As a language teacher working with young adults, I saw the stress procrastination created. Every week before finals, students became sick and occasionally cracked under the strain. Students would cram, cram, and cram. They would try to make more ‘time’ by abusing coffee and sacrificing sleep. They looked miserable and exhausted before going into exams.
It was painful to watch. It also was completely unnecessary. These people were taking a significant time away from their careers and family to travel to a new country, pay gobs of money for tuitions fees, visa fees, and accommodations, all to master the English language. Then they would fall prey to the same habits they had in university. They procrastinated on assignments and allow them to pile up until the last moment. Then they were surprised to be in the crunch zone again.
At our school failing had real consequences. Language is progressive skill; meaning mastery of easier concepts (like use of simple verb tenses) are required to understand more complex grammar forms (like future perfect tense). Moving into a higher level with mastery of previous concepts may be good for a student’s ego, but it may seriously damage their overall progression in understanding English. Our school trained tens of thousands of students, over 20+ years of operation, so we really did know what was best for language skill development. If they failed a level, it was in their interest to repeat it. Yet students, with bruised egos from a failed exam, were impervious to such recommendations. They believed being held back as their friends moved on was some form of punishment. After all, they “tried their best.” Why couldn’t we just be nice about and pass them up a level?
Some teachers wanted to play the “good guy” and fudged marks to pass a student because they didn’t want to be the one to say “No.” The student was overjoyed and praised the teacher for their kindness. Next month, they were in for a rough ride. Concepts became much harder, they felt stupid because all the other (qualified) students were faster doing exercises and understood the higher rate the instructor was speaking at. Feeling out classed, they would start skipping classes and get terrible scores which were nowhere close to what they needed to advance. Then they would get stuck repeating a level they weren’t qualified for. This would typically lead to another month of frustration because they think they already know this stuff, so they skip more classes and fail again. At this point, they may need private lessons, or they swallow their pride and request a lower level. Students often think that by pushing teachers for a pass, they are “gaming the system”. In reality, they are just shooting themselves in the foot.
I always wanted the best for my students, but I wasn’t going to pass people who weren’t ready for it. I saw many students falling prey to procrastination and poor study habits. I tried several tricks in grammar class to get the students more involved in not leaving study to the last moment; though with my morning classes, it was of limited success.
“Just Do It”
My afternoon classes afforded me some flexibility in how I delivered my assigned topics. One class required the students to create and research five-minute presentations for the class. After running the class several times, you would be shocked at how few university level students lack a working knowledge of how to prepare and deliver a simple presentation. Most believe this means to write an essay and read it out loud. They figure they will be so frightened of public speaking that their memory will black out. Therefore, it is essential to write out every single word. Military grade neuro toxin gas isn’t more soporific than the monotone mumblings of a terrified student stumbling through 10 pages of text, broken only by long looks at the clock to see how much longer their ordeal was to last. Painful for the student, painful for the class (some of whom are so bored they fall asleep), painful for me.
After running the class several times, I resolved to change the project for two new objectives. First, students would learn a basic technique for how to create and conduct an engaging presentation the way professional orators do. The second and more ambitious objective was to teach students to get over procrastination. I imagined how wonderful it would have been to have a teacher teach me something that would have been so useful for my academic career.
Surely, the students would appreciate my efforts.
Stop smirking…
Seriously…
The assignment was a five-minute presentation. It required research, handouts, photos or props, and five minutes of actual content without two minutes of an introductory preamble mumbling and two minutes of class questions. Real content was being timed. They had 2 weeks to prepare, and they had class time to work on it.
Rather than leaving it open I structured all the parts of building a presentation into sub-assignments. One class was about brainstorming possible topics, selecting one, writing an outline for it, and seeing what they can talk about with others in small groups. Then I set up mini-deadlines; the next class, they had to commit to a specific topic and write it down on a class sign-up sheet. This also had the advantage as the class wouldn’t have to listen the same presentation over and over again.
In another class, they had to come up with an outline of everything they knew about the topic and try small talks in their groups. They group would then ask questions and that would form the basis of what they needed to do research on for the next day in the computer lab. So the person wasn’t on their own, three or four other students were involved with creative input for their presentation. This made it much more interactive. Another class was about how to use cue cards (solving the problem of the essay readers). Mini-deadlines meant their progress was to be checked every few days rather than saving it all to the end. They had to get things done on time to proceed to the next step.
