psychology of procrastination podcast

Theres no pictures. You dont have to be a member of Procrastinators Anonymous to appreciate how paralyzing procrastination can be. Boyes wrote the book Stress-Free Productivityand the HBR article How to Stop Procrastinating.. The other thing I do is a pre-mortem. What theyre much better at is actually using their emotions as fuel for their goals. It doesn't have to be objectively an unpleasant task, but it's what our interaction with that task, the emotions that arise from that interaction and how it makes us feel and if it's something unpleasant and we can't quite work through those feelings, procrastination becomes a way to solve that, at least in the short run. 3 Strategies for Dealing with Procrastination - Harvard Business Review I want the other person, if theyre waiting on something from me, I want them to understand that its not because theyve done anything wrong or Im angry at them, or I just want to take that uncertainty off their plate. And that might be something that is a really strong value for you that you can use as a motivator. And there might be some generational influences there too. Mills: So what are some strategies or techniques to combat procrastination and just get things done, and how does thinking of it as an emotion regulation problem change how we approach the situation? Because putting off those kinds of things tends to cause big problems, like if your air conditioner breaks in the middle of summer or whatever it is, its useful to have a generic system that you can use for approaching tasks that you dont do frequently, tasks that feel out of your wheelhouse, novel tasks. Their self-worth is contingent upon whether they live up to some sort of idealized standard that they think society or their friends or their family expect of them. Because what procrastination does is it gives you immediate relief. Fuschia M. Sirois, PhD, is a professor in the Department of Psychology at Durham University, Durham, England, and heads the Self-Regulation in Health and Well-Being Laboratory.. For more than 20 years, she has researched the causes and consequences of procrastination as well as how emotions play a role in explaining why people procrastinate. I just think of one to mitigate against each and that keeps it contained and it satisfies my anxiety. Yes. And if you like what you heard, please leave us a review. Make the goals small and manageable, and focus only on what the very next step should be. Sometimes the emotion will disguise itself as a physical sensation, such as anxiousness, nausea, or a rapid heartbeat. But we can easily say it's all to do with mood management," Sirois says. And the general gist of it is that habits make behaviors more automatic. And then yeah, what we see that as procrastination. But that being said, there's other things that we can do to engage in procrastination for sure. And how to stop procrastinating. Fuschia Sirois, PhD: Oh, thanks for having me, Kim. But it makes sense though too, because if you're stressed all the time and you're not looking after your health, these healthy behaviorsand stress and health behaviors are two key pathways to good health and when you don't engage in them, we know that they are risk factors for poor heart health. We are both aware that we feel frustrated with ourselves when we know weve been procrastinating. And procrastination is a form of delay, so we can say that all procrastination is delay, but not all delay is procrastination. And really what that means is that procrastination is a very specific type of delay and how researchers in the field, how we define it so that we can go out and explore what are the consequences and causes of procrastination, we define procrastination as an unnecessary form of delay. Adam also tackles emotions and mental obstacles that impact our work, like loneliness, procrastination, burnout and bouncing back from rejection. You might be procrastinating when: There is a gap between your intention and action You feel like avoiding something You find yourself easily distracted You feel overwhelmed by tasks at the last minute You always feel rushed to complete a project Why is procrastination so tied up with guilt and shame, even though it's something nearly everyone does? People have a comfort level with tasks that they do all the time. CURT NICKISCH: But thats never addressing the emotion that goes with it. I have been researching and writing about procrastination for nearly twenty years. Mills: So a moment ago you mentioned the couch and the screen, being able to get away from those things, and I'm wondering whether does the ubiquity of social media and electronic devices have an impact on procrastination or have procrastinators always been able to find excuses to put things off? Sirois: That is a really good question. You cant just white knuckle it through things. Some of them bake, even. Im not advocating anyone adopt my system. Look at the thoughts that come with that emotion. You actually can't because if we look at the definition, it's got to be something they intended to do. What do you find your cognitive distortions arewhat are the things you tell yourself to make yourself feel better about putting things off? But also it feels like it is approaching the tasks in a way that uses my strengths. I've done some preliminary work looking at using self-compassion to address procrastination and it does suggest that it at least increases people's intentions to get on with the task and not procrastinate, but I want to follow up with some research to actually track that. If you live and breathe video games, Procrastination Podcast has you covered. Gamers Gene's Procrastination Podcast is