The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel Read Free Book Online Page A

deathly dull, and where your vices lie all combine to determine your individual procrastination profile. The Procrastination Equation isn’t seeking to form a comprehensive depiction of who you are but to create a succinct snapshot that can explain a lot with a little.
    The Procrastination Equation attempts economically to describe the underlying neurobiology that creates procrastination. I will tell you right now: the biology and the math won’t match exactly. A road map of a city, for example, no matter how recent or detailed, can’t represent every corner and crevasse of reality; it skips over details like architectural styles or fire hydrant placement. Judiciously focusing on streets and highways allows the map to emphasize navigation. If this big picture doesn’t satisfy you and you want all the details, don’t fret. The next chapter will give you what you are looking for.

Chapter Ten
Making it Work
    PUTTING THE PIECES INTO PRACTICE
    Do or do not do. There is no try.
    MASTER YODA
    B efore I get into this chapter, I want to thank you for persevering. People who procrastinate tend to get distracted and turn to other things. So since you have reached chapter 10—and I am assuming you haven’t skipped ahead to the end—you deserve a little praise. After all, the tendency to put off has such a deep resonance in our beings that it is more remarkable when we don’t procrastinate than when we do. Having read through the book, you have a good grasp of the underpinnings of procrastination, how it emerges from our brain’s architecture, the ways in which the modern world makes it worse, and what you can do about diminishing it. There is just one last step to putting procrastination in its place. You need to believe what you read.
    I can’t really blame you if you are a little suspicious. If you are familiar with self-help books, you have certainly earned some cynicism. There is so much misinformation in the field of motivation—so many promises that don’t deliver—that “What if someone wrote a self-help book that actually worked?” is the premise of Will Ferguson’s international bestselling novel HappinessTM. Satirizing the self-help industry, Ferguson invents the character Tupak Soiree, who writes What I Learned on the Mountain, a tome that genuinely helps you lose weight, make money, be happy, and have great sex. 10a Now I can’t promise the last of these, but The Procrastination Equation is about making the rest of What I Learned on the Mountain a reality. Every technique in this book is based on the bedrock of scientific study, so it had better work. Just flip ahead a few more pages and look at the research I have laid out in the Endnotes.
    The Procrastination Equation, just like What I Learned on the Mountain, is still only an inconsequential book if the techniques stay locked inside its covers. In Ferguson’s novel, the challenge was just getting people to read it. For a while, What I Learned on the Mountain ’s potential effectiveness was derailed, as you might guess, by procrastination. As Edwin, the book’s editor, concludes: “I forgot about procrastinators. Don’t you see? All those people out there who purchased the book or were given it as a gift and still haven’t got around to reading it.” For my book, the requirements are a little steeper, but as you can see, you have already pretty much finished it. To make what you are reading effective, you also need to take its contents seriously. You need to adopt these techniques into your life and start seeing your decision making in terms of that interplay between your limbic system and your prefrontal cortex. To lift the ideas off these pages and into your life, we are going to take one parting look at Eddie, Valerie, and Tom and imagine how they are getting along. You'll see that they are using all these techniques in combination, and thriving because of it. And if you can see yourself doing the same, then you will be able to get your act