Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb. I'm Julie Douglas. Julie, do
Speaker 1: you remember studying writing papers all that jazz back in
Speaker 1: high school and college? Now I'm doing jazz hands, Yes,
Speaker 1: I do remember. I recall frenzy um activity happening at
Speaker 1: the eleventh hour. Yeah. I remember staying up like all
Speaker 1: night to write things. In college. I remember getting up
Speaker 1: early to do homework, then being late as I ran
Speaker 1: off the class, and then finishing the homework in class,
Speaker 1: or skipping lunch to do a homework assignment do that afternoon.
Speaker 1: Everything was always a last minute, right, And this is
Speaker 1: called the student syndrome, right, Yes, yeah, and it's really common.
Speaker 1: I'm sure everyone at some point, particularly in in in
Speaker 1: their student years, experienced this where you were just putting
Speaker 1: everything off because you were making a deal with yourself saying, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: i'll do it in a couple of days, I'll do
Speaker 1: it a couple of hours and then bam. Because there's
Speaker 1: always something more entertaining or worthwhile to do in the
Speaker 1: present than later on. And I'm sure that that would
Speaker 1: have been something like other studies rather than beer consumption
Speaker 1: or well, well I did not consume libations in college
Speaker 1: for the most part. But what would you have occupied
Speaker 1: have been? Stuff like, um, you know, team Fortress or
Speaker 1: a quake or something I guess, you know, other at
Speaker 1: leisure activities. I wasn't exactly living it out most of
Speaker 1: my college career. I have to say, all right, well,
Speaker 1: I don't have any comment on that for myself. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: but procrastination, it is a huge deal. It is perhaps
Speaker 1: an inseparable part of who we are. Everyone does it,
Speaker 1: even the even the go getters out there. There's something
Speaker 1: on that to do list. It's not getting um do attention,
Speaker 1: and it all boils down to procrastination. We've been trying
Speaker 1: to fight this for ages. We still don't have it
Speaker 1: completely kicked or anywhere close to it. So what exactly
Speaker 1: is it? We're going to discuss what procrastination is, why
Speaker 1: we do it, some of the ideas out there about
Speaker 1: how we might defeat it, and uh and and whether
Speaker 1: that's really an achievable goal. Yeah, can you really vanquish it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Um and just saying no, you ever actually get around
Speaker 1: to vanquishing it? Well, yeah, you can put a plan together,
Speaker 1: you can clean the plan just at all. You can
Speaker 1: have a board meeting about it. You can put together
Speaker 1: committee to study procrastination and put together ten like ten
Speaker 1: steps on best us standards and practices towards defeating it.
Speaker 1: Then you can blog about those ten steps. Yes yeah, um,
Speaker 1: but like, this is not a modern phenomenon, right, Sure,
Speaker 1: there's been an uptick, and for reasons we'll talk about later.
Speaker 1: But just in case you're wondering it, it actually came
Speaker 1: into our vernacular and owned fifteen hundred and thirty two,
Speaker 1: I believe the first instance of the use of the
Speaker 1: word procrastinate. Yeah, the actual like English word procrastinate. Ye.
Speaker 1: And there's a book from eighteen fifty two called Thoughtless
Speaker 1: Little Fanny, The Unhappy Results of Procrastination. So this was
Speaker 1: on people's minds thoughtless little fanny, thoughtless little fanny, Like,
Speaker 1: don't have such a thoughtless little fanny? Like? Is that
Speaker 1: never mind? No, we're not talking about fannies like fanny,
Speaker 1: because it's like, get off your fannie and do something right. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe that's where some of that came from. Who is well, uh,
Speaker 1: even though the word is relatively new in terms of
Speaker 1: human history. Uh. The idea is, of course has been
Speaker 1: around for as long as we've had stuff to put
Speaker 1: off doing. I mean it's uh, if you look back
Speaker 1: in the Mahabarada, the ancient Indian epic, which we've discussed
Speaker 1: a little in the past when we were talking about
Speaker 1: ancient technology and weapons. Um, and I'm I've been really
Speaker 1: into it because I just forced my wife to set
Speaker 1: through several hours of the Peter Brook Channel four film
Speaker 1: that up to he did. Peterborok did like a nine
Speaker 1: hour version of the Mahaparata and then they cut it
Speaker 1: down to like six hours or five hours for TV,
Speaker 1: and then they cut that down to three hours for
Speaker 1: the DVD. And it's really cool, but my wife had
Speaker 1: suffered through it because it is a little slow. Yes,
Speaker 1: but there's a part in it where the character of
Speaker 1: Bishma is talking to King yudish Tura and he's taking
Speaker 1: him about these fish right that they're they're three fish
Speaker 1: in the water and there's a fisherman coming. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: this is like the apocalypse for these fish. And one
Speaker 1: of the fish in the water says, all right, I'm
Speaker 1: a fish of action. Let's do this. This let's do this.
