Speaker 1: Hello, Happy almost new year. This is the next in
Speaker 1: our series of behavior and habit related re releases to
Speaker 1: Ring in the beginning of two thousand and twenty, a
Speaker 1: new year and a new decade. Today's is with Tim Pitchell,
Speaker 1: who is a professor who studies procrastination and this interview.
Speaker 1: I've really thought about a lot of things that was
Speaker 1: said in this interview, and I think it's a really
Speaker 1: good one. But one of the things that he said
Speaker 1: in the interview is that he thinks procrastination is a
Speaker 1: problem of emotional regulation, and that really made a lot
Speaker 1: of sense to me. An emotional regulation is something that
Speaker 1: I've been thinking a lot about this year and working
Speaker 1: with my clients a lot this year on because really
Speaker 1: it's kind of the whole ball of wax in some ways,
Speaker 1: right It's about can I decide what's important and then
Speaker 1: when my emotions come up, can I stay with what
Speaker 1: I've decided is important in my life, not what my
Speaker 1: emotions are pushing or pulling me to do right now?
Speaker 1: Can I allow the emotions to be there, process them,
Speaker 1: and then act according to my values. And that's really procrastination, eating, well,
Speaker 1: stopping drinking, all the different things that a lot of
Speaker 1: us want to do in life. Keeping up a meditation practice.
Speaker 1: It really takes that emotional regulation piece. It's not the
Speaker 1: only piece of behavior change, but it is an important piece.
Speaker 1: So this interview from Tim is really great. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to get some more help with emotional regulation as
Speaker 1: well as all the other aspects of behavior change, than
Speaker 1: sign up to talk to me for a thirty minute
Speaker 1: call and I'll tell you a little bit more about
Speaker 1: the program. I'll learn what's going on with you. I'll
Speaker 1: give you an actionable piece of information, and if the
Speaker 1: program makes sense, we'll talk about moving forward, and if
Speaker 1: it doesn't, we will be friends. After talking for thirty
Speaker 1: minutes and I've gotten to know you a little bit better.
Speaker 1: You can go to Eric Zimmer dot coach slash application
Speaker 1: for that and here is the interview with Tim Pitchell.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy it. It is in the getting
Speaker 1: on with life that makes our lives, and that procrastination,
Speaker 1: in a very real sense, is an existential issue of
Speaker 1: not getting on with life itself. Welcome to the one
Speaker 1: you feed throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized the importance
Speaker 1: of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in garbage
Speaker 1: out or you are what you think ring true. And
Speaker 1: yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or
Speaker 1: empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear.
Speaker 1: We see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf m thanks for joining us. Our guest on
Speaker 1: this episode is Tim Sitchell. Tim is an associate professor
Speaker 1: of psychology at Carlton University in Ottawa and has garnered
Speaker 1: an international reputation for his scholarship and a global audience
Speaker 1: for his I Procrastinate podcast. He also writes a popular
Speaker 1: Don't Delay blog with Psychology Today. His new book is
Speaker 1: Solving the Procrastination Puzzle, A Concise Guide to Strategies for Change.
Speaker 1: Hi Tim, Welcome to the show. Hi Eric, Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. I am really excited to have you on.
Speaker 1: Your book is called Solving the Procrastination Puzzle, A Concise
Speaker 1: guide to strategies for change. You actually have a couple
Speaker 1: of books, but this is the one that that I
Speaker 1: read to focus on for the interview. And I know
Speaker 1: procrastination runs rampant, you know, everywhere, and I know our
Speaker 1: listeners it's something they also are interested in. So I'm
Speaker 1: really looking forward to getting into that. But let's start
Speaker 1: like we normally do with The Parable. There is a
Speaker 1: grandfather who's talking with his granddaughter and he says, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: at battle. What is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 1: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 1: and fear. And the granddaughter stops and she thinks about
Speaker 1: it for a second and looks up at her grandfather
Speaker 1: and she says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the
Speaker 1: grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to
Speaker 1: start off by asking you what that parable means to
Speaker 1: you in your life and in the work that you do. Well.
Speaker 1: I've been looking forward to joining you on the podcast
Speaker 1: simply because I like The Parable so much. I read
Speaker 1: it and I've I've enjoyed parables since I was a
Speaker 1: young man, especially Zen Collins and things like that, And
Speaker 1: I see the same sort of wisdom in that parable.
Speaker 1: And it fits my research so much in the sense
Speaker 1: that even the most recent research we've seen come out
Speaker 1: of Germany using functional magnetic residence imaging on the difference
Speaker 1: in brains between those procrastinating those who don't, we see
Speaker 1: that the amygdala is larger. Uh, And it's about fear.
Speaker 1: It's very true in terms of understanding procrastination. So it
Speaker 1: fits with my research well. And in my own life,
Speaker 1: of course, I recognize it the habits that I developed,
Speaker 1: the things that I feed, the things, the things that
Speaker 1: I think make me happy but don't. When I feed those,
Speaker 1: they become habits and difficult to break. So I resonate
Speaker 1: to that, both personally and professionally. That's wonderful. So do
Speaker 1: you have any parables of your own that are particularly
Speaker 1: important to you besides the Wolf parable that come to
Speaker 1: mind that might speak to procrastination? Yes, for sure. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's a zend story and it's the young novice who
Speaker 1: lists the master and he said, Master, I've been doing
Speaker 1: my meditation and then I've been working hard. How do
Speaker 1: I achieve enlightenment? And the Master looks at him and says,
Speaker 1: have you finished your rice? And he said yes, then
Speaker 1: then wash your bowl. And that's the end of the story.
