Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Science Stuff production of iHeartRadio. Hoarhitch Ham
Speaker 1: and do they We're finally getting to the science of procrastination.
Speaker 1: Why do we procrastinate? Who procrastinates? And is there a cure.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be talking to not one, not two, but
Speaker 1: three psychologists about this phenomenon, all of whom have a
Speaker 1: different take on why we procrastinate, and then we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about possible strategies you can use to stop procrastinating,
Speaker 1: including some that you might find unusual. So, whether you're
Speaker 1: someone who keeps putting things off, or if you want
Speaker 1: to understand people around you should do, then don't delay.
Speaker 1: Listen on as we tackle the science of procrastination.
Speaker 2: Y enjoy.
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, So I am a big procrastinator. If you
Speaker 1: work with me, then you probably know to give me
Speaker 1: a fake deadline just to make sure I don't turn
Speaker 1: things in late. I've also written comics groups about procrastination.
Speaker 1: It was a big theme in PhD comics, and I've
Speaker 1: delivered a lecture on procrastination in academia called the Power
Speaker 1: of Procrastination about four hundred times in universities all over
Speaker 1: the world. So I was very interested and a little
Speaker 1: scared about tackling today's subject. Now, I know I'm not alone.
Speaker 1: According to the experts we're talking to today, about ninety
Speaker 1: five percent of all human beings report procrastinating at least
Speaker 1: a little bit in their lives. I mean, come on,
Speaker 1: we all do it. I say that other five percent
Speaker 1: of the population is just lying. But some people procrastinate
Speaker 1: a lot, and they do it to the point where
Speaker 1: it starts to affect their lives. Maybe it's a nagging
Speaker 1: sense of guilt they carry with them, or maybe it
Speaker 1: results in misopportunities, or there could even be health consequences.
Speaker 1: By the way, if you have any medical issues that
Speaker 1: you need to get checked or anything, go do that
Speaker 1: right now. Don't mess around with that now. As it
Speaker 1: turns out, there is a whole field of scientific research
Speaker 1: into procrastination. If you search for academic papers with the
Speaker 1: word procrastination, you get about three hundred thousand results, about
Speaker 1: thirty thousand of those just in the last three years.
Speaker 1: Like I said, it happens to a lot of people,
Speaker 1: and according to the first expert we're talking to today,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a consequence of our evolution and our history.
Speaker 1: So here's my conversation with doctor Pier Steele, a professor
Speaker 1: of organizational psychology at the University of Calgary. Well, thank
Speaker 1: you so much, doctor Steele for joining us.
Speaker 3: Great to be here.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Now I reached out to you, I want to say,
Speaker 1: maybe like ten years ago, and we put it off. Yes,
Speaker 1: we procrastinated a little, but we finally did it. We
Speaker 1: finally connected. Is this a historic case of procrastination?
Speaker 4: Well, I did a historic review of it, and some
Speaker 4: of the ones are pretty out there.
Speaker 1: You've seem worse, seem worse, far worse.
Speaker 4: One thing, I've always wanted to restart the Procrastination Club
Speaker 4: of America.
Speaker 1: Oh, but something keeps getting away. It might take a
Speaker 1: while to get members to sign up.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it might take a little bit of a while.
Speaker 4: But procrastinations funny, right, uh huh, It's tragic and funny simultaneously.
Speaker 1: Right. Oh no, we take it very seriously here at
Speaker 1: sign stuff.
Speaker 4: Well, I know the science of it, if that's what
Speaker 4: people want, but it has you know, deep lines going
Speaker 4: back in history.
Speaker 1: Tell us about the history of procrastination.
Speaker 4: Okay, well you want to go back. It's as old
Speaker 4: as time, really as old as us. If you go
Speaker 4: back far enough. I mean one of the first historical
Speaker 4: references to it are in about fourteen hundred BC in
Speaker 4: ancient hieroglyphs. And the reason why, of course, is because
Speaker 4: we just started getting our civilization together.