Speaker 1: Let's uh, let's let's hop to it. Let's get to
Speaker 1: some water where we're not going to be threatened by
Speaker 1: this fisherman. And then there's another fish, and this fish
Speaker 1: is more of a thoughtful planner, and the fish says, look,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna think this over, I'm gonna i'm gonna do
Speaker 1: a little research, I'm gonna crunch some numbers, and then
Speaker 1: when the time for action comes, I will act and
Speaker 1: I will be prepared to act. And uh, and that's good.
Speaker 1: Both of these fish are great. But then there's a
Speaker 1: third fish, and that third fish is just like, ma,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not I'm not gonna worry. Well, is
Speaker 1: that fish just completely hamstrung by the idea and and
Speaker 1: therefore becomes a slacker fish? Um, yeah, kind of a
Speaker 1: slacker fish, just like doesn't that is it gonna put
Speaker 1: the is it gonna act now? Isn't gonna put the putar?
Speaker 1: Far with the effort to act now? Is instead going
Speaker 1: to just be like, well, what the fisherman does tomorrow
Speaker 1: is completely out of my mind, so Bishmuth says. Thus
Speaker 1: everyone meets with destruction, like the procrastinating fish, who from
Speaker 1: want of intelligence cannot divine the hour of danger. That
Speaker 1: man again, who, regarding himself clever, does not seek his
Speaker 1: own good improper time, incurs great danger, like the Sekula
Speaker 1: who had presence of mind. So it's, uh, it's it's
Speaker 1: really interesting ancient texts they're already talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: the wisdom behind tackling procrastination. You don't have to act
Speaker 1: right away, you know, you don't have to be the
Speaker 1: person it's like, oh, here's a here's a challenge. I'm
Speaker 1: on it. At least be the be the fish that
Speaker 1: is that is planning things out and as well. Discussing this,
Speaker 1: you tend to see like two types of procrastination with anybody.
Speaker 1: We're either putting off something that we really do not
Speaker 1: want to do, like taking out the garbage roundloading the dishwasher,
Speaker 1: or doing our taxes something like that. Or we're putting
Speaker 1: off something that we really want to do, or we
Speaker 1: think we really want to do, or we feel like
Speaker 1: we should want to do. The stakes are higher in
Speaker 1: that instance, right, and the expectations and probably the fear
Speaker 1: surrounding it. Right if you look in in the In Islam,
Speaker 1: the Arabic world word for procrastination toss with primarily concerns
Speaker 1: the postponement of good deeds. So there's more of an
Speaker 1: emphasis in Arabic on procrastination as the putting off of say, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, doing this great endeavor that you're planning, you know,
Speaker 1: I know, writing that book you always wanted to ride,
Speaker 1: or or finally donating to charity or you know, or
Speaker 1: whatever you're particular. There's more of a lighting of the
Speaker 1: fire under the duff to get things done. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then hitting on Buddhism, here's a quote from Surya Dass,
Speaker 1: an American in a lama in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition,
Speaker 1: and he says, we have to stop procrastinating, pretending that
Speaker 1: we have forever to do what we want to do
Speaker 1: and be what we long to be. So that's it.
Speaker 1: He dies in this whole idea that a lot of
Speaker 1: procrastination is sort of on some level feeling are like
Speaker 1: we're gonna live forever and we have indefinite time to
Speaker 1: achieve these various goals, obligations, dreams, uh, etcetera. C. S. Lewis,
Speaker 1: of course, the Christian writer and sci fi fantasy fictioner,
Speaker 1: says there is no other day all days are present.
