now. i mean it.

I am currently reading - not Sartre, not Foucault - but Fiore. Who is Neil Fiore, Ph.D.? He is the man who will enable me to finish my dissertation by May. Therefore, he is more important to me than any French guy and/or philosopher could ever be.

Neil Fiore is the author of The Now Habit.

Katharine recommended this book as the most productive way to put off writing my dissertation. She was right. Fiore has special credentials when it comes to my seemingly intractable case. He was a counselor for groups of procrastinating doctoral candidates at, get this, UC Berkeley. Over time, he discovered an interesting difference between those who finished writing in a reasonable amount of time (two years or less) and those who didn't.

Fiore found that, surprisingly, "intelligence and emotional problems were not the characteristics that distinguished the two groups. The real difference seemed to be that those who took three to thirteen years to finish their dissertations suffered more" (p. 81). Long-term procrastinators, of which doctoral students are prime specimens, see themselves as working all the time, deprived, guilty, with their 'real' lives on hold.

When did Fiore implant a web cam in my brain?

I'm not usually tempted to apply pop psychology to my life, but I'm ready to implement his suggestions, including writing for a quality 25 or so hours per week and playing, cooking & exercising the rest of the time. Planned fun is mandatory.

Fiore also persuasively argues that procrastination does not stem from laziness, but from perfectionism. When I was triathlon training, I complained to a friend that I felt guilty about being lazy and not writing enough. She laughed - how could I call myself lazy when I was waking up at 5:30 a.m. for two-hour workouts? Her question gave me pause. Fiore points out that, strangely enough, procrastination is (short-sighted) rational behavior for perfectionists: we get the reward of putting off work on something that can't possibly be good enough and, when forced to do the project at the last minute, can tell ourselves that it isn't a true representation of our work.

I don't want to reveal all of the tricks up Fiore's sleeve and deprive him of whatever profit he makes from the $10.17 you pay, but here is a final nugget, the epigraphs from Chapter 5:

Serenity Prayer: Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.
- Reinhold Niebuhr

Stress Prayer: Grant me the stubbornness to struggle against things I cannot change; the inertia to avoid work on my own behaviors and attitudes which I can change; and the foolishness to ignore the differences between external events beyond my control and my own controllable reactions. But, most of all, grant me a contempt for my own human imperfection and the limits of human control.

Blogging, by the way, is not procrastination. It's warming up.