The content of these lectures were formed from observing how students handled or did not handle assignments. Seeing where students were making mistakes showed me where I had to fix and train the next batch in the next month. The course content continually evolved by keeping my objectives in mind and tweaking what I was doing from month to month.
After about 3 iterations, I accounted for 95 to 99% of the common problems. After 7 months, the overall quality of student presentations was STUNNING. Excellent handouts, well thought out props, students were asking open questions to engage the class and encourage interaction. They sounded like professionals. The average work was A+ grade.
Yet some students were so scared of speaking before a class they requested a class change to avoid the assignment. Some of the best presentations came from students who were most scared at the start. After training on how to do something it is satisfying as a teacher to see students get into an activity and really enjoy it. Many ran their presentations up to 10 minutes and the whole class was engaged and enjoyed the experience.
The Basic Strategy
There are many versions of the “Just Do It” strategy. Most of them carry the following elements:
1) Clear End Goal:
The real objectives in a communication class is to combine all four linguistic skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) and use them to solve problems or do assignments. The project of creating a five minute presentation was only a means to get them to use English. For example, when doing research they could only use English websites and had to write their notes in English. Some tried to research using their native language, but this was quickly discouraged. Using an unfamiliar language wasn’t the most effective way to do research, but doing a research project in English was very effective in learning English.
2) Plan of Action:
When goals require multiple steps, it may be necessary to create a plan of action. This is a bunch of sub-goals which add up to realize the main goal of the project. This is something we will talk more about in Chapter 8, keeping motivation for large projects.
3) Small Deadlines:
It is useful to have small mile stones to keep you on track, rather than just one deadline at the end. By assigning home work they were accountable for, the students weren’t allowed to leave it to the last minute. The ‘last minute’ kept coming up every day, so it was harder to skip out and get behind.
4) Regular Activity:
It is important to keep up a regular pace. Every day you should be doing some activity towards your end goal. Keep that rock rolling!
5) Feedback Points:
In the assignment, the students had several opportunities to give their presentations test runs in front of 3 to 4 partners. Each time they ran through it they could see what worked and what didn’t, they would get feedback and make a few improvements before the next attempt. In a way this is what I was doing with each iteration of the course. Seeing what students were doing and tweaking what I taught each month. It was amazing what 3 or 4 dry runs did to improve their confidence and delivery skill.
The “Just Do It” Problem
The above is an example of the “Just do it” approach. It is a practical, logical, straight forward answer to procrastination. It isn’t surprising that the self-help genre is full of this sort of advice; and being a long time reader, it made sense to me. It influenced the way I taught my classes and served as a framework for helping students overcome procrastination.
The only problem is it doesn’t actually stop procrastination. If you can just tell a person to “Just Do It”… and they “Do It”, then they never really had an issue with procrastination. There are three basic problems with this approach:
1) A Different Language
Optimists and pessimists don’t live in the same world. More good things happen for optimists than pessimists. This is not about “the power of belief,” nor because they have a charmed life. Optimists are lucky because they expect to be. They filter the world looking for opportunity. When something bad happens, they are looking for ways to turn them to their advantage. The same sorts of opportunities exist for pessimists, but they see the world as dangerous and hostile, thus they don’t look for hidden opportunities. The expression, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” directly talks about how a pessimistic attitude can sour an obviously lucky event and turn it bad.
Just as the optimist supports the idea that the world is full of opportunity by filtering for it, the pessimist supports their world view by filtering for all the ways that the world is bad. Inside their mind they represent the world quite differently. When an optimist and a pessimist talk to each other, they may be using the same language, but the words don’t match up to their internal representations. They both conclude the other is crazy.
When a motivated person is talking to a like-minded person, “Just Do It”, is all that is needed. Both represent the world the same way. When the same advice is given to a person who has issues with procrastination, “Just Do It” is often met with resistance: “Fuck Off! If I could ‘Just Do It’ I would have obviously ‘just done it’. Obviously, I’m I didn’t because I can’t. You don’t understand me. Take your ‘Just Do It’ and Just Shove It…”
As a teacher I had authority over the students. If they wanted to be part of the class they had to do the work I set for them. The problem with any authoritarian relationship is that people will comply because they have to. As soon as the teacher, boss, parent or police officer leaves they go back to their old habits. So even if they complied in class they didn’t solve their problem with procrastination.