Speaker 1: Now this moment contains all moments. I really I enjoyed
Speaker 1: sort of looking looking around and seeing what different people
Speaker 1: have to say about it. So, so we've been thinking
Speaker 1: about it for a long time. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: philosophy and uh and religion tied up in actually stirring
Speaker 1: people to action and stirring yourself to action. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: let's talk about some statistics behind this too, like what's
Speaker 1: going on here? There is a five year study that
Speaker 1: actually this is the the irony here. It was meant
Speaker 1: to be a five years study, but it took ten
Speaker 1: years to complete. Not making this up. Oh yeah, journalists
Speaker 1: love that stuff, by University of Calgary professor Pierce Steele.
Speaker 1: It's a thirty page study and it's actually pretty exhaustive.
Speaker 1: But it concluded, among other things, that only about five
Speaker 1: percent of the American public thought of themselves as chronic procrastinators.
Speaker 1: But now today it's about so the number has gone
Speaker 1: up quite a bit significantly. Yeah, and the culpriate just
Speaker 1: just guess what the culprit is. But the reason why
Speaker 1: this may have gone up, Oh, let's see the last
Speaker 1: twenty five years, I'm guessing the Internet. Yeah, it's lovely distractions,
Speaker 1: That is exactly it. Pierce Steel also attributes to the
Speaker 1: mind uh mind sweeper game. I really I never figured
Speaker 1: out how to play mine. I know, I thought, well,
Speaker 1: he had kept like and all the things that I
Speaker 1: read there were all these quotes of that mind sweeper
Speaker 1: game just taken over the nation. Yeah, I think perhaps
Speaker 1: for him, I'm going to guess that. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but it's really interesting because it's a hard thing to measure.
Speaker 1: And in fact, Slate dot com had a great article
Speaker 1: called Procrastinators Without Borders, and what they were saying essentially is, okay,
Speaker 1: here is a study that is right for research. You know,
Speaker 1: how do people procrastinate in other cultures? Because you know,
Speaker 1: you you can look at Americans and you can say, okay,
Speaker 1: there's a high incidence of self reporting of procrastinating. But
Speaker 1: perhaps that's because we're really into self disclosure, right Americans are.
Speaker 1: And you can say there's a high incidence in Japan.
Speaker 1: But you could say, well, that's also because uh, if
Speaker 1: someone were to say they were procrastinating, that's sort of
Speaker 1: a cultural norm of self criticizing oneself, and so it
Speaker 1: would make sense that they would say, oh, yes, I'm
Speaker 1: a procrastinator and this is part of my problem. Um,
Speaker 1: So there's there's sort of hard to measure in other cultures,
Speaker 1: and also how how is it perceived there? Right, because
Speaker 1: we know that a color is a color in one
Speaker 1: culture and the color in a different culture. Right, It's
Speaker 1: all how we sort of uh construct this reality, right
Speaker 1: of how we perceive things. And of course there's also
Speaker 1: something to be said about how different different cultures perceived
Speaker 1: time slightly differently, right, Um. And then this comes down
Speaker 1: to basically clock time versus event time. Yes, and there's
Speaker 1: nature time to write, right, yeah, nature time as well, which,
Speaker 1: of course it's just it's it's light out, it's start out,
Speaker 1: the sun's going coming up, the sun is going down.
Speaker 1: Looks like when when are you planning to eat dinner?
Speaker 1: Are you planning to eat dinner at seven o'clock sharp?
Speaker 1: Are you planning to eat dinner when everyone returns to
Speaker 1: the house, or are you planning to eat dinner when
Speaker 1: the sun comes down? There's not all necessarily the same time, right,
Speaker 1: and in in different cultures that could be wildly different
Speaker 1: times that they actually occur. Robert Levine is a social
Speaker 1: psychologist and the author of a geography time, and he
Speaker 1: maps the different perceptions of time between urban and rural settings,
Speaker 1: corporate culture, as ethnic groups, and academic disciplines, and he
Speaker 1: puts forth the idea of a multi temporality. So he
Speaker 1: it's sort of this idealistic like, you know, possibly we
Speaker 1: could start to move between nature time, event time, and
Speaker 1: clock time, depending on the situation. But what you'll see
Speaker 1: is that in most Western cultures we work on clock
Speaker 1: time monochronic time, right, monocron nicktime rather, and that's a
Speaker 1: linear timeline. It moves us from one task to another,
Speaker 1: where if you're in um event time in another culture,
Speaker 1: then let's say that you make a date to study
Speaker 1: with someone, and you make the date for seven o'clock.
