Don’t Let Black and White Thinking Prevent You From Accomplishing Goals That Are Hard to Achieve

Setting arbitrary but absolute start times or deadlines can sabotage efforts to change or reach important goals.

I think this is a timely topic, with there being just a little over a month until January 1st, which means a week until people start coming up with New Year’s resolutions. It’s not exactly a secret that most people who set such resolutions end up failing to keep them. It’s almost part of being in the club.

No one wants to hear about that rare bird who actually kept their New Year’s resolution. We all want to commiserate with each other over how long it took us to break it, have a good laugh at how unfailing human and flawed we are, give each other the right to dismiss it as unimportant, reinforce the idea that we can always do it later when we are actually ready.

The problem with all this is that January 1st has become focused on as the day of change, as the only time to set real resolutions with teeth. So when our resolutions turn out to be ephemeral, any other attempts during the year to change after failing this first one, will not be taken as seriously.

And if we fail at the all important New Year’s resolution, what chance do we have of being successful should we try again later in the year? So failing at our New Year’s resolutions lets us off the hook for the rest of the year.

Thinking about New Year’s resolutions I realize that the idea of the perfect day to set in place plans to change affects more of my life than I had realized. Or perhaps I’ve realized it but didn’t want to have to tackle it.

Some of what has reinforced this tendency in me is my sense of black and white. I often see the world and my life in terms of an either/or dichotomy or as a series of absolutes which must be rigidly adhered to. This comes in large part from the way in which I was raised. There was always a right way of doing something and a wrong way. You met a deadline or you failed. You handled a situation correctly or incorrectly, you did what you said you would do or you didn’t. There was no in between in my family.

So if you were supposed to clean your room and managed to do all but a little of it by the time set for you to be finished, you hadn’t cleaned your room at all. If you dealt with a problem but there were still aspects of it that weren’t worked out yet, you hadn’t addressed the problem at all. If something wasn’t 100 percent then it just wasn’t.

And it didn’t matter if an outcome was an arbitrary one or even an informal one that you set for yourself. If a book report was due the following wednesday, but you remarked offhand that you’d finish it by the end of the weekend, not doing so meant you had failed to complete it on time and there were still two days before it was due. Having internalized this system of viewing my actions had lead me to continue to think about what I do now in the same way.

My black and white thinking is also reflected in my tendency to set arbitrary times or dates for starting something then giving up if it doesn’t happen. So if I decide to start a new writing project on the first of the year but then don’t, I may not pick the idea back up again.

My reaction to my black and white deadlines is similar to giving up on a New Years resolution when you’ve already failed to keep it by the time February rolls around because other days just aren’t “resolution worthy.” I create ideas of there being a “right” time to start something and once it passes I might be able to while I might be able to start on a different day, it somehow won’t be “right.”

My arbitrary deadlines don’t have to make more than tangential sense. It could be a Monday as the start of the week, the first thing in the morning as the start of the day or the first day of a new month.

In the past such deadlines made sense because they were based on my assessment of when something had to be done and then walking my timeline back until I knew I would have time to complete the task. That was at a time, though, when my goals were better defined, I had a structured way of achieving them and the rewards for successfully doing so as well as the consequences for failing were significant.

In graduate school you would never fail to meet a deadline because doing so would cause you to be thrown out of the program. This was perfectly in line with the way I’d been taught to deal with life so it was a system I was comfortable with. was fanatical about meeting the goals I set and overdid everything to achieve them. And achieve them I did, in spades.

Now, however, with this business of writing, without a formal structure or accepted steps to achieving success or even having a real definition of what success is, I find myself at a loss. I make lists of steps and goals, write things on chalkboards scattered around my apartment, and decide upon arbitrary dates or times when it “makes sense” to start something.

This gives me a false sense of structure because these strategies are a throwback to a different time and different reality. Now if I determine I “need to” publish a certain essay by a certain time and don’t do so, there may be natural consequences or there may not be. Maybe my overall engagement or earnings go down because I’m not publishing frequently enough, but then again maybe not. The thing about black and white actions is that for them to succeed they need black and white consequences that are meaningful.