Speaker 1: According to doctor Steele, yea of procrastination basically started with
Speaker 1: complex civilization. Before women were just hunters and gatherers. We
Speaker 1: just kind of did whatever we wanted to do. But
Speaker 1: then things got complicated. Society has got more complex. We
Speaker 1: needed to coordinate with others and do things in groups,
Speaker 1: and suddenly we had deadlines.
Speaker 4: That's right, we had coordination problems. Agriculture is like the
Speaker 4: first long term basically goal. You had to plant in
Speaker 4: the spring to reap.
Speaker 1: In the fall, right, you had to plan ahead.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right. Things have to happen.
Speaker 1: So before we evolved as animals in the wild and
Speaker 1: we just did whatever we wanted to do. In fact,
Speaker 1: we should have all to not worry too much about
Speaker 1: the future.
Speaker 4: Back in the day, when food was short and it's spoiled,
Speaker 4: you better gorge what's good because it's really difficult to
Speaker 4: get food and high energy ones that's what you need
Speaker 4: to serve. We have like one hundred million years of
Speaker 4: evolution and ancestors that go along with So if you're
Speaker 4: living in an environment where there are no long term
Speaker 4: goals and projects, your mind evolves towards the short term.
Speaker 4: It naturally does.
Speaker 1: And this, Dougor Steele argues, means we kind of evolved
Speaker 1: to have two brains in our heads.
Speaker 4: So we have this kind of clusion of a brain.
Speaker 4: We have this older limpic system, which kind of wants
Speaker 4: things that sees right, and you have this prefront the cortex,
Speaker 4: which is good for planning in the future.
Speaker 1: I see, it's not like someone designed a human being
Speaker 1: from scratch. It's like we evolved and we built on
Speaker 1: top of what sibilis there and what's under there was
Speaker 1: least be an animal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean we evolve from that. We didn't get
Speaker 4: rid of that, We just added to it like an extension,
Speaker 4: so that part of us is still there.
Speaker 1: This is what psychologists call the dualistic theory of mind,
Speaker 1: which says that we kind of have two brains, the
Speaker 1: primitive animal brain we evolved for millions of years, called
Speaker 1: the limbic system, and the rational planning brain we've wrapped
Speaker 1: around it called the prefrontal cortex. And doctor Pierre says
Speaker 1: that procrastination is basically what happens when those two brains
Speaker 1: fight with each other, especially about something called temporal discounting.
Speaker 4: Procrastinations is simply an expression of our temporal discounting, which
Speaker 4: we fire value the now more than later.
Speaker 1: Okay, here's an example. Let's say you want to exercise
Speaker 1: more well, when the time comes, your prefrontal cortex knows
Speaker 1: that exercise is good for you and that it will
Speaker 1: pay off in the future, But your limbic system doesn't
Speaker 1: really understand the future. It just knows that you're tired,
Speaker 1: that exercise is boring and it's uncomfortable effort. Or let's
Speaker 1: say you need to work on your taxes. Your prefrontal
Speaker 1: cortex knows you need to do it or you'll get
Speaker 1: in trouble in the future. But all your limbic system
Speaker 1: knows is that it's a pain in the butt. And
Speaker 1: so the two parts of your brain are always fighting
Speaker 1: it out. And sometimes your limbic system wins and you procrastinate,
Speaker 1: and sometimes your prefrontal cortex wins and you get things done.
Speaker 1: All of this can be captured. It's something that doctor
Speaker 1: Steele calls the procrastination equation. Yes, there is math involved
Speaker 1: in procrastination.
Speaker 4: Well, there's an equation, right, I wrote the book the
Speaker 4: Procrastination Equation, So there is actually a mathematical formula for
Speaker 4: Oh what is it? There's three basic variables, and the
Speaker 4: first is just rational gambling.
Speaker 1: Okay, here's a mathematical equation that doctor Steele says basically
Speaker 1: can predict whether you're going to procrastinate or not. The
Speaker 1: equation says that how likely you are to do something
Speaker 1: is equal to how confident you are that you can
Speaker 1: do it times how much value you think you'll get
Speaker 1: out of doing it, divided by the amount of impulsiveness
Speaker 1: in your life. So if you're really confident you can
Speaker 1: do something, the more likely you are that you're going
Speaker 1: to do it. The more something is worth to you,
Speaker 1: like how much money you'll get out of it, or
Speaker 1: how much trouble you'll get into if you don't do it,
Speaker 1: the more likely also that you're going to do it.