Speaker 1: And it's so powerful for me because you know, that's
Speaker 1: what life is in so many ways, that it is
Speaker 1: in the getting on with life that makes makes our lives,
Speaker 1: and that procrastination, in a very real sense, is an
Speaker 1: existential issue of not getting on with life itself. And
Speaker 1: so I find that to be a very powerful thing
Speaker 1: that we can make more of many tasks in our lives.
Speaker 1: In fact, I teach my children that all the time.
Speaker 1: I'll say to my son, for example, when he was six,
Speaker 1: I said to him, you know, Alex, it's time that
Speaker 1: you started making your own bed, And of course he said,
Speaker 1: I don't want to. I don't feel like it. And
Speaker 1: my children know what I say, and to that all
Speaker 1: the time is as I didn't ask you what you
Speaker 1: want or how you feel. I said, it's time for
Speaker 1: you to make your bed. And that's, you know, so
Speaker 1: much in that parable or that zen calling of what
Speaker 1: makes enlightenment in life right just taking the next right action.
Speaker 1: And actually you just touched on something that I was
Speaker 1: going to read that you wrote because I love the
Speaker 1: way you say this, and I just think it puts
Speaker 1: this in perspective. And you say, when we procrastinate on
Speaker 1: our goals, we are basically putting off our lives. And
Speaker 1: you said you became more convinced of the importance of
Speaker 1: dealing with procrastination as a symptom of an existential malaise,
Speaker 1: and a malaise that can only be addressed by our
Speaker 1: deep commitment to authoring the stories of our lives. To
Speaker 1: author our own lives, we have to be an active
Speaker 1: agent in our lives, not a passive participant making excuses
Speaker 1: for what we are not doing. Yeah, it's nice to
Speaker 1: hear my words right back to me. It'sause it's been
Speaker 1: a while since I wrote that book. Uh, And and
Speaker 1: I stand by that. It's it's good that I don't
Speaker 1: kind of create to go who I wrote that. No,
Speaker 1: it is a sustinct summary of what keeps me interested
Speaker 1: in procrastination. Like, there's so many layers to my understanding.
Speaker 1: You know, I started briefly with thinking about the latest
Speaker 1: German study that was neurophysiological, you know, based on understanding
Speaker 1: brain differences. But like all explanations, we can take it
Speaker 1: at different levels of analysis, and for me, the most
Speaker 1: profound one is this notion of getting on with our
Speaker 1: own lives because the one non renewable resource we have
Speaker 1: in our lives is time. You and I don't know
Speaker 1: how much we're gonna have, but we know we can't
Speaker 1: make any more of it. And I think that's probably
Speaker 1: why in every great world religion there's some notion of
Speaker 1: the sin of sloth, because you can't waste this thing
Speaker 1: called life. And with procrastination, you know, for me, it's
Speaker 1: not a matter of becoming some uber productive earning machine,
Speaker 1: but a person who lives the life here she wants
Speaker 1: to achieves the goals that he or she wants to achieve,
Speaker 1: and doesn't kind of stew on his own juices in
Speaker 1: the guilt and shame that's so commonly defines procrastination. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's such a big piece of it. I
Speaker 1: often talk with people about when we know there's things
Speaker 1: that we want to lash need to do, and we
Speaker 1: don't do them, it feels awful. And I think one
Speaker 1: of the most important skills we can build in life
Speaker 1: is to sort of make promises to ourselves and then
Speaker 1: keep those promises. And procrastination stands kind of right in
Speaker 1: the middle of that, and you actually say that there's
Speaker 1: some research that shows that procrastination actually compromises our health
Speaker 1: in two different ways. Could you share a little bit
Speaker 1: about that. Yes, I'm working on another paper with my
Speaker 1: colleague at the University of Sheffield right now. We're reanalyzing
Speaker 1: some of our data and the first path is a
Speaker 1: direct path with stress across the nation. Causes more stress,
Speaker 1: and of course we know there are many mechanisms in
Speaker 1: terms of our physical health how that undermines our immune
Speaker 1: system and creates uh less resistance to all sorts of illness.
Speaker 1: So procrastination stress route to an effect on our health.
Speaker 1: But there's also an effect in terms of fewer wellness
Speaker 1: behaviors and treatment delay, more treatment delay. So procrastination has
Speaker 1: indirect effects. So we have this this this direct route
Speaker 1: through stress, but there are two interesting indirect routes that
Speaker 1: procrastination has an effect on our health, and that's from
Speaker 1: fewer wellness behaviors. So we don't sleep when we think
Speaker 1: we should be sleeping, don't exercise, don't eat well. These
Speaker 1: are typical wellness behaviors, and sleep is interesting on its own.
Speaker 1: I have colleagues in at Youtubect University in the Netherlands
Speaker 1: who've been studying sleep procrastination in fact. And the other
Speaker 1: indirect route is treatment delay. Oh, I'll get look after
Speaker 1: that later, and that has significant effects, and I'm interested
Speaker 1: in studying that, especially in older adults when things are
Speaker 1: more fragile in terms of you need to have fixed
Speaker 1: things looked in sooner than later. So we have all
Speaker 1: these roots to the connection between procrastination and our health.
Speaker 1: The one we have the most research evidence on is
Speaker 1: the direct effects of stress us. But then there's the
Speaker 1: indirect effects of fewer wellness behaviors and treatment delay. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Actually makes me think of a story. And I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that I can blame this on having better control
Speaker 1: of procrastination or just pure terror. But this week I
Speaker 1: got a call from my dentist. I had been in
Speaker 1: last week to get some work done and they called
Speaker 1: and said, we see something in your X rays and
Speaker 1: we think we think it might be cancer. And I thought,
Speaker 1: oh my god. So I called oral surgeons until I
Speaker 1: could find one that would see me like now, and
Speaker 1: uh when over got it looked at and it was
Speaker 1: absolutely nothing. But again I think that was more driven
Speaker 1: by fear than not being a procrastinator. But it it
Speaker 1: just made me think of that when you're telling that
Speaker 1: story about delaying going to the doctor. That was one
Speaker 1: time I was not delaying. But you know there are
Speaker 1: people who get news like that and do put it off.
