Article archive / December 2021
Originally published: . Volume 12, No. 12. Source pages: 13.
What Motivates Getting Things Done by Mary Lamia
Bill McCown, PhD Professor, Associate Dean ULM; College of Business and Social Sciences Coauthored the first research-based book on chronic procrastination
As the psychological science literature shows, procrastination is universal and very common. Some people naively think it is humorous. However, its mental health and financial impact can be serious, extreme, even life- crippling.
Typically chronic procrastination defies a person's best intentions and stymies possibilities. Treatments are difficult, slow, and, at best, may only be modestly successful. In Dr. Mary Lamia's book What Motivates Getting Things Done: Procrastination, Emotions, and Success (2017), the author, a noted therapist, author, and graduate professor, explores the complex behavior of people who fail to complete their goals in a timely fashion. She does so from an individual differences perspective that should resonate with psychologists. Unlike typical approaches that emphasize time management, Lamia argues that effective intervention for procrastination depends on addressing a client's motivation style. Task-driven people (including most psychologists, by the way) are organized, perhaps naïve, perfectionistic, and often become motivated by finishing a project to the exclusion of other necessary activities. Deadline-driven people are more pragmatic, flexible, and motivated primarily by immediate time pressures. Neither approach is "right" or more successful. People from both groups may have problems procrastinating, though in different ways and over different tasks. Optimal treatment must be tailored to these styles, mindful of a client's developmental history, anxiety, and experiences with shame. Exceptionally written, science-based, scholarly yet remarkably reader-friendly, What Motivates Getting Things Done: Procrastination, Emotions, and Success advance theory and treatment. Like her previous writings, Lamia's work illustrates one example of where a one-size-fits-all treatment is not the best. The book is the most important on this topic in many years.
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