Speaker 1: But then both of those terms are divided by the
Speaker 1: impulsiveness in your life. So if you have a lot
Speaker 1: of impulsiveness in your life, you're less likely to get
Speaker 1: things done. But if you have less impulsiveness, the more
Speaker 1: likely you're going to do things, and this impulsiveness, doctor
Speaker 1: Steele says, is a combination of a the personality you're
Speaker 1: born with. B the skills you've learned in life, and
Speaker 1: see how many distractions you have around you. Now, two
Speaker 1: of those things you can change. You can learn new
Speaker 1: skills to get yourself organized and avoid procrastination, and you
Speaker 1: can reduce the number of distractions in your life, like
Speaker 1: turn off your cell phone or don't work in front
Speaker 1: of the TV. But the third, your personality is something
Speaker 1: you're just born with.
Speaker 4: Well, the degree of procrastination is really it's genetic. It's
Speaker 4: eighty percent. Because it's a personality trait. It comes under
Speaker 4: conscientiousness and boat's neuroticism. Anxiety is a better, more transparent
Speaker 4: term for it.
Speaker 1: Psychologists can track personality traits in people, and the two
Speaker 1: scientists have found that are most associated with procrastination are
Speaker 1: called conscientiousness, which is how diligent you are, and neuroticism
Speaker 1: or anxiousness, which is how much you tend to worry
Speaker 1: about things and overthink them. In scientific studies, people who
Speaker 1: are diligent tend to procrastinate less, and people who are
Speaker 1: anxious or neurotic tend to procrastinate more. And we know
Speaker 1: these are genetic from twin studies.
Speaker 4: So you can do this by twins raised together versus
Speaker 4: raised to part So then you can see if they
Speaker 4: are still like pretty much identical despite being never have
Speaker 4: met each other and raised in different households. Be given
Speaker 4: things like, you know, a procrastination or impulsivity test, and
Speaker 4: all the rest of them. And if they both have
Speaker 4: a strong agreement correlation with each other, you know with
Speaker 4: a high degree of certainty it's genetic, right. You don't
Speaker 4: actually have to go in the DNA to do it.
Speaker 1: So if your twin is a procrastinator, chances are you're
Speaker 1: a procrastinator too. Or if you find that your daughter
Speaker 1: is a procrastinator, uh like I have, then you have
Speaker 1: no one to blame but your own genes. The tendency
Speaker 1: to procrastinate is hereditary. Okay, So to recap, scientists have
Speaker 1: a mathematical formula for procrastination. It says that you're less
Speaker 1: likely to procrastinate if you're confident and the task is
Speaker 1: important to you and you've learned how to organize yourself.
Speaker 1: But you're more likely to procrastinate if you're impulsive or
Speaker 1: if you have a lot of distractions around you. Now,
Speaker 1: does that mean we've solved procrastination? Not quite. According to
Speaker 1: the next scientist we're going to talk to, this a
Speaker 1: question doesn't answer one of the main questions about procrastination,
Speaker 1: which is why do we do it? If we know
Speaker 1: something is important to us, why do we still choose
Speaker 1: not to do it. When we come back, we're going
Speaker 1: to answer this question, and we're also going to talk
Speaker 1: about how to stop procrastinating. So don't procrastinate. Stay with us,
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. Hey, welcome back. We're talking about
Speaker 1: the science of procrastination, and so far we talk to
Speaker 1: one expert who says procrastination is simply an expression of
Speaker 1: our temporal discounting. That's the idea that we value the
Speaker 1: present more than we value the future. For example, if
Speaker 1: I give you the choice of taking one thousand dollars
Speaker 1: in cold hard cash right now versus taking one one
Speaker 1: hundred dollars in say, two years, your brain is probably
Speaker 1: thinking I'll take the cash now. That's what's happening. According
Speaker 1: to doctor Pier Steele, when you procrastinate, you're discounting the
Speaker 1: potential negative consequences that might happen in the future if
Speaker 1: you procrastinate. Doctor Steele even has a procrastination equation. But
Speaker 1: according to the next procrastination expert I talk to, there's
Speaker 1: something missing from this view of procrastination, and that is
Speaker 1: why do we do it? It only counts as procrastination
Speaker 1: if you feel you should be doing something else, So
Speaker 1: why do it? Why do we still make that choice
Speaker 1: to put things off? And for chronic procrastinators, why do
Speaker 1: they keep making that choice over and over again? To
Speaker 1: answer that, here's my conversation with doctor Fusia Sira, a
Speaker 1: professor of Social and health psychology at Durham University in
Speaker 1: the UK. Well, thank you, doctor Sirah for joining.