your source for everything Video Games info/news. And although I've only done one study in this area, one study that I did do looking at people with hearttheir heart health, so in terms of having hypertension or cardiovascular disease, I found that those who scored higher on a measure of chronic procrastination, when you controlled for all kinds of other factors that might account for poor heart health, they were more likely to be in the group that had poor heart health. Have you ever dealt with procrastination? And then back to the psychological flexibility concept of using the difficult emotions that arise. So people who are prone to procrastination do tend to use more social media, tend to be engaged with their digital distractions. And shes here to lay those out for us. And there is some research, there's some procrastination researchers down in Peru, and we do these conferences every couple of years, just sort international conference on procrastination and we hear about the different research that's going on different in parts of the world on the topic of procrastination. For a lot of tasks, Ill just do one or two of them. Is the task actually stupid, or is it something you should do, youre just afraid to do it, so youre demeaning it in case you fail? And thats something that people with psychological flexibility are able to do. A lot of the focus on overcoming procrastination has been on habit forming and discipline, and getting the gumption to face the tasks you dont like doing. We get technical help from Rob Eckhardt. What are the next things that you're looking at in the realm of procrastination or even the other areas where you're doing research? Fear of failure, fear of . We wont discover our true potential if we dont give ourselves ample time.I have plenty of time, I'll do it later.We are undervaluing the future self when we think this way. Rooted in psychology, our personalized lessons help you develop strategies to overcome procrastination. Im Curt Nickisch. So theres a great HBR article about how diverse teams tend to do better work, but they also tend to feel like they have more conflict. For example, if theres a task associated with your job that you dont want to do, you can still link it with something you believe in. I mean, that being said, there has been some experimental research done where they gave students a range of tasks easy and more difficult and looked at the time on task and what things they did otherwise. Its why people have workout playlists. ALICE BOYES: Yeah, often the emotional intolerance isnt really about just a task being boring or unpleasant. Avoidance brings immediate relief from the distress associated with the task. Humans are terrible at predicting the future. When we are novice drivers, we have to think carefully about checking the mirrors and all the steps. So even though I dont like providing tech help, I like the idea that I will compensate for her weaknesses and she will compensate for mine, and that well support each other through that. So when an emotion comes up, like when someones feeling doubt or someones feeling embarrassment, thats what people who function well do. So as much, there's not so much as a strong response to procrastination in cultures where things are a little bit more lax in terms of timelines. And recognizing that actually if youre doing things that are creative, if youre doing things that are hard, youre going to need more recovery time. So things like compassionate self-talk can be really useful for them. CURT NICKISCH: Yeah. This automatically undercuts any excuses youll have because ultimately, the task, if youve signed up for it, aligns with your values. They call procrastination the grave where opportunity is buried. Eve. This episode was produced by Mary Dooe. We think about the immediate damage it can cause. These include relationships, being assertive, struggling with guilt and/or procrastination, children and teenager's behavior, anxiety disorders, anger management, kids and divorce, self-esteem, child visitation, weight control, forgiveness, ADHD, addictions, and my latest, mood disorders. Other areas I'm looking at is trying to get a handle on some of what's happening with respect to the emotion regulation and specifically this idea that we tend to often not get started on a task because we make emotional mountains out of molehills. ALICE BOYES: Yeah, its actually just what I was talking about before. So rather than frame it in terms of productivity, which I think feeds into a lot of our social norms about what we should and shouldn't be doing and how much we should and shouldn't be doing, I'd rather frame it around whether you're reaching your goals or not or do you have all these things you started and never finished, do you have all these unfulfilled goals that you just never got round to doing because of fear of failure or just worried it wasn't going to be good enough or worried whether you could manage maybe some of the challenges that you might face when you engage with that task? So it's much easier to study it instead of a naturalistic setting by just getting people to self-report or to look at people who chronically procrastinate because what you study in the lab is going to be delay for sure, but it not isn't necessarily going to be procrastination. Accept the emotion that is there, have self-compassion and forgiveness for the emotional experience you had. A lot of studies haven't found any difference and sincesome more recent evidence does suggest that men tend to procrastinate a little bit more than women. Mills: You also study perfectionism, which is a topic that we recently talked about on another episode of this podcast. Solving the