Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to sign Stuff, your production of iHeartRadio. I'm
Speaker 1: hoor Hitcham, and in this bonus mini episode, we are
Speaker 1: answering the question how do you stop procrastinating? Hopefully you
Speaker 1: heard our main episode about the Signs of procrastination, in
Speaker 1: which three experts weigh in on what procrastination is, why
Speaker 1: we do it, and what consequences it has. Now we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about what happens if you want to
Speaker 1: stop procrastinating, and as it happens, each of our experts
Speaker 1: suggest a different strategy. Fir Stop is doctor Pierce's Steel,
Speaker 1: a professor of organizational psychology at the University of Calgary
Speaker 1: who's written several books on procrastination and has even programmed
Speaker 1: a chat GPT app to help you stop procrastinating. You
Speaker 1: can find all his work at procrastinus dot com. Now,
Speaker 1: if you recall, doctor Steele explained that when we procrastinate,
Speaker 1: it's really our frontal cortex finding it out with your
Speaker 1: more primitive limbic system.
Speaker 2: Like a lot of people struggle with this because it's
Speaker 2: really the mind is set against itself. You want to
Speaker 2: do it, but you don't want to want to do it,
Speaker 2: or you want to want to do it, but you
Speaker 2: don't want to do it right, so people like struggle,
Speaker 2: why can't I get myself going? And partly is the environment.
Speaker 2: It's totally stacked up against you. If sometimes there's nothing
Speaker 2: wrong with your goals or you, it's about your environment
Speaker 2: and accessibility of distractions of temptations.
Speaker 1: Tuctor Steele says one of the best things you can
Speaker 1: do to stop procrastinating is to durun off your phone
Speaker 1: or hide it in another room.
Speaker 3: Make sure you.
Speaker 1: Have a distraction free space in which to work. And
Speaker 1: according to doctor Steele, the number of ways for us
Speaker 1: to get distracted has only gotten worse over the years.
Speaker 2: And it's just gone up and up and up, like
Speaker 2: a five hundred percent increase in product procrastination last twenty years. Wow,
Speaker 2: And I haven't even checked it recently.
Speaker 1: In his books and website, Tuctor Steel has lots of
Speaker 1: techniques to help you stop procrastinating, but the main one
Speaker 1: is to make it hard to get distracted.
Speaker 2: And there's like twenty five different techniques, right, but the
Speaker 2: fundamental one, the easiest one, is distancing your temptations, make
Speaker 2: them harder to get through. I would always start with
Speaker 2: that before moving down to the other ones.
Speaker 1: Next up is doctor Fuschia Sira, professor of psychology at
Speaker 1: Durham University. If you remember doctor Curras, is that at
Speaker 1: the heart when we procrastinate is an emotional reaction. There's
Speaker 1: always something about the task we're avoiding that gives us
Speaker 1: a negative emotion. Maybe the stakes of the thing you
Speaker 1: have to do are high and that stresses you out,
Speaker 1: or maybe you are secretly afraid of doing it because
Speaker 1: then people might judge you and think you're not good enough,
Speaker 1: or maybe you just find it unpleasant, and then the
Speaker 1: negative emotions can pile up and you start to feel
Speaker 1: shame or panic about the fact that you're procrastinating. So
Speaker 1: doctor Ciro says to avoid all those emotions, which works
Speaker 1: in the short term but not in the long term.
Speaker 3: So you get that immediate reinforcement. You've just engaged in
Speaker 3: short term mood repair. But it's what we all go
Speaker 3: through when we procrastinate, and I do prostate myself too. Occasionally.
Speaker 3: For me, it's because I'm very future oriented with thinking.
Speaker 3: I start imagining how difficult something's going to be, and
Speaker 3: that's enough to make me go no, I don't want
Speaker 3: to get into that right now, So I put it aside.
Speaker 1: You know, the trig doctors Ros says is that whenever
Speaker 1: you feel yourself procrastinating, you sort of can't figure out
Speaker 1: why you're doing it. Take a step back and try
Speaker 1: to pinpoint the negative emotion that's making you procrastinate. You're
Speaker 1: saying the correct response should be to basically cope with
Speaker 1: our emotions or dig into our emotions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you have to first of all, recognize that there's
Speaker 3: an emotion driving this dysfunctional behavior and keeping you from
Speaker 3: reaching your goals and you know, making your dreams a reality.