Speaker 1: In an event time, you wouldn't actually be expected to
Speaker 1: show up at seven o'clock because what might happen between
Speaker 1: you showing up for that time and when you actually
Speaker 1: do is that a friend could come over and want
Speaker 1: to listen to music. And so it's much more like, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to go with it now, and it's
Speaker 1: less of a concern about the future. It's more like
Speaker 1: what's going on right now. So it's like Davies yes,
Speaker 1: it's very much so like this Um and Levine found
Speaker 1: that the quicker we speak, walk, eat, and drive UM,
Speaker 1: the more of an economic um boom we get. Right there,
Speaker 1: So the communities that are much more structured around clock
Speaker 1: time tend to be ones that and this is no surprise,
Speaker 1: have bigger economies, um, more luxuries, higher incomes, and so
Speaker 1: on and so forth. And I thought this was interesting.
Speaker 1: This was interesting that the top five countries using the
Speaker 1: index of pace of life as he calls it, or
Speaker 1: time consciousness from fastest to slowest are Switzerland, Ireland, Germany, Japan,
Speaker 1: and Italy. And the five slowest or at least time
Speaker 1: conscious countries are Syria, El Salvador, Brazil, Indonesia, and the Mexico. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I mean, here you go. Here's a good example
Speaker 1: of how time and this perception of whether or not
Speaker 1: you're procrastinating could be wildly different from one culture to another. Well,
Speaker 1: having been too in Mexico and having been to Germany,
Speaker 1: I can say that there does a drastic difference in
Speaker 1: how time is perceived and how time passes in those
Speaker 1: two countries. Well, as I know that Germany is is
Speaker 1: famous for its transportation, right and for for always being
Speaker 1: on time, um and adhering to the clock time. Well,
Speaker 1: I have, I have. I mean, I'm I'm not the
Speaker 1: most you know, buckled down of individuals, but but I
Speaker 1: do have some German blood in me. So there there
Speaker 1: are times where I'm like, where is someone to enforce
Speaker 1: the rules and to put straight limits and beginnings on
Speaker 1: this thing? You know? And then you reach for a
Speaker 1: strudal Yeah, and then I reach for a strudle. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like why why are people coming in late and
Speaker 1: leaving early for yoga class? This should not be permitted.
Speaker 1: I've got Dutch on my side, So I just wear
Speaker 1: wooden shoes. Okay, that's That's gotta make down dog different
Speaker 1: really difficult though it does, it does. It's a challenge. Um.
Speaker 1: But so the question then sort of becomes like, how
Speaker 1: how do we become motivated in these different atmospheres, um,
Speaker 1: of different environments. And it's interesting to note that Lady
Speaker 1: Gaga actually enters this equation, yes, and doesn't she always
Speaker 1: I guess she does. She's always interjecting herself in these
Speaker 1: philosophical discussions, right, um, And we're there was we're of
Speaker 1: course referring to m psychology today blog post or or
Speaker 1: article I think blog post slash article um that was
Speaker 1: talking about basically pitting Lady Gaga against the Secret because
Speaker 1: the lady guy got had this thing about where she
Speaker 1: could see the awards, and she doesn't put them on
Speaker 1: the wall. She like throws them in the closet or something. Right,
Speaker 1: she sort of bragged, well, I don't know if you
Speaker 1: say bragg but her advice to an up and comer was, Hey,
Speaker 1: don't don't get all excited about whatever awards you've been given.
Speaker 1: I just pretend like they don't exist anymore. Taken down
Speaker 1: and I take it down to the studs, and then
Speaker 1: I have to get those awards again. Yes, and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: And the name of this article was the motivatical wisdom
Speaker 1: of Lady Gaga versus the Secret. And we'll have to
Speaker 1: throw a link in the blog post we do with this,
Speaker 1: but it concerns Sigmund Freud's idea of the irrational lobido,
Speaker 1: the part of our psyche that lives for immediate pleasure,
Speaker 1: all right, which actually ties into a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of our discussions here about procrastination, because it's about,
Speaker 1: you know, it's all about like this present us and
Speaker 1: then dealing with a future us that yeah, feed it
Speaker 1: and give its its instant gratification. Right, so um two.
Speaker 1: In order to accomplish this immediate pleasure, the libido uses
Speaker 1: what Freud termed a primary process, where it produces a
Speaker 1: memory image of an object needed for gratification in order
Speaker 1: to reduce the frustration of not having been gratified yet.