Speaker 1: It's quite incredible. Yeah. Yeah, Now I just was like,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't want to live for two weeks
Speaker 1: worrying about this, like, because I know I will, you
Speaker 1: know anyway. So there's lots of things that causecrastination, but
Speaker 1: at the heart of it, you say that one of
Speaker 1: the biggest things is that it's a form of self
Speaker 1: regulation failure. Can you explain that? Sure, so many people
Speaker 1: think procrastination is a time management issue, and although time
Speaker 1: management is a necessary skill in our lives, it's not
Speaker 1: sufficient because you'll come to the point in time where
Speaker 1: you say, Okay, this is the project I said I'm
Speaker 1: going to work on, but your whole body screams, I
Speaker 1: don't want to. I don't feel like it. You have
Speaker 1: an emotional response to the task at hand. We typically
Speaker 1: call that task aversiveness. We find it diversive in that
Speaker 1: we're anxious about it, we're bored, we resent it, we're
Speaker 1: frustrated by it, any one of those emotions, or pick
Speaker 1: some of your favorites. So how do you get rid
Speaker 1: of those negative emotions because we don't want them. While
Speaker 1: we use avoidance as an emotion focused coping strategy, the
Speaker 1: problem is it's a misregulation of emotion because we're not
Speaker 1: really going to feel better in the long run. We're
Speaker 1: not regulating ourselves in a healthy way. But it gets
Speaker 1: reinforced because the moment you get to the task, for
Speaker 1: that moment, you feel better. So you get this negative
Speaker 1: reinforcement that creates a habit. So procrastinations an emotion focused
Speaker 1: coping habit. And it's a problem of self regulation in
Speaker 1: the same way that eating the second row of cookies
Speaker 1: in the bag isn't going to make you feel better.
Speaker 1: Putting off these things isn't gonna make you feel better.
Speaker 1: We have the naive belief is this is what we
Speaker 1: need right now. Present self believes he or she will
Speaker 1: benefit future self pays the price, right And I think
Speaker 1: what's so tricky about procrastination or cookies or drugs or
Speaker 1: all these different things is if they didn't work at all,
Speaker 1: it'd be easy to see through them. But they work
Speaker 1: for like a minute or five minutes or ten minutes,
Speaker 1: they've got an initial okay, that feels better, and then
Speaker 1: it fades and we pay more later. And you've got
Speaker 1: a phrase that you use related to this um that
Speaker 1: that people can use, and you say it's I won't
Speaker 1: give in to feel good and recognizing that feeling good
Speaker 1: now comes at a cost. It does have this immediate fix,
Speaker 1: albeit really specious because even especially with procrastination and eating
Speaker 1: more so than the other alcohol and drugs work a
Speaker 1: bit longer because they can actually do a bit of
Speaker 1: mood altering, right, but the food and the procrastination, A
Speaker 1: part of you is quite aware of that. The guilt
Speaker 1: almost the surfaces immediately, especially for some of us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of my favorite ways to think about this, and
Speaker 1: I don't I would imagine being as involved as your
Speaker 1: and procrastination. You have seen, um the posts he did
Speaker 1: in the Ted talk but um tim Urban with the
Speaker 1: blog weight but why and um, you know, it's just
Speaker 1: so many brilliant things in there that but the one
Speaker 1: that struck me probably the most was this idea of
Speaker 1: the dark playground. And the dark playground was all right,
Speaker 1: we've decided that we're going to procrastinate again. It's not
Speaker 1: usually that conscious of a thought I'm going to procrastinate,
Speaker 1: but we've decided we're going to do something else right,
Speaker 1: but we don't really enjoy He calls it the dark
Speaker 1: playground because we're playing. We might be on Facebook or
Speaker 1: YouTube or playing Solitaire or whatever it is, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't fully feel good because there's this nagging sense of
Speaker 1: I should be doing something different, and that that term
Speaker 1: dark playground really really helped me because I could notice
Speaker 1: when I was in it. I could notice that like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not doing what I should do. I'm doing this thing,
Speaker 1: and you know what, I'm not even really enjoying it
Speaker 1: that much, not as much as I would enjoy it
Speaker 1: if I finished what I had to do and then
Speaker 1: went and did it. That's crucial that that self understanding
Speaker 1: is the impetus for true change. It doesn't make it easy,
Speaker 1: especially if you have a habit, because habits draw us
Speaker 1: back to it. But without that recognition, there's no real
Speaker 1: commitment to the change. It's when you recognize that, yeah,
Speaker 1: this it doesn't work. I've had a belief for a
Speaker 1: long time. This makes me feel better, but it's not
Speaker 1: going to and then what you need to put into place.
Speaker 1: There just a few strategies to extract drew from that
Speaker 1: kind of mental loop or that downward spiral you can
Speaker 1: get into that eventually leads into that negative spot. This
Speaker 1: would be a good time to introduce this topic. It
Speaker 1: shows up in a lot of areas of the book,
Speaker 1: um and I'm a big fan of it also. And
Speaker 1: it's the idea of implementation intentions, and you actually at
Speaker 1: different places in the book talk how we can use
Speaker 1: these to deal with kind of that part of procrastination.
Speaker 1: Can you explain what an implementation intention is and then
Speaker 1: maybe talk about how we can use them in relation
Speaker 1: to this self regulation. This is the work of Peter
Speaker 1: Gollwitz or at New York University, and he and his
Speaker 1: colleagues have done a great deal of work differentiating between
Speaker 1: goal intentions. We all have goal intentions. I want to
Speaker 1: write this, or I want to lose some weight, or
Speaker 1: I want to achieve that, or we can have avoidance goals.