Speaker 3: But what is that emotion? You have to name it
Speaker 3: before you contame it. Is it boredom? Is it frustration?
Speaker 3: Is it anxiety? Is it stress? Is some combination of
Speaker 3: these things? What is the emotion I'm feeling? And then
Speaker 3: what are the thoughts that are contributing or past experiences
Speaker 3: that might be attributing.
Speaker 1: And once you identify the emotion that's making you procrastinate,
Speaker 1: you can deal with it. You can think about whether
Speaker 1: it makes sense for that emotion to be holding you back.
Speaker 1: If you need extra help, Doctor Sirah has written a
Speaker 1: book and a toolkit to help people deal with their
Speaker 1: procrastinating emotions. The link is in the episode description. All right,
Speaker 1: now we get to our last expert, doctor Lisa Boylka,
Speaker 1: a researcher in psychology at Tubingin University. As you mentioned
Speaker 1: in the main episode, we all tend to procrastinate less
Speaker 1: over time, partly because we get better at dealing with
Speaker 1: things and partly because the world puts more constraints on
Speaker 1: you as you get older and have more responsibilities. So
Speaker 1: if you're looking to do less procrastination in a way,
Speaker 1: you don't have to worry about it that much because
Speaker 1: the world will sort of do it for you. But
Speaker 1: the other big tip about how to stop procrastination is
Speaker 1: to realize what one of the big problems with procrastination
Speaker 1: really is.
Speaker 4: There's another big component, which is that you actually have
Speaker 4: like this guilty conscience that in the back of your head,
Speaker 4: Like for instance, when you have a task which is
Speaker 4: really difficult or it's just boring and you don't want
Speaker 4: to do it, and then you procrastinate, you watch cat videos,
Speaker 4: or if you do something that's more fun like on
Speaker 4: short term, you feel much better about it, you feel
Speaker 4: much better about yourself. But in the end, you have
Speaker 4: in the back of your mind maybe I should have started,
Speaker 4: Maybe I should do it now.
Speaker 1: Interesting, it seems like maybe the difference in is this
Speaker 1: idea of guilt. Yes, guilt. The real problem with procrastination,
Speaker 1: it seems, causes all the anxiety and stress is feeling
Speaker 1: guilty about it. So one thing all our experts agree
Speaker 1: on that could help you out is to cut yourself
Speaker 1: some slack. Otherwise you just keep falling down that spiral
Speaker 1: of negative emotions. I mean, I asked all three of
Speaker 1: our experts if they still procrastinate, and they all said
Speaker 1: they do. So, even procrastination experts procrastinate.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a human tendency. Like we live in
Speaker 3: a culture that is so focused on productivity, and if
Speaker 3: you've got this as a backdrop, and you know you're
Speaker 3: not doing what you're supposed to be doing, you're immediately
Speaker 3: feeling like, I'm not doing what everybody else is doing.
Speaker 3: I'm not contributing to society. I'm a bad person, right,
Speaker 3: There's something wrong with me.
Speaker 1: And then that feeds back into their negative emotions, which
Speaker 1: makes them want to avoid it even more.
Speaker 2: Exactly what I would want people to do is to
Speaker 2: give themselves a little more self love, you know, forgive
Speaker 2: themselves for being human, but also understand their human I see,
Speaker 2: they're not robots or angels of perfection, and this is
Speaker 2: really baked into our brain's architecture. If we wanted to
Speaker 2: eliminate that, we'd have to be other than human. What's
Speaker 2: your understand it? Life gets a lot easier and a
Speaker 2: lot more fun to.
Speaker 1: All right, So to recap, the three biggest things you
Speaker 1: can do assuming you want to stop procrastinating, are get
Speaker 1: rid of potential distractions, dig into your emotions and try
Speaker 1: to figure out why you're really putting something off. And
Speaker 1: go easy on yourself. Approach your inner procrastinator with love.
Speaker 1: You are, after all, only human. Thanks for procrastinating with us.
Speaker 2: See you next time.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to Science Stuff. The production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: written and produced by me or Y Cham credited by
Speaker 1: Rose Seguda, executive producer Jerry Rowland, and audio engineer and
Speaker 1: mixer Jasey Pegram And you can follow me on social media.
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Speaker 1: and please tell your friends We'll be back next Wednesday
Speaker 1: with another episode.