Procrastination Puzzle A Concise Guide to - Studocu Another will power builder is to choose a difficult book, decide to read it in let us say 60 days, and then divide the book up into 60 parts to read every day. And when we're faced with the temptation to put something off, how can we change our mindset and our environment to help us buckle down and do what needs to be done? Kim Mills: You know the old saying, never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow? How does procrastination affect people's lives and their mental and physical health? And we all know that it helps to identify emotions. Sometimes we need more encouragement to complete a task we are dreading. Sometimes its just making sure you dont make that cognitive error, or catching the cognitive error when youre making it, as recognizing that its almost like theres an inverse correlation there between how awkward and yucky things feel. Psychology of Procrastination: 10 Worksheets & Games (PDF) 31 Aug 2021 by Christina R. Wilson, Ph.D. Scientifically reviewed by Jo Nash, Ph.D. Procrastination is an interesting concept in our culture. He felt that someday he would be caught and everyone would know that he had faked competence. People often come to therapy wanting to change somebody else. How does this play out interpersonally? And thats what we often think first about. Yeah, I'm doing a few different things. Because being on alert, partly were alert for our usual associations between things. Keeping your goals realistic and reassessing goals and strategies as needed. People with Imposter Syndrome believe if someone knew the real them, they would never receive the same level of trust or responsibility. So if youre like that, then it is thinking about, Well, I need to this thing because I need to be reliable for somebody else. Doer: Overcome Procrastination on the App Store CURT NICKISCH: So lets start down the line here and go through three different areas where we can really make a difference when it comes to changing how we work. Its the idea that you can use your emotions as fuel for your goals, that you dont need to reduce your negative emotions. And really the name of the game is people changing themselves. Sirois: There is indeed a difference. But I dont always do those six or seven steps. Breaking up large projects into smaller tasks. Then maybe a quick walk to clear your head. More specifically, cognitive behavioral therapy will help you identify your cognitive distortions. And so when we look at procrastination then in terms of emotion regulation, what one way to think about is that we're not avoiding the task per se, what we're avoiding is the negative emotions associated with that task. For the American Psychological Association, I'm Kim Mills. So some of my students have looked at getting people to answers and questionnaires at one time point, and then following up with them and getting them to fill in with grids based on 30-minute or 15-minute segments of the day. For Dr. Brammer, Imposter Syndrome came from his ability to excel in school, despite consistently cramming for assignments and tests. Habits, emotions, and thought patterns. For many of us, its a hard habit to break. It was engineered by Patrick Murray, and the digital . Its really been great to have you on the show to talk about it. I find I do some of my best work when Im procrastinating doing something else. There might be some really monumental delayers out there, but they could be sagacious delayers, wise delayers who are doing it with purpose. And I think people tend to oversimplify that. You get into that endless feedback loop. The psychology of procrastination is complex, and there are several factors that contribute to this behaviour. ALICE BOYES: Yeah, so people will have heard a lot about habits in recent years. So if you put those two things together, higher stress and poor health behaviors, and you tie that in with somebody who's got this pattern of dealing with unpleasant tasks in this very avoidant manner by procrastinating, over time, there's going to be some cumulative damage. Feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and a lack of energy can make it difficult to start (and finish) the simplest task. So sort of drilling down into understanding better that emotional side. Making time for time management. Doer: Overcome Procrastination on the App Store CURT NICKISCH: You also argue for people to create better systems to help them start new tasks. Procrastination, Depression and Creativity | Psychology Today So the evidence, it's a little mixed. Bottom line is that we value patient care, so even we dont necessarily feel like doing small tasks throughout the day, we still do them because we link them to our deeper values. Self-forgiveness reduces the negative emotions we associate with a task, thus reducing future avoidance and offering ourselves an encouraging approach instead. And the other thing that happens too, when you don't start a task, you can still live in that wonderful space where you can imagine how great it's going to be and you can picture how perfect the ending's going to be when you finish writing that report or redecorating your house or whatever it is, that task that you're dealing with at that time. iProcrastinate Podcast on Apple Podcasts Fuschia Sirois, PhD, of Durham University, talks about why procrastination is an emotion regulation problem, not one of laziness or poor time management skills; how it can harm our mental and physical health; why its so tied up with guilt and shame; and how self-compassion can help us overcome it. It's basically saying, Hey, yeah, I'm struggling with this task. And when were on alert more, thats often what sparks