Speaker 5: Us, no problem, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: And we finally were able to connect. We've been trying
Speaker 1: for a while. We've been procrastinating.
Speaker 5: No no, we've been making wise delay to find the
Speaker 5: perfect time.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is interesting. According to doctor Sira, there is
Speaker 1: an annual conference on the scientific study of procrastination. Well,
Speaker 1: it's not quite annual.
Speaker 5: We had a procrastination conference in Yutrik University in Netherlands
Speaker 5: this summer. We do it every two years. As a
Speaker 5: running joke that that's about as often as we can
Speaker 5: get around to doing it because it's procrastination.
Speaker 1: These are people who procrastinate or people who study procrastination.
Speaker 5: People who study procrastinations. That's sort of the the international
Speaker 5: group of scholars who study procrastination, which has been growing
Speaker 5: over the last few years, which is good to see
Speaker 5: a lot of new young researchers coming into the fold
Speaker 5: and taking up the call to better understand procrastination from
Speaker 5: a scientific perspective.
Speaker 1: According to doctor Sarah, there is still a lot of
Speaker 1: healthy scientific debate about what counts as procrastination and why
Speaker 1: people do it. Well, they just start us off, can
Speaker 1: tell us what is procrastination? How do scientists define it?
Speaker 5: So procrastination is a form of delay, but it's not
Speaker 5: your garden variety delay. So it's unnecessary and voluntary delay
Speaker 5: of an important task that you intended to do, despite
Speaker 5: knowing that there's going to be negative or harmful consequences
Speaker 5: by not following through. This is why it is such
Speaker 5: a fascinating phenomena to study, because people do this thing
Speaker 5: that's so irrational. They know on some level it's going
Speaker 5: to be harmful, yet they still do it. Like what's
Speaker 5: going on there?
Speaker 1: Right? Yeah, what is going on here. Well, any Deductor Sirah,
Speaker 1: the answer is actually not that complicated.
Speaker 5: I think the initial work on procrastination was taken up
Speaker 5: by behavioral economists who look at the cost of things,
Speaker 5: the cost of behavior, and the trade offs, because it
Speaker 5: looks like there's trade off with procrastination on the surface.
Speaker 5: So there was this view that it's something that you
Speaker 5: could put down to some sort of a formula, and
Speaker 5: it was always about your what you expected and what
Speaker 5: you valued, and things put into the formulas motivation times,
Speaker 5: you know, future value equals tendency.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing, doctor Sierra argues, people don't really
Speaker 1: follow a formula when they procrastinate.
Speaker 5: People don't think that way when they procrastinate. They don't
Speaker 5: make a conscious decision to procrastinate. It's irrational. You can't
Speaker 5: foot it in to formula. So it's absolutely rational. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and that's why if you try to explain it using
Speaker 5: rational formulas, you're always going to miss the footing.
Speaker 1: Acquitting Deductor Surrah, the real reason we procrastinate is emotional.
Speaker 5: After several discussions, we did put out a theoretical paper
Speaker 5: where we want to just turn over this idea that
Speaker 5: it's just this rational formulaic thing, and no, this is
Speaker 5: it's irrational. And what else do we know in our
Speaker 5: human experiences is also i rational emotions. So we've put
Speaker 5: forth the idea that is a sort of temporal mood
Speaker 5: regulation sort of model where really what we're doing when
Speaker 5: we procrastinate is we're trying to regulate our mood and
Speaker 5: it's not the task, it's the emotions associated with that task.