Speaker 1: So basically this would be like an example of this
Speaker 1: would be like if someone was like, man, I sure,
Speaker 1: I sure, wish I was a rock star. That looks great,
Speaker 1: and then you imagine yourself as a rock star and
Speaker 1: you just sort of set there and you're you know,
Speaker 1: your high school class or your or behind the wheel,
Speaker 1: and you sort of stay up, you're off into the
Speaker 1: distance and see yourself as a rock star, and in
Speaker 1: doing that, scratch that itch and then the itches scratched
Speaker 1: and you're like, okay, I'm good. I'm good. Now back
Speaker 1: to what I is doing. Okay, So this is the
Speaker 1: fantasy part of it, right, And this is this is
Speaker 1: how it relates to the secret. Yeah, we imagine everything
Speaker 1: from revenge to accomplishment, you know, whatever it may be,
Speaker 1: without doing anything, and we received the pleasure from the
Speaker 1: image alone, and then of course the secret. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, can we say what the secret is? Can
Speaker 1: we be sued for revealing the secret? I don't think
Speaker 1: it's a secret anymore. Yeah, I mean, has that red
Speaker 1: stamp on the it's been on Oprah and and all
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff. I'm sure a lot of people are
Speaker 1: are familiar with the concept at least right sort of
Speaker 1: this law of attraction. It's like you imagine it and
Speaker 1: make it real. You put out your your wish for
Speaker 1: this thing, and then you put that out into the
Speaker 1: universe and that that I know I'm probably massacring this,
Speaker 1: but I will admit that I have not read this book.
Speaker 1: So this is my piecemeal understanding of it. Is that
Speaker 1: once you put out that wish, that energy, then that
Speaker 1: is going to attract uh, your wish fulfillment so that
Speaker 1: it comes to you whatever it is. I have. I
Speaker 1: have read other things that to make similar arguments for
Speaker 1: this idea of manifesting what you want in your life.
Speaker 1: And some of these even take a sort of quasi
Speaker 1: quantum physics approach by you know, sort of like looking
Speaker 1: at the idea that all possible realities exist somewhere. So
Speaker 1: if you were to focus, you could force yourself into
Speaker 1: the physicals, into into the alternate realities where the desired
Speaker 1: events have transpired. So there's a reality where I'm a
Speaker 1: rock star. There's a reality where I clean up after
Speaker 1: rock stars, and all I need to do is focus
Speaker 1: hard enough, and I can move my current self toward
Speaker 1: more towards the rock star persona than the rock star
Speaker 1: cleaner upper. Okay, So there's a problem with this though,
Speaker 1: if you're actually motivated to fulfill it for yourself, right,
Speaker 1: And that's where Lady Gaga comes in, because she's relying
Speaker 1: on an expectation that she has that's a framework based
Speaker 1: on her past experiences. So she already knows what it
Speaker 1: takes to get to this goal and fulfill it, right,
Speaker 1: and only that she's created a lack right because mentally
Speaker 1: she has removed those awards, those accolades from from her um,
Speaker 1: from from becoming a symbol that is already fulfilling. So
Speaker 1: she's her desire. I think it's like like, man, I
Speaker 1: wish I was famous and successful, and then she looks
Speaker 1: up at the awards and she goes, there, I am,
Speaker 1: and then like then they accomplished, and so she takes
Speaker 1: them off, and she's like, oh, that was accomplished and
Speaker 1: famous and all that. And then she looks up in
Speaker 1: the walls empty and she makes a little frowny face. Nothingness, right,
Speaker 1: and then she starts to levitate like a zen Buddhist. Um.
Speaker 1: I made that part of so over the last decade
Speaker 1: is this article lays out there was a study at
Speaker 1: a New York university and they took they used three
Speaker 1: different groups to study which of these approaches is more successful.
Speaker 1: Here's a fantasy group that essentially falls the path of
Speaker 1: the secret here and they imagine what they have already
Speaker 1: desired having come true, all right. And then there's a
Speaker 1: control group that's the baseline people just do, left to
Speaker 1: their own devices. And then there is a mental contrasting group,
Speaker 1: and this is uh, this is like the Lady Gaga
Speaker 1: model where they mentally contrast by fantasizing about what they
Speaker 1: want and then immediately afterwards they compare where they are
Speaker 1: now with where they want to be. So this would
Speaker 1: be the whole like, you know, fantasizing about being a
Speaker 1: rock star and be like, oh, that's that's kind of
Speaker 1: cool in my head, and then you you, you know,
Speaker 1: you suddenly you're back in reality and you're like, whoa,
Speaker 1: I'm not a rock star at all, and then perhaps
Speaker 1: imagining the steps that would take you to that desired reality.