Black and White Thinking Can Be a Means of Alleviating Anxiety

The deadlines I set are more aimed at letting me alleviate immediate anxiety at not feeling like I’m producing anything significant. But then when I come to face the behavior needed, it’s the anxiety related to the required that I’m trying to avoid.

For example, I often say, “I don’t finish and publish my essay by xxx time then I can’t go to my writing group.” While this may seem reasonable, my writing group at this point is almost the only social interactionI have. It is also the only time I give myself permission to work on fiction projects that are a fun release but not things that will earn me money anytime soon or perhaps ever.

I also know that hearing about other people’s writing projects and the act of writing fiction in a group setting where people show interest in what I’m working makes me more productive in terms of my non-fiction writing. Going to these groups then, would seem to result in far greater outcomes for my work related writing than publishing a single essay that I am forcing myself to finish on time.

The big problem with black or white thinking is that it prevents us from seeing a range of options that are in the grey area. If I say that I need to finish something by 12:00 in order to go to a 1:00 writing group and don’t do so, it’s not as if someone removes the option of finishing it at all. There are a lot of other possibilities.

• I can finish it now and go to the group late but still have at least an hour to work on other things and be able to participate in the social hour at the end.
• I can finish it on the subway and publish it as soon as I get there
• I work on my work related project in the group. I might not get the added benefits from writing fiction but I will still get the social benefit.
• I finish it later after the group ends in the same location or I can finish it when I get home. This might cause a slight dip for the day in my engagement, visibility and earnings but I can still schedule it to be published early the following morning and this will let me rebound with a second article and possibly a third during the day.
• I can finish it the next day when I get up and still publish it early. I might take a hit today but I can make it up tomorrow.
• I can find something that I’ve already written and repurpose it to have something that is published today. Even if it doesn’t get a huge number of views or a lot of engagement it will serve the purpose of letting me remain visible even if I don’t manage to finish the new article.

If I were to sit down and problem solve this, I’m sure I could come up with a number of other choices, some of them workable and others less so, but I’d still see there were lots of options other than not going to the group. This would increase my chances of actually going since I could no longer use the article as an excuse.

How to Handle Black and White Thinking

The first thing we have to realize with this kind of thinking, is that it often functions as a way of letting ourselves off the hook for something we don’t want to do or that is hard for us to do. I have a great deal of social anxiety. Even interacting with a group of people I have known for six or seven years around set topic I am comfortable with is anxiety producing for me. I generally enjoy the opportunity once I’m in the middle of it, but it takes a lot of energy beforehand.

It’s far easier for me to decide not to go than to decide to go. Setting arbitrary deadlines that sound reasonable in my head allows me to give up on a situation that may be anxiety provoking. It also gives me a way to think about my decision in a way that makes it seem responsible.

We need to realize that sometimes black and white resolutions and arbitrary start times and deadlines may be a way to let ourselves feel okay about already deciding not to do something. With regard to New Year’s resolutions, we know that failing is the norm and that no one will hold us accountable if we do so. Heck, keeping our resolutions may actually make others resentful.

Creating the resolution makes us feel like we have done something responsible, committing to change our behavior. At the same time in the back of our minds we know that we don’t have to really do it. And if we don’t, we don’t we have to face up to it, since everyone will understand and even relate to us.

For me, these deadlines mean I don’t have to do something that causes me anxiety. I don’t have to try something new like writing a book since I didn’t start it on June 1st like I said I would. I don’t have to go to a social engagement since I didn’t finish my work by 1:00pm. But there are so many other options that are possible, so the truth is, I’m just letting myself off the hook in a way that I find acceptable.

When we consciously think through what is getting in the way of us doing something or reaching a goal and make ourselves aware of how our black and white thinking is a way of sabotaging our efforts, it’s much harder to let ourselves off the hook. When I make a point of calling myself out on something, especially by writing it then publicly posting it, it makes me accountable for addressing it.

And so with that in mind, I will now make a choice that will allow me to go to my writing group even if I don’t finish and publish this post by 1:00pm. Welcome to the grey zone.

Natalie C. Frank has a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. She specializes in Pediatric Psychology and Behavioral Medicine.

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