Procrastinators Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from chronic procrastination.

"Overcoming Procrastination" by Albert Ellis and William Knaus

This is a classic in the procrastination field. It's based on Cognitive Psychology - a school of psychology which Albert Ellis founded. I never read it, but I have an idea of the approach because I used to go up to the Albert Ellis Institute on Fridays for the public demonstration.

I have a cassette tape of a mini-session I had with Albert Ellis himself (96 years old at the time) talking about my procrastination problem.

I cherish the tape, but the session didn't change my procrastination. Maybe I wasn't trying.

Can you tell us some more?

Hi Pro,

I'm seriously considering getting this one, but concerned despite the fact that you actually had a session with Ellis it didn't make a difference (I know it's a tall order, expecting results from one session, but you'd think if it was any good you'd at least have come out of it wanting to read the book). Can you tell us a bit more about the book, or a bit more about the session?

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how Cognitive Psychology works

Cognitive Psychology has to do with ferretting out the irrational assumptions that drive dysfunctional thoughts and feelings and challenging them. For example, the irrational idea that you shouldn't have to do anything unpleasant sometimes underlies people's procrastination.

The difficulty with Cognitive Psychology is correctly identifying these irrational thoughts. I think the reason that my session with Albert Ellis wasn't effective is that he didn't take the time to figure out what was underneath my particular procrastination, and instead challenged some common irrational beliefs that didn't happen to be my issue.

Thanks

I've got the general cognitive psychology idea - I was wondering how it was applied to procrastination specifically. I've gone for the Andrea Perry book instead for now - I'm not yet convinced that this one would help me. (Gotta go DSO is helping me out by checking up on me!)

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Pro - read the books!

Then you can tell us about them properly!

I've got a few but they're a bit buried - I'll dig them out when I've got a bit more time and see if I can remember them well enough to give a review (I still maintain websites have been more helpful to me than books though, and I'm a bibliophile).

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