Speaker 1: So anyway, the results show that the Lady Gaga styled
Speaker 1: mental contrasting always does a better job than than pure fantasy.
Speaker 1: And so the suggestion here is that the secret mode
Speaker 1: is uh is kind of flawed. I just love the
Speaker 1: fact that that someone took Lady Gaga's quote about taking
Speaker 1: our platinum records down and and it's something like she
Speaker 1: said something like a pretenda, haven't sold a damn one
Speaker 1: and I've got to do it all again. Like they
Speaker 1: took that quote and then they app aied it to
Speaker 1: a study along with the Secret this book the Secret,
Speaker 1: and bore this out. I think that's pretty great. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean that's how you do it. You get this,
Speaker 1: You take the science, you throw Lady Gaga or a
Speaker 1: really strong verb in the headline, and you've got yourself
Speaker 1: the science news story. He's got legs. Yeah. Um. In
Speaker 1: a minute right here after the break, we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about whether or not there's a unifying theory of
Speaker 1: procrastination of why we do it, and we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about how you can overcome your procrastinate and ways.
Speaker 1: This podcast is brought to you by Intel, the sponsors
Speaker 1: of Tomorrow and the Discovery Channel. At Intel, we believe
Speaker 1: curiosity is the spark which drives innovation. Join us at
Speaker 1: curiosity dot com and explore the answers to life's questions.
Speaker 1: All right, and we're back. Are you ready to listen
Speaker 1: to the rest of this podcast or have you been
Speaker 1: putting it off? No? No, you have to finish this podcast.
Speaker 1: We're halfway through. It's like that I'm gonna go grab
Speaker 1: some water. It's like that quote from a beeth where
Speaker 1: he's wading through the blood and he's like to to
Speaker 1: turn back. Now, I'd have to wage just through just
Speaker 1: as much blood to see it all the way through.
Speaker 1: So that's where we are. We've got to wait through
Speaker 1: the rest of the blood. Wow, you're dark man. Yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: I like it. So So yeah, we're talking about procrastination
Speaker 1: and is there a unified theory because we we we
Speaker 1: discussed that. We discussed humor in a recent podcast, and
Speaker 1: we talked about a unified theory of humor where they say,
Speaker 1: what is humor? Well, here you go, cultivate it out
Speaker 1: in like a few different steps complete explanation. Can we
Speaker 1: do that with procrastination in theory? We can? Right, okay?
Speaker 1: And so the temporal motivation theory posits that motivation can
Speaker 1: be understood by the effects of expectancy and value, which
Speaker 1: could be weakened by delay, with differences for rewards and losses.
Speaker 1: So what we're talking about here is motivation equals expectation
Speaker 1: times value over impulsiveness times delay. So if you plug
Speaker 1: in the conditions of a scenario and the denominator that
Speaker 1: that impulse in the face of gratification, right, the what
Speaker 1: would be the underneath expectation of value? If that is
Speaker 1: weaker than the proposition of a good chance of a
Speaker 1: successful outcome, then you are less likely to procrastinate, which
Speaker 1: sort of feels like a dumb moment, you know, like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, okay, of course, because you would think, right
Speaker 1: that if it was a good chance that you were
Speaker 1: going to do great at this task, um, and you
Speaker 1: know you you didn't have really a good reason to
Speaker 1: put it off, that you would get it done. So
Speaker 1: that's where I kind of that's the point where I say, well,
Speaker 1: that makes sense, But we're crazy humans and we're sort
Speaker 1: of flawed in our logic, and sometimes we do things
Speaker 1: to to really mess ourselves up, you know, we self
Speaker 1: deceive or we make something bigger than it is, and
Speaker 1: so we don't accomplish something because we even though we're
Speaker 1: excited about it. Right, That's that's the problem I have
Speaker 1: with T M. T Okay. But but to break it
Speaker 1: down again, it's basically we're more likely to do the
Speaker 1: things that we expect succeed at, and we typically discount
Speaker 1: future rewards in favor of the media rewards, which comes
Speaker 1: down again too. I can have fun now versus acing
Speaker 1: that test tomorrow, or I can not have fun now,
Speaker 1: and as the test tomorrow, which is more real, I'm
Speaker 1: not having fun now and I want the fun, right Yeah.