Speaker 1: I don't want to end up here. And then the
Speaker 1: contrast that with implementation intentions, which is the how how
Speaker 1: are you can actually implement this goal? Because goal intentions
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of more motivational force, but an
Speaker 1: implementation intention, which they've shown over and over again in
Speaker 1: their research, makes it more likely than going to act.
Speaker 1: And the classic implementation intention, in terms of what they've
Speaker 1: found in research, is most effective is a conditional statement
Speaker 1: if then, or as I like to say, when then,
Speaker 1: when this happens, then I do that. And when we
Speaker 1: set things up like that, what happens is we put
Speaker 1: the queue for action in the environment. So, for example,
Speaker 1: I want to speaking of dentists as you did a
Speaker 1: few moments ago, I wasn't flossing my teeth enough and
Speaker 1: it was leading to some gum disease at the beginning
Speaker 1: of it, at least that my dentist would say, you
Speaker 1: really have to flost, And for the life of me,
Speaker 1: I just couldn't develop that habit. A little boy inside
Speaker 1: of me was resentful about it, and then the rest
Speaker 1: of me wouldn't remember. But an implementation intention really saved me,
Speaker 1: and it was simply that I leveraged a habit I
Speaker 1: already had. I did brush my tea east quite regularly,
Speaker 1: really regular day, every day, twice a day, and so
Speaker 1: I just made the intention when I pick up my
Speaker 1: toothbrush I'll put the floss on the counter, and when
Speaker 1: I put my toothbrush down, I will pick up the
Speaker 1: flows the when then, and the most important one is
Speaker 1: really just getting the floss onto the counter, because sometimes
Speaker 1: I wouldn't even remember it. This prospect of memory is
Speaker 1: a big part of not being able to self regulate
Speaker 1: because you don't even remember what you're supposed to do.
Speaker 1: But the implementation intention puts that queue in the environment. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm picking up my toothbrush, I'm putting the floss on
Speaker 1: the counter, and so I'm leveraging a habit already have.
Speaker 1: That's a really important part of this. And by putting
Speaker 1: the queue for the action into the environment, it helps
Speaker 1: me create a new habit. Now, what's interesting about all
Speaker 1: that is there's so many days where I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't feel like I don't want to act like
Speaker 1: a little boy because we have a six year old
Speaker 1: alive and well in us, or a little girl as
Speaker 1: the case may be. And I look at myself and say, wow,
Speaker 1: you know, what were you going with this? You know
Speaker 1: how long it takes to flash your t It takes
Speaker 1: like thirty seconds, and it feels great, And then I
Speaker 1: get on with that so there's layers of working there,
Speaker 1: but the implementation intention was the foundation. This is a
Speaker 1: testimonial you're about to hear from one of my coaching
Speaker 1: clients named Hate, and she tells you what her experience
Speaker 1: of the program has been, and I hope you find
Speaker 1: it interesting. It's pretty quick and then if you want
Speaker 1: to talk to me and learn more about the program
Speaker 1: and get some input on what you're dealing with, go
Speaker 1: to Eric Zimmer dot coach slash application and sign up
Speaker 1: for a thirty minute call. Here's the testimonial with Kate.
Speaker 1: My name is Kate and I'm from New Hampshire and
Speaker 1: I would love to say a word about working with
Speaker 1: Eric Zimmer. So I have been working with Eric this
Speaker 1: year on goals around health and health practices, and specifically
Speaker 1: I was really trying to lose weight. I just have
Speaker 1: had a tough time with that for about the last decade.
Speaker 1: And I have reached goals working with Eric that I
Speaker 1: have not otherwise been able to do, even working with
Speaker 1: nutritionists and health coaches and fitness experts. So Eric's work
Speaker 1: in behavior with me has been profound. I love his
Speaker 1: style and his mannerism and I really do think that
Speaker 1: what I'm figuring out how to do is make lasting
Speaker 1: change for myself. If I had to recommend Eric, I'd say, heck, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's great. You should work with him again. If you're
Speaker 1: interested in the program, go to Eric Zimmer dot coach
Speaker 1: slash application. Will have a thirty minute, no pressure call
Speaker 1: where I will get to know you a little bit better,
Speaker 1: tell you about the program, and if we both decide
Speaker 1: it sounds like it's a good thing, we'll move forward.
Speaker 1: If not, I will leave you with something useful in
Speaker 1: your life, and we will have gotten to talk and
Speaker 1: know each other, which is always a good thing from
Speaker 1: my perspective. Eric Zimmer dot coach slash application. I've mostly
Speaker 1: looked at implementation intentions really in you know, using the
Speaker 1: if then statement, but also a lot about you know,
Speaker 1: the studies that show if you decide how and when
Speaker 1: and where you're going to do something, you're way more
Speaker 1: likely to do it. So it's one thing to say
Speaker 1: I need to work out tomorrow. It's a different thing
Speaker 1: to say, Okay, I'm going to run for two miles
Speaker 1: at the Park by the Lake tomorrow at six pm.
Speaker 1: Right like, you've got a way better chance of doing it.
Speaker 1: If you've got that second statement versus the first. I'm
Speaker 1: going to work out tomorrow. You know what interests me
Speaker 1: about implementation attentions. I did speak a great deal about
Speaker 1: it in the book, but since writing that book, I've
Speaker 1: focused a lot more on even finer tuned statement around
Speaker 1: this that I find is a real game changer for
Speaker 1: most people. And that really draws on the work of
Speaker 1: David Allen, who's written books like Getting Stuff Done and
Speaker 1: Ready for Anything. He argues really clearly, we don't do projects,
Speaker 1: we do actions. Because I would say to people, as
Speaker 1: as you saw in the book, a key thing is
Speaker 1: just get started. And people would say to me, Tim,
Speaker 1: if I could just get started, I wouldn't have a
Speaker 1: procrastination problem. That's not very helpful. And so as I
Speaker 1: thought through that and looked at how we think about
Speaker 1: uh getting started, the question then becomes, what's the next action?
