How To Use an Antiprocrastination Sheet

In Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy Revised and Updated, David Burns writes about The Antiprocrastination Sheet technique. This technique is for activity that you’ve been avoiding because you think it will be difficult and unrewarding. You use it to test your negative assumptions and find out how accurate or off-base your negative expectations really are.

Summary of Steps

• Step 1 - Create the Antiprocrastination Sheet.
• Step 2 - List your tasks.
• Step 3 – List your predicted difficulty and predicted satisfaction.
• Step 4 – List your actual difficulty and actual satisfaction.

Step 1 - Create the Antiprocrastination Sheet.
To create the Antiprocrastination sheet:

1. Draw five lines down a piece of paper. This will divide the sheet into 6 columns.
2. Label the columns: Date, Activity, Predicted Difficulty (0-100%), Predicted Satisfaction (0-100%), Actual Difficulty (0-100%), Actual Satisfaction (0-100%) See the example below.

Step 2 - List your tasks.
In the Activity column, break the activity down into small steps (chunk it up.)

Step 3 - List your predicted difficulty and predicted satisfaction.
Write your predictions down using a 0- to- 100 percent scale, how difficult and rewarding each step would be.

Step 4 – List your actual difficulty and actual satisfaction.
After completing each step, write down how difficult and rewarding it actually was.

Example Antiprocrastination Sheet
Burns includes an example of an Antiprocrastination Sheet:

Date	Steps	Predicted Difficulty(0-100%)	Predicted Satisfaction(0-100%)	Actual Difficulty(0-100%)	Actual Satisfaction(0-100%)
6/10/99	1. Outline letter.	90	10	10	60
-	2. Write rough draft	90	10	10	75
-	3. Type up final draft.	75	10	5	80
-	4. Address the envelope and mail the letter.	50	5	0	95

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