Speaker 1: What are Sura saying is that at the heart of
Speaker 1: every decision to procrastinate, there isn't a calculation about what's
Speaker 1: good for us now or later, or what is the
Speaker 1: value to us. When we're procrastinating, we're simply reacting to
Speaker 1: an emotion.
Speaker 5: It's the low self esteem, it's the perfection is. It's
Speaker 5: to worry about what's to come or not to come.
Speaker 5: It's the threats to our sense of competency. So you've
Speaker 5: got this thing you're really worried about. It's like, it's
Speaker 5: going to be horrible. I've never done it before. It's
Speaker 5: not going to be good enough. I'm going to be criticized,
Speaker 5: I'm going to feel terrible about myself. Like, well, it's
Speaker 5: just boredom. Sometimes because boredom is an unpleasant state as well.
Speaker 5: It's a full range of negative emotions. As human beings,
Speaker 5: we avoid negative emotions.
Speaker 1: Oh I see.
Speaker 5: So we argued that what you're doing with procrastination is
Speaker 5: you're avoiding the emotions associated with that task, right, and
Speaker 5: we react to that. Okay, I need to regulate this emotion.
Speaker 5: What do I do? I think I go do something
Speaker 5: more interesting or that I enjoy, because that will help
Speaker 5: me forget about this thing that I know I should
Speaker 5: be doing right now that I'm not doing.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 5: The unwillingness to work on that project or task or
Speaker 5: goal that is causing you challenging emotions that you don't
Speaker 5: know how to deal with except by disengaging from them,
Speaker 5: walking away from which we see behaviorally as procrastination.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know about you, but at this point
Speaker 1: in the conversation I was feeling, as people say expost,
Speaker 1: what doctor Sira is saying is that at the heart
Speaker 1: of every time you procrastinate, there's a core emotion being
Speaker 1: triggered by the thing you're supposed to be doing. Maybe
Speaker 1: you're afraid that people will judge you if you do it,
Speaker 1: or you're afraid it won't turn out as good as
Speaker 1: you want it to be, or maybe you associate the
Speaker 1: task with something stressful that's happened to you before, or
Speaker 1: maybe it's just hard or boring, and that negative emotion
Speaker 1: is enough to keep you from doing it and to
Speaker 1: make things worse. The fact that you're not doing it
Speaker 1: can cause the negative emotions to pile up.
Speaker 5: But it doesn't last because it's not effective mood regulations.
Speaker 5: People feel bad about the procrastination, then they start beating
Speaker 5: themselves up about procrastinating, and now they've gone another layer
Speaker 5: of negative mood onto the task. And is that going
Speaker 5: to get them to do it? No, it'll make the
Speaker 5: procrastination even more now to move away from that negative mood.
Speaker 5: And so you get this precious circle. And if you
Speaker 5: people stepping in going why aren't you doing this? Again?
Speaker 5: More negative mood, they're going to put it aside.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 5: It doesn't help people to make them feel bad about
Speaker 5: the procrastating. It has the opposite effect.
Speaker 1: I feel gotri Sura that you're peering into my soul
Speaker 1: right now. You're laying bare all the hang ups and
Speaker 1: decisions in life.
Speaker 5: That's what we all go through when we procrastinate. It's
Speaker 5: pure raw emotion and it needs to be managed. And
Speaker 5: that's it.
Speaker 1: I see.
Speaker 5: And there's different strategies you can take to do this.
Speaker 5: But unless you recognize that emotions are ground zero for procrastination,
Speaker 5: any other stuff you do isn't going to be effective
Speaker 5: in the long run.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, I feel like you're making it sound rational,
Speaker 1: which defeats to the rest of the definition, Like if
Speaker 1: I'm avoiding it for an emotional reason, then isn't that rational?
Speaker 5: No, So he is rational in the moment. It apports
Speaker 5: you short term mood repair. So there is a reason,
Speaker 5: a short term reason. You get short term benefit. Yeah,
Speaker 5: but it is irrational because the cost of not actually
Speaker 5: getting that task done is the lot what's looming larger.
