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Online Store - The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play
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List Price: $14.95
Our Price: $10.17
Your Save: $ 4.78 ( 32% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Tarcher
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 155.232
EAN: 9781585425525
ISBN: 1585425524
Label: Tarcher
Manufacturer: Tarcher
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 224
Publication Date: 2007-04-05
Publisher: Tarcher
Studio: Tarcher
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Editorial Reviews:
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Originally published by Tarcher in 1988, The Now Habit has sold more than 58,000 copies, and is as relevant as ever! Author Neil Fiore offers the first comprehensive strategy to overcome the causes of procrastination and to eliminate its deleterious effects. His techniques will help any busy person get more things done more quickly, without the anxiety and stress brought on by failure to meet the workplace's pressing deadlines. This revised, redesigned edition includes a new introduction and a section that provides strategies to understand and deal with the complex role technology plays in procrastination today.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Neil is Brilliant!
Comment: I don't know that you can ever say that any method, however brilliant, is for everyone, but if nothing else has worked for getting you to stop procrastinating, you'd be silly not to get this book.
More specifically, the "un-schedule" is a counter-intuitive approach for enlisting help from the part of yourself you've been fightinmg with for too long now. Imagine feeling compelled to do the things that are truly important, instead of being pulled towards the distracting behaviors of old. Neil will show you how. Get the book. You'll find something in it that will be transformational.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Ph.D. student at Berkeley finally sees the light
Comment: Fiore used to work as a counselor for groups of procrastinating Ph.D. students at Berkeley. I am currently a procrastinating Ph.D. student at Berkeley. Not surprisingly, his advice is spot on for me. I wrote the following review for my blog:
[...]
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 a draft of 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 a group 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.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Ideology
Comment: This book promotes the internalization of a Protestant work ethic, which is perhaps what readers may indeed desire. Fiore has some interesting insights into the psychology of the chronic procrastinator, but I found the book's ideology too much to swallow:
"We all have a number of things we would like to accomplish, things we tell ourselves we 'should' accomplish -- increasing our net profits, learning to play the piano, making a million dollars, taking a vacation, writing a book, finishing a degree, repairing the house, losing ten pounds, spending more time with friends, getting up earlier..." --- how much more bourgeois can this book get?
Procrastinators, you are more than producers!! No matter how "fun" efficiency can be, life is more than setting and meeting goals.
Customer Rating:
Summary: It speaks to me
Comment: I do see myself in the book and it gives me a perspective on why I keep putting off the work. It did help me the first week I read it, but the influence fade away over time. It is a book and it takes serious effort to "do it now" on your part. I try to resume the now habit this week and will continue reminding myself of doing it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Golden Book
Comment: This book nails it all. I was a bit scared with some of the reviews before buying. But thank goodness I brought. This book is far more worth then its price. This book have the content to change your life for betterment for ever. Thanks Neil for writing such a wonderful book. It really changed my attitude towards any work.
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