Speaker 1: If we go back to you when you asked me
Speaker 1: earlier about the parables or stories in our lives and
Speaker 1: I went immediately to to a Zen Buddhist cone or
Speaker 1: a Zen Buddhist story, Well, the Buddhists will also say
Speaker 1: that we have monkey mind busy places. You know, we
Speaker 1: think and we feel, and we think and we feel,
Speaker 1: and you can't get rid of the monkey. It's just
Speaker 1: part of the human condition. But as one monk I
Speaker 1: heard say so clearly and so eloquently, you've got to
Speaker 1: give the monkey something to do. And it's the same
Speaker 1: for psychologists will tell us. You know, you can have
Speaker 1: all these emotions, but you can't suppress them, and you
Speaker 1: can't ignore them. They're real. But we can direct our
Speaker 1: attention somewhere else. So now not only do I think
Speaker 1: about implementation intentions is a really important tool, but I
Speaker 1: also use this simple statement of what's the next action,
Speaker 1: and I keep that action as small as possible, so
Speaker 1: it's a very low threshold for engagement, so that I
Speaker 1: look at and go, well, who couldn't do that? And
Speaker 1: that primes the pump for going. And I thought of
Speaker 1: that really when you were talking about the implementation intention
Speaker 1: to go for the run yep, for when or the
Speaker 1: how you're going to do it and when and for
Speaker 1: what distance? But soon as you said two miles, I thought,
Speaker 1: for many people that just sets up the barrier or
Speaker 1: two miles that's too much, And so instead I'd be
Speaker 1: looking at at when I get home from work, the
Speaker 1: moment I get home, I'm gonna put on my running
Speaker 1: shoes and walk back outside the door. That might be
Speaker 1: as much as I have to say to myself to
Speaker 1: get me started. Now. The interesting thing about how predictably
Speaker 1: irrational human beings are is that as much as some
Speaker 1: of us almost fight with ourselves to get started, ten
Speaker 1: minutes later we're on the run and we think we
Speaker 1: could be in the next Olympics, and we're just it's
Speaker 1: just so crazy, you know. We think, now I could
Speaker 1: run forever. It feels so good. So we go from
Speaker 1: not being able to run at all to thinking that
Speaker 1: we're an Olympic athlete. And of course that's just the
Speaker 1: way the mind is working. And we have to understand
Speaker 1: that we have these predictably irrational aspects of our human thinking,
Speaker 1: and we have to have these hacks to work around them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you you brought up in that statement there. I think
Speaker 1: at least three different important points. The first is the
Speaker 1: ambiguity of a lot of the things that we have
Speaker 1: on our task list. I might have on my task list,
Speaker 1: I actually have had on my task list. Record video.
Speaker 1: I've got a video. I've got a record for something
Speaker 1: I'm doing well The problem with that is that that
Speaker 1: is about eight or nine tasks. You know. First I
Speaker 1: have to uh write the script for the video. Then
Speaker 1: I have to get somebody to review it. Then I
Speaker 1: have to practice it. Then I have to set up
Speaker 1: the video equipment and set up the lighting, and then
Speaker 1: I have to record it. Then I have to edit it,
Speaker 1: I mean. And so when I have a task on
Speaker 1: my list like get video done, I'll procrastinate it forever
Speaker 1: because it's not clear what the next action is. And
Speaker 1: so as you were saying, deconstructing that down to the
Speaker 1: very simplest and next action I can. I often say that,
Speaker 1: you know, ambiguity is really a huge cause of procrastination
Speaker 1: for people and when they look at their task list,
Speaker 1: because we tend to have projects on our task list,
Speaker 1: not tas asks. Uh. The second thing that you talked
Speaker 1: about there is just that idea of getting started, and
Speaker 1: you know, you use the analogy I'll just put on
Speaker 1: my shoes. I mean, I use that one all the
Speaker 1: time for the gym, like just get into your gym,
Speaker 1: close or just get to the gym. Or with cleaning,
Speaker 1: you know, all right, all you have to do is
Speaker 1: clean for three minutes. I set myself a timer and
Speaker 1: I get going for three minutes and I'm usually off
Speaker 1: and then the last thing that was embedded in what
Speaker 1: you said is a really important idea that you talk about.
Speaker 1: It is that we often think that the order of
Speaker 1: operation is motivation and then action, but it is just
Speaker 1: as common the other way around. If we can take
Speaker 1: the action, the motivation tends to follow after it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this is a really important point that when
Speaker 1: I when I was writing that book, one of the
Speaker 1: things I focused on is that I don't know where
Speaker 1: we get this belief as adults, but we seem to
Speaker 1: have this belief that we have to be in the
Speaker 1: mood to do something, that motivation proceeds action, But as
Speaker 1: you're noting, it's often the other way around. In fact,
Speaker 1: social psychologists showed us years ago that attitudes can actually
Speaker 1: follow behaviors, not behaviors following attitudes. It's so true motivation.
Speaker 1: In fact, there's some very interesting research that shows even
Speaker 1: a little progress on a goal fuels are well being,
Speaker 1: which is a great thing considering what the procrastinations typically
Speaker 1: that downward spiral. So it's really the antidote in some
Speaker 1: ways to how do I get out of this trap.