Speaker 5: And so the reason to do it is you're afforded
Speaker 5: this this shift from feeling bad to feeling not so
Speaker 5: bad or to feeling better because you especially to go
Speaker 5: off and do something that's more enjoyable. But it's not
Speaker 5: effective emotion regulation because it comes back to bite you
Speaker 5: ten times worse than it was in the first place, right,
Speaker 5: because you start feeling bad about it, and other people
Speaker 5: might be getting on your case, and then now it's
Speaker 5: looking even worse. And you worry more, and it's getting
Speaker 5: closer to the deadline, and you know all these sorts
Speaker 5: of things.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's why we really procrastinate. We do it
Speaker 1: because there's a negative emotion tied to the thing we're
Speaker 1: supposed to be doing, and we don't know how to
Speaker 1: deal with that emotion other than to avoid it or
Speaker 1: put it off, Which means there's a very simple way
Speaker 1: to stop procrastinating. We'll get to what that is, but
Speaker 1: first I wanted to know procrastination is really all that bad?
Speaker 1: What the science say is really the impact of putting
Speaker 1: things off. When we come back, we'll talk to another
Speaker 1: psychologist who was involved in the longest running study on
Speaker 1: procrastination ever done, where they tracked procrastinators for almost twenty years.
Speaker 1: We'll see what they found after the break. Stay with us,
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. Hey, welcome back. We're talking about
Speaker 1: the size of procrastination, and so far we learn what
Speaker 1: procrastination is, who procrastinates, and why we procrastinate. Now there's
Speaker 1: only two questions left. Is procrastination really that bad? And
Speaker 1: how can we stop procrastinating? To answer the first question,
Speaker 1: I reached out to psychologist doctor Lisa boylke a research
Speaker 1: scientist at the University of Tubingen in Germany. Doctor Bolka
Speaker 1: is one of the authors of one of the longest
Speaker 1: running experiments on procrastination ever done, where they looked at
Speaker 1: what really happens to people who procrastinate to tell us
Speaker 1: about it. Here's my conversation with doctor Bolka. Well, thank you,
Speaker 1: doctor boylkeev for joining us.
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 1: Can you please tell us who you are and what
Speaker 1: you do.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: My name is Lisa Boyka.
Speaker 2: I'm a research scientist and postdoc at the Hector Research
Speaker 2: Institute of Education, Sciences and Psychology at the University of Tubingen,
Speaker 2: and I'm interested in understanding how procrastination emerges and how
Speaker 2: it can be overcome.
Speaker 1: Incredible, and we almost didn't have this meeting because I
Speaker 1: procrastinated in sending you the link to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm worrious about that.
Speaker 2: I guess I did an effective strategy of reminding and
Speaker 2: then go fine, good giving you deadlines.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, thank you. So.
Speaker 2: At our institute, there was a longitutional study that started
Speaker 2: in two thousand and two and it was a big
Speaker 2: cohort with over four thousand students and it started in
Speaker 2: the high school at the very last year and attract
Speaker 2: actually students every two years or later on every four years.
Speaker 2: And there we have like this massive data set where
Speaker 2: we could actually track students and ask them several years later,
Speaker 2: including during the pandemic, on how they are feeling, what
Speaker 2: they are doing, and this we could connect to their
Speaker 2: procrastination tendencies as well as to how they developed their
Speaker 2: procrastination behavior over time.
Speaker 1: Okay, I have a lot of questions now, So you
Speaker 1: tracked people for eighteen years. Every couple of years, you
Speaker 1: would go back to them and you would survey them
Speaker 1: and you ask him questions. Yeah, correct, What kinds of
Speaker 1: questions would you follow up with?
Speaker 2: So it was always the same questions, which makes it
Speaker 2: possible to have a look on how different things develop
Speaker 2: over time. For instance, if you ask them about generally
Speaker 2: delaying tasks and then they indicate in one year, yes,
Speaker 2: I do this a lot, and then several years later
Speaker 2: this and maybe not so much anymore, so that you
Speaker 2: can actually see how things changed over time.
