My friend, Nancy Morris, has been studying the science of psychology in the business world for over 25 years. She has observed obvious facts about how to create success in one’s personal and professional life.

“Success,” describes Nancy, “is best defined by the person using it, and nobody else. Unfortunately, people have a tendency to listen to what others say the definition of success should be. This leads us to chase our tail, trying to achieve their success when ours is actually so much different. This also explains why some people struggle to follow the guidance of so-called gurus – it’s their success, not our own.”

She says that uncovering our own definition of success can be difficult. Her fundamental belief is quite simple, the depth of your self-awareness equals the breadth of your success, however you choose to define it. This holds true for life in general but also for different areas in your life.

So the degree to which you know yourself is the degree to which you can create the opportunities and make the choices and decisions that will take you where you want to go. Procrastination Now is the first book of The Morris Code™ series that helps you deepen your self-awareness. “The Morris Code™ is a set of simple attitudes and actions I have learned over the years to be the most effective in helping someone define their own success. Understanding The Morris Code™ helps reduce that internal, unhelpful noise so that you can deepen your own self-awareness.”

In a nutshell, The Morris Code™ is:

1. Use procrastination to your advantage by understanding what it truly is.
2. Pursue performance goals persistently and consistently.
3. Stop shoulding on yourself and others.
4. Have more want-to’s in your day than have-to’s.
5. Personify integrity – say what you mean and mean what you say.
6. Live in your sense of source, whatever that is.

Nancy states that there is no such thing as “time management”. In fact, those who say there is are doing a disservice to those of us who want to be more productive and effective at work. Given that we cannot manage time, we must focus on what we can manage. And what we can manage are the choices we make and actions we take with the time we have. Procrastination is one of those choices.

“Procrastination” is one of those words that has been given a very negative connotation. That connotation creates a lot of useless internal noise about who we think we are. Yet the science shows that procrastination is a gift you have, not a personality flaw or lack of discipline.

“I don’t want you to stop procrastinating. In fact, I want you to do more of it. Procrastinating is one of the most useful skills you have and you’ll discover a unique action for maximizing it. When you use procrastination as a pointer to your underlying mental processes, it becomes a mechanism for helping you develop self-awareness. Basically, self-awareness is an understanding of how you think and feel about yourself in different situations. Research shows that high-performing workers demonstrate high degrees of self-awareness and can more accurately assess their workplace behaviors such as procrastination.”

From Nancy’s point of view, when you deny procrastination by seeing it as something to be “stopped”, you are actually denying yourself that self-awareness. The more you focus on trying to stop the behavior of procrastination, the longer the underlying problem(s) will continue. You cannot fully stop the behavior of procrastination given that it’s the behavioral result of high levels of thinking. However, you can change your thinking and set up new ways of dealing with the underlying problems.

Nancy summarizes that as you understand the theory and implement the action, you’ll automatically and naturally behave in a way that is more effective and productive, without reading dozens of books or spending thousands of dollars on coaches and gurus you really don’t need.