creativity. And this makes some sense if we think about how harmful stress is to our bodies. ALICE BOYES: Yeah, Im not sure that its that black and white. Im thinking of putting something off until Friday afternoon and then writing an email to kick it into somebody elses pile of work at the end of the week. Sirois: So yeah, I mean there's a lot of myths out there about why people procrastinate and the common wisdom out there is that, oh, teach somebody to manage their time better and they'll stop procrastinating, or give them better self-control or tell them they're lazy and crack the whip and get them going and that'll reduce it. But I think this was the first time I really understood how identifying emotions could lead to something in the article you call psychological flexibility. Download a good meditation, or use the app Headspace, and practice it daily to develop a habit of mindfulness. So the researchers that have looked at what people do to procrastinate on their bedtimes, it's not just digitally oriented distractions, they engage in a whole bunch of things. Can you explain what that is? What's the difference between procrastinating and simply deferring something for another time? Perceptions of procrastination range from being the topic of jokes to being associated with mental illness (Svartdal, Granmo, & Farevaag, 2018). Why is it so easy to fall into this trap even when we know better? CURT NICKISCH: Thats interesting. Identifying the role of procrastination in your life. So a lot of things that we do where its of a lot of value, doing something for the first time, doing something that youve never done before, that feels really foreign to you, thats a huge skill building thing. So itll be things like if your air conditioner starts making you funny noise. The Psychology of Procrastination (Podcast Episode 2018) - IMDb Maybe with the exception of form filling and really basic things, but most things that we procrastinate we can approach through the perspective of our strengths. So we talk about sagacious delay where on the surface when somebody puts something off, we might look at them and say, Hey, they're procrastinating, or we might even look at our own behavior and just because it's a delay and we're not doing what we know we should be doing, we might say, Well, I'm procrastinating. But if you sort of look below the surface, it may be that maybe you haven't started that report because you're waiting to hear back with some key information that's essential for you to get going on this and if you started without that information, you actually would be wasting a lot of time. And we can all do that with everything basically. "Everyone procrastinates, but not everyone is a procrastinator," quoth Dr. Joe Ferrari, a charming, hilarious expert on the subject. Look at the cognitive distortions that came with the thought. And yes, there is such a group. Psychologists have identified various drivers of procrastination, from low self-confidence to anxiety, a lack of structure, and, simply, an inability to motivate oneself to complete unpleasant. About the expert: Fuschia Sirois, PhD Understanding the psychology of procrastination is key to overcoming it and achieving success in our personal and professional lives. However, we can strengthen our willpower through routine exercise. Emotions pretty much always come with thoughts and vice versa. So the classic example thats always used in any intro psych textbook is driving: that once were not a novice driver anymore, whenever we sit in the driver seat of a car, we go through a sequence of behaviors without really even thinking about what we are doing. Episode 022: The Psychology of Procrastination Psychiatry So whats a good way to overcome that, to accept that this friction-filled work, as you put it, is good for you and may help you? Volitional Psychology (PROCRASTINATION) with Dr. Joseph R. Ferrari The podcast version of this story was produced by Audrey Nguyen. You might have a big work project that's due, you feel stressed about it and suddenly you realize you can't possibly get started until you clean your desk. So there's this task, we may not have enough information about it, and we start imagining how difficult it's going to be and how complex it's going to be and how we're going to fail or struggle. ALICE BOYES: Yeah. Movies. . In this podcast, we will explore moving from procrastination to your destiny. And in the workplace as well. And then also, cut yourself a little bit of slack about some of the creative procrastination, like recognizing that weve got this image of a productive person being this person who is never distracted, whos always focused, who never procrastinates, whos just hustling all the time. But really just the more you learn about emotions, the more your psychological knowledge is, the easier this it is to work around all this and not be scared of negative emotions. You can find her article, How to Stop Procrastinating in the May/June, 2022 issue of Harvard Business Review and at hbr.org. Oh, and don't you need to finish solving Wordle before you can tackle that job? I think one of the big misconceptions in all of this is that people think a lot about reducing emotions as a way of combating procrastination. Im Curt Nickisch. CURT NICKISCH: Thats Alice Boyes, a trained clinical psychologist and the author of the book Stress Free Productivity. The presence of ambivalent emotions tends to put us on alert. She also wrote the HBR article, How to Stop Procrastinating. They take a negative emotion and they use it as fuel for their goals. Adam Grant posted this interesting thing on Instagram a few weeks ago where he said, I wouldve started on Instagram a long, long time