evolutionary advantage. You can think out a problem. You can research problem solutions. You can join with others in a common cause to solve the problem. You can consult with a knowledgeable person. You can frame a problem with a question: what steps apply to starting a normally delayed priority activity? If one way doesn't work, try another.

To meet priority objectives you can start early and ground your actions in the sensory world of concrete experience. By getting future hassles off your back now, unmet priorities won't come back to haunt you because they will be done. Is this a strong enough incentive? What is your intent?

You can find an introduction to how to recognize and quell procrastination thinking at:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/science-and-sensibility/201006/unc…

To broaden your understanding of procrastination thinking, see End Procrastination Now (Knaus. 2010. NY: McGraw-Hill) or The Procrastination Workbook (Knaus. 2002. CA: New Harbinger).

Dr. Bill Knaus