Speaker 1: A little bit of progress fuels our motivation. We don't
Speaker 1: wait for the mood or the muse. We'll be waiting
Speaker 1: there a long time. Yeah, exactly. And you know that
Speaker 1: idea of I have to feel like something to do
Speaker 1: it is so fundamental to this whole issue of procrastination.
Speaker 1: And you know the phrase I use is you know
Speaker 1: that I don't want to let my moods drive my action.
Speaker 1: And I usually make a joke out of that, like,
Speaker 1: if you had a mood system like mine, right, if
Speaker 1: you let your moods drive your actions, it would be
Speaker 1: a disaster. And my past is littered with disasters of
Speaker 1: allowing my moods to determine what I do, because you know,
Speaker 1: people have some you know, some people wake up, you know,
Speaker 1: peppy and happy and ready to take on the world
Speaker 1: every day. And then there's the rest of us who, um,
Speaker 1: you know, often don't feel that way. And it's learning
Speaker 1: to get started even when we may not feel like
Speaker 1: it that is so critical. But I want to bring
Speaker 1: up another point. This leads us into motivation, and we
Speaker 1: talked about how, you know, if we can just get started,
Speaker 1: motivation or our attitude changes. Just getting started makes us
Speaker 1: feel better about the task. It makes us feel better
Speaker 1: about ourselves. But let's talk about the role of remembering
Speaker 1: our motivation as a way to help us with self
Speaker 1: regulation and is a way to deal with um potentially
Speaker 1: depleted willpower in what regard eric remembering our motivation like
Speaker 1: remembering our commitment to what it is we're trying to achieve. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or you know you've got to You've got a chart
Speaker 1: in the book where you show this idea of you know,
Speaker 1: it's worthwhile to look at your goal and look at
Speaker 1: the costs associated with procrastination as well as the benefits
Speaker 1: of acting in a timely manner as a way, you know,
Speaker 1: for me, I sort of think of that as like
Speaker 1: remembering my why, Like why is this important? Definitely? For sure?
Speaker 1: In fact, everything is foundation. The foundation for all of
Speaker 1: this is in commitment. And even Peter Gollwitzer, who's written
Speaker 1: extensively on implementation intentions, is acknowledged in quite a few
Speaker 1: papers and book chapters that without commitment and won't happen,
Speaker 1: there's no technique that's going to save you. You do
Speaker 1: have to be able to look at your own life
Speaker 1: and understand why it is that you're even going to
Speaker 1: use a strategy like what's the next action or when then?
Speaker 1: And so we have to have a clear idea of
Speaker 1: the meaning behind our goals. In fact, another way that
Speaker 1: I often think of it, and I learned this from
Speaker 1: my past own dissertation advisor who worked with an area
Speaker 1: called personal projects analysis. The balance between meaning and manageability.
Speaker 1: It's always a balance between those two. It has to
Speaker 1: be meaningful for us to want to do it, but
Speaker 1: it also has to be manageable. It goes back to
Speaker 1: your notion of ambiguity. I've certainly found in our research
Speaker 1: that uncertainty is a very high correlative procrastination and uncertainty.
Speaker 1: It can be there when you have ambiguous schools. So
Speaker 1: but if you if you focus only on manageability the
Speaker 1: next steps and you go, oh, like a monkey could
Speaker 1: do this, what, I'm not interested anymore. But if you
Speaker 1: work only on meaning, then you don't know how to
Speaker 1: manage it. So it's this interesting balance. And at any
Speaker 1: given time, some days I have to emphasize more than why,
Speaker 1: which is your original question about. You know, why would
Speaker 1: I engage and this? Why is this important to me?
Speaker 1: And other times I know exactly why I want to
Speaker 1: do it, and then the question becomes more of a yeah,
Speaker 1: but how am I going to manage this? And then
Speaker 1: I go back to Okay, what's the next action? Or
Speaker 1: do I need to call a friend? That sort of strategy.
Speaker 1: But it is this balance between meaning and manageability. And
Speaker 1: then there's other times, whereas I said in the book,
Speaker 1: sometimes you simply have to look at the cost, like
Speaker 1: what is this going to cost me if I put
Speaker 1: it off? Yeah? Exactly. Um. And so one of the
Speaker 1: things that you talk about is that sometimes when we
Speaker 1: do stop to think about it for a second, we
Speaker 1: will say something to ourselves like it's just not important,
Speaker 1: or um, you know, a variety of other things. So
Speaker 1: there there are common biases that get in the way
Speaker 1: of us looking at this clearly and um. One of
Speaker 1: those is, you know, saying to ourselves, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: it's not important, right, and and being able to recognize
Speaker 1: that if it's something that we thought was important before
Speaker 1: when we weren't faced with the task, it's probably important.
Speaker 1: And you use an implementation intention here. Actually you say
Speaker 1: if we say it's not important, then we stop and
Speaker 1: remind ourselves that this is self deception. Or if I
Speaker 1: say it's not important, then I will just get started.
Speaker 1: But there's some other biases I thought would useful in
Speaker 1: talking about. One is prefer tomorrow over today, because this
Speaker 1: is such a classic one. I'll do it tomorrow, and
Speaker 1: I think inherent in i'll do it tomorrow is I
Speaker 1: will feel like doing it tomorrow, which is obviously a fallacy.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that bias, about how we prefer
Speaker 1: tomorrow over today and how we think we'll actually want
Speaker 1: to do it tomorrow, and why that's so easy to do. Well.
Speaker 1: There's two things that happened there, and they're both grounded
Speaker 1: really very well in research. On the one hand, Dan
Speaker 1: Gilbert at Harvard University, who studied a great deal about
Speaker 1: affective forecasting. We know what weather forecasting is trying to
Speaker 1: prett what the weather is going to be like tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Affective forecasting is how are we going to feel tomorrow?