Speaker 1: And this instantly brings to mind something called Ulysses packed,
Speaker 1: which is a great to refresh. Of course, it's the
Speaker 1: myth of Ulysses. You know, um who's uh uh you know,
Speaker 1: he's he's he's on the ship. He's sailing right, and
Speaker 1: he knows the sirens are coming up, the beautiful naked
Speaker 1: ladies that crawl out of the singing to him, and
Speaker 1: they will lure everyone to their deaths. They will sing
Speaker 1: so beautifully and they will be so absolutely naked that
Speaker 1: all the men on the ship will climb into the
Speaker 1: water and drown. So Ulysses is a he's a pretty
Speaker 1: smart cat. So he's like, this is what you're gonna do.
Speaker 1: You're going to tie me to this mass and time
Speaker 1: me so tight that when the naked sirens starts singing um,
Speaker 1: future me won't be able to do anything about it
Speaker 1: because past me is brilliant. So it's like it's past
Speaker 1: Ulysses versus future Ulyssenes, and he binds future Ulysses, and
Speaker 1: then when future Ulysses rolls around, he's like, oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: somebody in timey I want to go drown with these
Speaker 1: naked ladies, and and past Ulysses like ha ha, I
Speaker 1: got you. Yeah, well, And I think what's interesting about
Speaker 1: this is that he's got the long term goal in mind, right.
Speaker 1: So that's really when we were talking about this a
Speaker 1: little bit more about how you do vanquished procrastinating, but
Speaker 1: that's a really big important part of that. He's got
Speaker 1: the past experience. You're drawn and he says, naked ladies,
Speaker 1: you have seen him before. My big goals to get
Speaker 1: past you guys and live It reminds me, did you
Speaker 1: ever watch Strangers with Candy? Oh? Yes, do you remember Jazz? Oh?
Speaker 1: Who's jazz Jazzy was the like the old jazz singer
Speaker 1: band teacher that was in one episode, But he would um.
Speaker 1: He was really attracted to the ladies, so he had
Speaker 1: to put a post it note on his hand that
Speaker 1: says touch the girls, Jazzy. And so there's the same
Speaker 1: way he's like reaching after a girl's hinder and uh,
Speaker 1: and then he yeah, and then he sees the post
Speaker 1: it note and he goes, ah, you're too fast for me,
Speaker 1: and uh. It's hilarious. But but it's a sound like
Speaker 1: the opposite of the Ulysses. No, No, it's the it's
Speaker 1: exactly the same. It's past Jazzy um influencing future Jazzy
Speaker 1: and saying, hey, future Jazzy, don't do anything I see
Speaker 1: I see the person always Yeah. But so Ulysses packed
Speaker 1: is Uh, it's sort of the same thing, and it's
Speaker 1: the eye. It comes back around to that idea that
Speaker 1: we're always going to go for the the immediate pleasure
Speaker 1: is is gonna appeal to us more than the distant pleasure,
Speaker 1: even if the immediate pleasure is something as fleeting as
Speaker 1: candy is good versus the distant pleasure is is living
Speaker 1: longer or being healthier. You know, you can tie this
Speaker 1: into any number of addiction scenarios. Well, and you were
Speaker 1: telling me about I think the ultimate example of this
Speaker 1: that you heard on radio Lab. Yeah, this is it
Speaker 1: was the it was where all right? So what can
Speaker 1: go up against this can out? What can defeat the
Speaker 1: immediate desire for pleasure? If immediate, if future greater pleasure
Speaker 1: won't do it. And the thing is, you need something
Speaker 1: that you have in the present really strong. So is
Speaker 1: a really strong emotional an outcome that's so repulsive that
Speaker 1: you would be completely shamed with yourself. This Yeah, this
Speaker 1: lady is trying to quit smoking. So she decided she
Speaker 1: made a pack with herself ironclad pat If I smoke,
Speaker 1: I will donate a whole bunch of money to the
Speaker 1: K five thousand dollars. And she was a you know,
Speaker 1: she was a big civil rights supporter. So this was
Speaker 1: just against every The idea of doing this stood against
Speaker 1: everything she'd believe. It would be like the the the
Speaker 1: ultimate like not only just humiliating, but she would be
Speaker 1: supporting um a you know, a racist group that that
Speaker 1: she has despises. So her current her her current shame,
Speaker 1: her current displeasure. Uh, you know, however you want to
Speaker 1: frame it, her her current um adversarial position to the