Micro-managers create a self-fulfilling prophecy; the more they have to observe, comment and correct every little thing their workers are doing, the more their workers turn off their own brains and need to be managed. Micro-management creates a culture which increases procrastination in its work force.
The method worked well at getting students combine their language skills and they were improving their skill in giving presentations. Yet, it wasn’t helping procrastination issues. Next month they would join up with a different teacher and they would revert to old methods.
2) Tasks over People
The “Just Do It” is a task centred approach. It ignores the fact that there are people doing the task. People have values and preferences and “Just Do It” gives no consideration for such. In a classroom or a company you will never encounter a group who all think the same way. Yet isn’t individual motivation extremely relevant to getting a job done? Doesn’t motivation determine production speed and the end quality? Yes on all accounts. So you ignore people at your peril.
Consider how volunteer workers are paid? You may think they are not paid; that is the definition of volunteers. Except they are being paid, it is just not through financial compensation. All humans have motivation for everything they do. If it isn’t money, then why are they there? Many non-profit organizations recruit volunteers because they lack the budget to afford regular staff, yet they treat their volunteers as if they were untrained, temporary employees. Volunteers are often assigned undesirable jobs that require little skill and have low consequences for failure, because the job itself is not very important. One of the most common complaints among volunteers is the feeling of being underutilized. After all they are donating their time to make a positive impact with an organization which is making a difference. This leads to a bad experience and a high turnover rate.
Then there are the extremely positive, happy and productive volunteers who work hard for a few months and then suddenly quit. Perhaps they only planned to volunteer for a season and then go back to previous commitments, and that was the plan all along.
It is the responsibility of management in non-profit organizations to figure out how to pay their volunteers. Is their payment work experience? Are they looking for references? Do they intend to move from being a volunteer into a full-time paid position? Are they interested in making the world a better place? Are they working because they are bored with sitting at home and want to get out and meet other fun people? Is it for a religious calling?
Organizations need to be aware of why the volunteers are there. How you pay a volunteer is to ensure their needs are being met. Yet, isn’t it also true that you have to meet the needs of regular workers as well? Money will motivate people to work for you, however if work conditions are terrible, and the workers feel disrespected by management, the company will have a high turnover rate. Management which neglects its workforce can look forward to having a union. Unionization only happens when the management / employee relationship has degraded to a point where employees are so afraid of talking to management they feel a need for outside representation. In shops where genuine mutual respect is part of the corporate culture, unions are not needed.
“Just Do It” emphasises the task and ignores the person. Motivation always comes from people first.
3) Unaddressed Root Cause
In every class, there was always a small group of students who wanted to be there. They require a little instruction to get the ball rolling and they were self-motivated after that. Students with procrastination issues required constant supervision; they were always asking for clarification on instructions, they would find flaws with everything, and they would keep making excuses why they need more extensions. Most of the time they would be unsatisfied with their own work, and want to go backwards to redo past assignments, rather than moving on to the next step. They spent more effort and energy “not doing the assignment” than they would have if they just accepted and did it.
The biggest problem of “Just Do It” solutions is that they never address the root cause of procrastination. This prevents a permanent solution. Many managers and behaviorists believe that if a person is working, then worrying about how they think or feel about the job is a non-issue. This is short-sighted. It is possible to run your car without oil in the engine, and the car will work for a while. Eventually, the car will suffer from a catastrophic breakdown. You can force people to work with “Just Do It” solutions, but eventually those relationships will fail. Ignoring root causes of procrastination, by forcing compliance stands to make a situation worse rather than resolve it.
Summary
Life skill coaches who write books on motivation often have a hard time relating to the experiences of people who have real problems with procrastination. The miscommunication goes back to the way that they interpret reality. While the “Just Do It” approach may seem like the most direct answer, it is incomprehensible to people who have a problem with procrastination. The long-term answer requires us to look at why a person is procrastinating in the first place. If you solve the source of procrastination then exerting more willpower, having more discipline, and working harder become irrelevant.
It is a necessary to understand the “Just Do It” approach, why it is popular, and why it doesn’t work. The failure of “Just Do It” stresses the need to take a closer look at the underlying dynamic of procrastination. And from that investigation we discovered the secret to effortless hyper-productivity.