Speaker 1: So doctor Bulky and her colleagues at the University of
Speaker 1: Tuingngen have been tracking the same few thousand people since
Speaker 1: two thousand and two, and this is an amazing feat.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you think about it, getting a few
Speaker 1: thousand procrastinators to consistently fill out a survey every couple
Speaker 1: of years and actually turning it on time seems like
Speaker 1: an impossible task. I guess it could only happen in Germany.
Speaker 1: But what's unique about this survey is that they've been
Speaker 1: able to not only track how much these few thousand
Speaker 1: people who procrastinate, but they also attracked how their lives
Speaker 1: are going, how successful they are, whether they're in a relationship,
Speaker 1: and how they feel in general. And what they found
Speaker 1: is pretty interesting. They found two things. The first is
Speaker 1: that the people who procrastinate more don't do as well
Speaker 1: as everybody else. So you could tell like people who
Speaker 1: procrastinated more over time led a different life than people
Speaker 1: who did not procrastinate as much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you could say it in a way like this,
Speaker 2: So it's correlational findings, but still you have the results
Speaker 2: over time, so you can't do causal conclusions there, but
Speaker 2: you can say procrastination was related to these kind of
Speaker 2: live outcomes and you can see that it had a
Speaker 2: negative impact.
Speaker 1: I see on how much money you make, and what
Speaker 1: were the negative correlations?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it was for example, lower chances of completing
Speaker 2: a university three, of getting promoted at work, regarding maintaining
Speaker 2: a stable relationship, as well as general lower life satisfaction.
Speaker 2: And it was also associated with maladaptive behaviors during the pandemic,
Speaker 2: such as increased computer and internet consumption and poor mental health.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, it affects your relationships.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's actually quite interesting, and we were also thinking
Speaker 2: about why is that. So you can, for instance, assume
Speaker 2: that maybe a person that is constantly procrastinating on major
Speaker 2: life decisions or like also maybe when to enter work,
Speaker 2: or that studying at university takes for ages, then this
Speaker 2: might also affect your personal life at home. And then
Speaker 2: this might also result in not having as many stable
Speaker 2: relationships or stable relationships at all as people do that
Speaker 2: are procrastinating less.
Speaker 1: Wow. Do you think that's because you would drive your
Speaker 1: partner crazy or you would never get around to proposing
Speaker 1: or something like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it could be both just speculating here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, wow, fascinating. And you said poor mental health meaning
Speaker 1: they were more stressed or they were just in general
Speaker 1: not feeling as well. What does that mean?
Speaker 2: So in other studies it was shown that it is
Speaker 2: related to increased stress or lower.
Speaker 3: Indicated well being.
Speaker 2: In this study, we operrationalized it by asking, like, compared
Speaker 2: to other people, you know, how is your health Is
Speaker 2: it higher? Is it lower? And they mostly indicated that
Speaker 2: it's actually lower.
Speaker 1: Oh I see, it's self reported mental health.
Speaker 3: In comparison to others.
Speaker 1: Oh I see, And why do you think they have
Speaker 1: lower mental health?
Speaker 2: I guess like one reason could be that because you're
Speaker 2: postponing things irrationally, like you're always on the last minute,
Speaker 2: Like you have more stressful situations. But you can also
Speaker 2: have a lot of small deadlines. If you know, by
Speaker 2: the end of every week, I want to do sports,
Speaker 2: for instance, and then every week you're procrastinating on doing sports,
Speaker 2: and this of course stresses you out because you realize
Speaker 2: that this is actually not what you intended to do.
Speaker 2: So this might accumulate over time, and then you have
Speaker 2: overall increased stress.
Speaker 1: I see. Do you feel bad about putting things off
Speaker 1: a lot?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: I feel like you might be describing my life a
Speaker 1: little bit.
Speaker 3: Maybe talking about it helps you.