Speaker 1: And what he's learned through his research is that we
Speaker 1: rely on the present to predict the future. So we
Speaker 1: all know what it's like to go grocery shopping when
Speaker 1: you're hungry versus when you're full. Your car looks distinctly different. Hunger,
Speaker 1: you're pulling a second card. Full of your favorite snacks
Speaker 1: and when you're just finished a big meal, when you're
Speaker 1: going shopping, go oh, I don't need so much milk
Speaker 1: this week. And again we're predictably irrational. So how that
Speaker 1: applies to procrastination is that that moment when you decide, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do this today, how do you feel?
Speaker 1: A lot? And I give talks to students or general audiences,
Speaker 1: the first word that comes to mind is relief, and
Speaker 1: then many other people just say I feel good exactly,
Speaker 1: So that when you use that momentary feeling to predict
Speaker 1: how you're gonna feel tomorrow, you say, oh, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna feel like it's tomorrow. So there's one cognitive bias
Speaker 1: that leads us to believe I'm going to want to
Speaker 1: do this tomorrow. But more importantly, and this is something
Speaker 1: that I didn't write back in two thousand two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: was some work by hal Hirshfield at U c l A,
Speaker 1: who's used functional magnetic residence imaging to look at the
Speaker 1: brains of people while they were thinking about either their
Speaker 1: present self, their future self, or a stranger. And to
Speaker 1: make a long story short, what he learned was that
Speaker 1: the areas of the brain that are active when we
Speaker 1: think about present self are different than when we think
Speaker 1: about future self. In fact, the areas of the raim
Speaker 1: that are active when we think about a stranger are
Speaker 1: the same areas that's processing information about the future self.
Speaker 1: So we seem to think about future self like a stranger,
Speaker 1: and that leads us again to think, uh, that that's
Speaker 1: that person will handle that, and so tomorrow that person
Speaker 1: will feel like a present self is processing information much differently.
Speaker 1: So these are biases in the way that we think
Speaker 1: about the future. In fact, we've done some research on
Speaker 1: that too, where we had people imagine their future self,
Speaker 1: in this case students, because that's a population we're working with,
Speaker 1: and when they thought more about future self, present self
Speaker 1: made different choices. And in fact, how Hirshfield did some
Speaker 1: of this research too before we did, but he did
Speaker 1: it with digital avatars, so you'd see a picture of
Speaker 1: yourself either as you look now or yourself digitally aged
Speaker 1: into your sixties and lo and behold, if you're sitting
Speaker 1: in experimental situation looking at your older self, and the
Speaker 1: experimental task is to allocate funds, you allocate more funds
Speaker 1: to retirement savings because you future self in mind. Without that,
Speaker 1: you spend money differently. And we found the same thing
Speaker 1: with students. If they could think about themselves at the
Speaker 1: end of the term, they made different choices now. And
Speaker 1: one of the mechanisms that seems to be at work
Speaker 1: there is you develop more empathy for future self and
Speaker 1: you think, yeah, that's really jerk and future self around.
Speaker 1: And in fact, when I give public talks, I draw
Speaker 1: on Richard Taylor, a the Nobel Prize winning economists from
Speaker 1: the University of Chicago who won his Nobel Prize for
Speaker 1: showing how we're predictably irrational, And as he summarizes it,
Speaker 1: he says, you know, we're more like Homer Simpson than
Speaker 1: we are homo economic Austs. And it makes me smile
Speaker 1: because I love Homer. And I'll put up a picture
Speaker 1: of Homer and Marge, and Marge says to Homer, you know, Homie,
Speaker 1: someday these kids are going to be grown and you're
Speaker 1: gonna regret not spending more time with them. And Homer goes, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the problem for future Homer. Man, I don't envy
Speaker 1: that guy. And he just gets it right. And so
Speaker 1: this get yourself present self dichonomy is really important, and
Speaker 1: we've seen it in all sorts of studies that to
Speaker 1: the extent that we're biased towards present self and we
Speaker 1: want that immediate mood repair. If we don't think about
Speaker 1: future self, present self always dominates, and we see that
Speaker 1: in cartoons and other things as well. Everyone knows that
Speaker 1: future self hates present self because ut yourself always getting
Speaker 1: jerked around. So if we can remember that this is
Speaker 1: these are some of the biases that are operating, it
Speaker 1: helps us develop more empathy for future self and we
Speaker 1: make different choices. Now. A lot of what we do
Speaker 1: on the show is we read books and listen to
Speaker 1: authors and falls kind of into the self help category,
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Speaker 1: code Wolf. Let's talk about one other bias that you
Speaker 1: mentioned in the book, and um, I thought this one
Speaker 1: was really interesting and you refer to it as self
Speaker 1: handicap to preserve self esteem. My colleague at the University
Speaker 1: of Sheffield, who started her graduate studies with us here
Speaker 1: at Carlton University in Ottawa. She did some research looking
Speaker 1: at how people make upward and downward counter factuals. And
Speaker 1: so let me just take a minute and talk about
Speaker 1: what those are. Downward counter factual we're really familiar with them.
Speaker 1: They happen all the time. They have they start in school.
Speaker 1: So you get a C grade and it's not what
Speaker 1: you're hoping for. Your shooting for an A. Let's say,
Speaker 1: but your downward counter factual is at least I didn't fail.
Speaker 1: It's counterfactual to what happened. But you say, at least
Speaker 1: I didn't fail. So what's the purpose of that, Well,
Speaker 1: it makes you feel better. You weren't happy about getting
Speaker 1: the sea, but when you've put it against failing, you
Speaker 1: feel better. The upward counter factual is just the opposite,
Speaker 1: of course, and that is what If I had studied harder,
Speaker 1: if I hadn't gone out last night, maybe I would
Speaker 1: have gotten an A same thing. You could imagine getting
Speaker 1: a little fender bender. Well, at least no one was killed.