ago if I had realized I could just repost my words, if I could just post pictures of my words rather than having to post pictures and videos that we more associate with Instagram. And obviously he does these, theyre essentially like tweets, theyre just these little quotes. ALICE BOYES: Yeah so some level of emotional education around this is good so that people do have strategies. But people have to have their own motivation. Guilt is a useful emotion because it causes us to want to repair things. Students who forgave themselves for procrastinating on academic work were found two weeks later to actually procrastinate less. Just do it and you'll feel a lot better than you think you will. Far more than a productivity hack. Mills: Well, that's some good advice for you procrastinators who are listening to us today. And I'll mention one final thing too. Thanks for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. Thank you for joining me today, Dr. Sirois. And there is indeed a connection. And they showed the data suggesting that their program worked and they showed the mean scores on this measure of chronic procrastination at the beginning of them coming to the clinic and at the end so they could say, Oh look, there's some improvement. And I remember standing there with a colleague of mine and we both were looking at the scores on this measure of procrastination at time one, and the level of procrastination that they found troubling was well below the average national mean for the procrastination in the U.S. and Canada, but this was troubling in Germany. What can you do, either as a manager or a colleague? We can't impose that on them. Heres the quick breakdown of how you can look at your thinking patterns when you decide to procrastinate: Recognize when you have the emotion about the task you want to delay. Sometimes its just theres so much opportunity, we want to be doing all of these things and we sort of bite off more than we can chew in terms of the energy and focus that weve got. For best results, make your first step . This can help you rebuild a habit of identifying the things we tell ourselves and have always accepted as truth. And then we do a bit of a calculation to get an idea of how many minutes they were procrastinating. Is there a difference? Does willpower work? I mean it's really bizarre. Not just it's harmful for our mental health, it's also harmful for our physical health. For example, there's some countries where deadlines are loose, trains and planes don't run on fixed schedules. APA 2023 registration is now open! Mills led APAs foray into social media and envisioned and launched APAs award-winning podcast series Speaking of Psychologyin 2013. But it still creates a bit of a problem of not having a habit of getting on and doing that other thing. So I think it can be quite mixed. We feel guilty about it. She is a social, health and personality psychologist who is broadly interested in how self-regulationhow we manage our thoughts, emotions and behaviorsaffect our health and wellbeing. And we all have personal examples something felt really yucky at the time, but it ended up being really, really fruitful. Sometimes its just people have more things that they want to do and theyre having trouble settling on one. You'll gain practical knowledge you can put into action right away. Repeat. That actually wasn't very hard at all and it was a lot faster to get through than what I expected. But there isn't a lot of research on that. And so I think we really do have to make that distinction between delay and procrastination. A conversation with former psychologist Alice Boyes about why we keep postponing our work. Save the MP3 file linked above to listen to it on your computer or mobile device. I think especially if it's a task that's really creating a lot of stress and really frustration or anxiety or anticipated anxiety, sometimes that's not how we feel right now, but we're anticipating that as soon as we start working on those tasks, we're going to get frustrated and that's enough to keep us from going with it. And then it turns into a big problem that could have been avoided. It will also help to be able to clarify your goalsdaily, weekly, monthly. One is quickly testing assumptions. If we dont try and we fail, there is less reflection on the self than if we try our hardest and fail. So for me, my system is quite tailored to my personality. Students who chronically procrastinate tend to have poorer performance in terms of their grades. Procrastination - American Psychological Association WorkLife with Adam Grant: A TED original podcast And so thats useful. So people think a lot about learning from other people and learning from science when it comes to productivity. So often what we put off is stuff thats novel. There is a gap between your intention and action, You feel overwhelmed by tasks at the last minute, You always feel rushed to complete a project, Youre hesitant to truthfully update someone on your progress. So a really good way to find a system for you for approaching double tasks is when you successfully do a novel task, look at the system that you used to get it done. CURT NICKISCH: Whats your understanding of procrastination? I mean, if you bring people in to be observed and to be experimental subjects where you tell them to procrastinate, I mean how do you do this? They dont think, Oh, I need to reduce all these negative emotions or theyre going to cause me to go off track with my goals. They associate strong emotions with propelling them to their goals, not with them taking them away from their goals. Procrastination can also be a result of depression.

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