Speaker 1: Feeling your patterns, ye are very producing an episode might
Speaker 1: help me. Yeah, So people who procrastinate don't do so
Speaker 1: well at least in some traditional measures of success. But
Speaker 1: as doctor Bolkia said, the results are correlational, meaning that
Speaker 1: it could be that these people are doing less well
Speaker 1: because they procrastinate, But it could also be that people
Speaker 1: who don't do well also just happen to be the
Speaker 1: kind of people who procrastinate a lot. It could even
Speaker 1: be that whatever else is going on in their lives
Speaker 1: that gives them less success is also causing them to procrastinate.
Speaker 1: As doctor Balka said, you need to dig into it
Speaker 1: with more research. But the other interesting thing doctor bulk
Speaker 1: and her colleagues found is that how much people procrastinate
Speaker 1: changes over time.
Speaker 2: So, for instance, we can also see that procrastination tendencies
Speaker 2: decrease with age, so there is kind of a maturation
Speaker 2: process that people are actually able also to overcome.
Speaker 3: This with age.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as we get older, we tend to on average,
Speaker 1: procrastinate less. And part of it, doctor Bulka says, is
Speaker 1: that we just mature, we learn to deal with things
Speaker 1: little better. But part of it is also that the
Speaker 1: world sort of gives you less room to procrastinate. For example,
Speaker 1: when you're a student and you're in college, there's lots
Speaker 1: of flexibility, but once you get out into the real world,
Speaker 1: things aren't that easy for you.
Speaker 2: For instance, studying presents an environment where you don't get
Speaker 2: a lot of feedback, you don't have many deadlines like
Speaker 2: you have to organize your learning independently.
Speaker 3: So there we can see that a lot of procrastination happens.
Speaker 2: But then later on in life, when you have a
Speaker 2: transition from studying into the work environment, then this is
Speaker 2: associated with less procrastination. So you change an environment also
Speaker 2: affects your procrastination overall.
Speaker 1: So there is a general trend to procrastinate less over time,
Speaker 1: but according to doctor Bolka, this doesn't apply to everyone.
Speaker 1: Some people never stop procrastinating.
Speaker 2: We can just see in our study that there is
Speaker 2: variance in the development, so you actually have people getting
Speaker 2: better and also people not getting better.
Speaker 1: Wow. Wait, wait, are you saying that most of us
Speaker 1: learn how to deal with procrastination, but some people even
Speaker 1: procrastinate learning about procrastination.
Speaker 2: So yeah, you can see that you have this mean
Speaker 2: level change that on average people are getting better over time,
Speaker 2: but you can also see that it doesn't apply to everyone.
Speaker 1: Fascinating. I guess what does that tell you about human
Speaker 1: nature and why we do think it.
Speaker 2: Can actually shows that we are able to change, that
Speaker 2: it's not set in stone, that it is forever. There
Speaker 2: are also interventions on personality change or how to develop
Speaker 2: different skills, so it can actually shows that there's a
Speaker 2: light at the end of the procrastination tunnel and that
Speaker 2: it's possible to overcome this behavior.
Speaker 1: And that brings us to the last question, which is
Speaker 1: how do you overcome this behavior? What do our experts
Speaker 1: say about how to stop procrastinating? Unfortunately, we left this
Speaker 1: question to the end and now we're out of time.
Speaker 1: We procrastinated telling you how to stop procrastinating. But don't worry,
Speaker 1: We're going to answer this question in a bonus mini
Speaker 1: episode that comes out later this week titled how to
Speaker 1: Stop Procrastinating. In it, we're going to hear from our
Speaker 1: experts how they deal with their own procrastination and what
Speaker 1: advice they give people who want to stop procrastinating. So
Speaker 1: be sure to check out that mini episode just look
Speaker 1: for it in a few days. Until then, thanks for
Speaker 1: joining us. See you there, you've been listening to science Stuff.
Speaker 1: The production of iHeartRadio Britain and produced by me or
Speaker 1: Hey Champ heredited by Rose Seguda, Executive producer Jerry Rowland
Speaker 1: and audio engineer and mixer Kasey Peckram. And you can
Speaker 1: follow me on social media. Just search for PhD Comics
Speaker 1: and the name of your favorite platform. Be sure to
Speaker 1: subscribe to sign Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts, and please tell your
Speaker 1: friends we'll be back next Wednesday with another episode.