Speaker 1: The downward counter factual, the upper counter factual. Maybe I
Speaker 1: should look at my phone when I'm trying to park
Speaker 1: the car. So you learn from upper counter factuals, and
Speaker 1: lo and behold when future looked at the difference between
Speaker 1: procrastinators and non procrastinators, not surprising that they made more
Speaker 1: downward counter factuals. Again, kind of underscoring this notion of
Speaker 1: it's about feeling good, the same strategies being used, but
Speaker 1: nothing's learned. And so it's interesting for us to stand
Speaker 1: back and listen to the self talk. Am I making
Speaker 1: downward counter factuals? Because if I am, again, it's all
Speaker 1: about making myself feel better rather than learning from the situation.
Speaker 1: And if you look at any of the popular self
Speaker 1: help around motivation and productivity, it's how do we effectively
Speaker 1: learn from our mistakes, because there's that's the only way
Speaker 1: we learned, And the downward and upwerd counter factuals that
Speaker 1: you hear as inner talk can be a real clue
Speaker 1: to the habits you've created in your own life around them.
Speaker 1: And so essentially part of what you're saying is that
Speaker 1: we might procrastinate to give us away to have an
Speaker 1: excuse for why we didn't do better later. Well, that's
Speaker 1: self handicapping thing. It's a little dicey that I've got
Speaker 1: colleagues and I happen to be in that camp. Who
Speaker 1: would argue that procrastination isn't a self handicapping technique, Because
Speaker 1: if I delay on purpose to protect my self esteem,
Speaker 1: then it's really a different form of delay because I'm
Speaker 1: doing it quite knowingly. I do think that their secondary
Speaker 1: gain and procrastination, you can use it to protect yourself
Speaker 1: not a bad grade for you know, working one night,
Speaker 1: but that's quite purposeful. I don't believe that we procrastinate
Speaker 1: to self handicap. Uh, we can delay to self handicap,
Speaker 1: but I want to There's a fine line, I would
Speaker 1: you between that sort of delay and procrastination, assuming that
Speaker 1: that's all happening at a conscious level. Right, So if
Speaker 1: I consciously say, oh well, I just won't study so
Speaker 1: much so I don't feel bad if I don't do well,
Speaker 1: that's very much a conscious decision and that's not procrastination.
Speaker 1: And that's actually a point you make very early in
Speaker 1: the book. Is not all delay is procrastination. There are
Speaker 1: valid reasons to delay, so you know, but but on
Speaker 1: a on a more subconscious level, perhaps there might be
Speaker 1: some of that. It's it's always interesting because I hear
Speaker 1: people use a term a lot self sabotage, and I
Speaker 1: never quite know what I think of that term. I
Speaker 1: don't know whether that's just like sort of woo woo
Speaker 1: word that sort of you know, brings up a lot
Speaker 1: of different things, or whether there's really something to that
Speaker 1: and it might be similar to what we're talking about here.
Speaker 1: I am self sabotaging by unconsciously putting something off because
Speaker 1: I will feel better about it later. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: there's some truth in that. It's become a habit in
Speaker 1: your life. You're you're working very hard to protect your
Speaker 1: self esteem. I know that my colleague Joseph Ferrari at
Speaker 1: DePaul University in Chicago, and some of his earlier research
Speaker 1: showed that procrastinators generally didn't want to get feedback that
Speaker 1: would reflect on them in a way they're can affect
Speaker 1: their self esteem. So you could see that sort of
Speaker 1: protective factor coming up, so that you delay needlessly and
Speaker 1: in a way that's going to be self defeating. But
Speaker 1: part of the motivation for that is that your feel
Speaker 1: you're going to fail anyhow. And in fact, when we
Speaker 1: listen to uh procrastinators in either therapy sessions or in research.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of Bill McCowen, Louisiana State has done some
Speaker 1: interesting research where he had students, when they were procrastinating,
Speaker 1: go online and talk about what they were thinking and feeling,
Speaker 1: and he captured a lot of the irrational thoughts, and
Speaker 1: there were things like, well, what's the point of me trying?
Speaker 1: I'm not any good anyhow, So sure we get that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. How happening inside of ourselves all this
Speaker 1: negative self talk, and then procrastination could become a mechanism
Speaker 1: which was self protective, and in that sense we might
Speaker 1: be talking about this elusive notion of self sabotage. Well, Tim,
Speaker 1: we are at the end of our time, and this
Speaker 1: has been enormously helpful and a fun conversation for me
Speaker 1: because I'm so interested in this. You and I are
Speaker 1: going to continue the conversation in our post show conversation
Speaker 1: and a couple of things we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: our um. The procrastination is not only an inability to
Speaker 1: get started. Sometimes we get started and then we get
Speaker 1: off track from a variety of ways. And we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about how to bounce back from that type
Speaker 1: of procrastination. In the post show conversation listeners. If you're
Speaker 1: interested in that, you can join us and be a
Speaker 1: member of the one you Feed Patreon community and you
Speaker 1: can get access to all the post show conversations, add
Speaker 1: free episodes and many episodes by going to one you
Speaker 1: Feed dot net slash Support. Again, Tim, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: We'll have links in the show notes for where people
Speaker 1: can see you and see your book. And I just
Speaker 1: thought it was a great book and this has been
Speaker 1: such a fun conversation for me. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Bye. If what you just heard was helpful
Speaker 1: to you, please consider making a donation to the One
Speaker 1: you Feed podcast. Head over to one you Feed dot
Speaker 1: net slash Support. The one you Feed podcast would like
Speaker 1: to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show.