Speaker 1: to the KKK way outpowered the present urged smoke because
Speaker 1: she would say, like she'd wake up in the morning
Speaker 1: and she'd reach for a cigarette and she'd think, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I can't, but I cannot do this. Yeah, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like future It's like a future Jazz was calling
Speaker 1: up President Jazz, and President Jazz's like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: Future Jazz, if you were here, maybe you could talk
Speaker 1: me out of this, but you're not who And then
Speaker 1: in the future Jazz is like, well, who's there who
Speaker 1: can actually talk to talk to him? And he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'll call up his revulsion to this, you know, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's all Jazzy needed. So it's pretty cool. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think what's interesting about that again is just
Speaker 1: going to this idea of like, how do you really
Speaker 1: overcome procrastinating because we're so good at self deception again,
Speaker 1: and this is from a sideblog, how to avoid procrastinating?
Speaker 1: I think concretely, and there's there's a clue right there.
Speaker 1: You have to be uh less abstract and more concrete
Speaker 1: about the decisions that you make and also about how
Speaker 1: much time it's going to take to do anything. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Hofstatter's law rights law that says that anything we think
Speaker 1: about doing is basically gonna take longer than we think
Speaker 1: it will. Even if you take into account Offsetter saw,
Speaker 1: it's still going to take longer, like there's no recursive
Speaker 1: quality to it. Yeah, so we end up with it's
Speaker 1: called it, you know, we end up with the planning fallacy.
Speaker 1: But we plan to do something and we're never gonna
Speaker 1: kind it just right. You can. You can pencil in
Speaker 1: eight different things to do on your vacation day or
Speaker 1: in your work day, and you're not going to get
Speaker 1: to all of them because everything takes longer than it
Speaker 1: should or you're not factoring in travel between the things,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, yeah, alright, So what are your tips here?
Speaker 1: My tipsy not that we normally give tips, but you know,
Speaker 1: we were researching this we thought we'd share it with
Speaker 1: you guys. Okay, So I ran across a number of
Speaker 1: different suggested ideas. One is um the idea of setting
Speaker 1: up dummy goals like don't set up big goals, but
Speaker 1: set up dummy goals. Yeah, So it's like and and
Speaker 1: part of this, uh, the source of treating this on compared, uh,
Speaker 1: tied it into the paradox of hedonism, which is, if
Speaker 1: you seek happiness or pleasure, you won't find it. But
Speaker 1: if you set a goal of, say winning a karaoke challenge,
Speaker 1: you might just have fun trying to achieve that. So
Speaker 1: in a way, it's kind of like shoot for a
Speaker 1: lower star and you just you know, And it's kind
Speaker 1: of like setting more realistic goals, but also setting dummy
Speaker 1: goals along your your towards your ultimate goal. All right,
Speaker 1: so there's there's this idea of structured procrastination. You can't
Speaker 1: defeat procrastination, be constructured. You can turn one negative quality
Speaker 1: against the other. And this comes from John John Perry,
Speaker 1: a professor of philosophy at Stanford University, and it basically
Speaker 1: comes down, all right, procrastinators have excellent self deceptive skills.
Speaker 1: So so you have this to do list, and like
Speaker 1: we're saying, one of the big things about procrastination, we
Speaker 1: all have a to do list and we never end
Speaker 1: up finishing it. So we're always unhappy because we have
Speaker 1: an incomplete to do list. So he's saying, all right,
Speaker 1: you have your on this to do list, move an
Speaker 1: item that you need to accomplish further down the list, Like,
Speaker 1: so your number one goal for the day is to
Speaker 1: actually set down and do your taxes, and then you
Speaker 1: have things like, um, clean out the dishwasher, and um,
Speaker 1: you know, feed the cat, not the floor. All right,
Speaker 1: so we've all been in this position. You really don't
Speaker 1: want to do your taxes, so you find yourself achieving
Speaker 1: these going after these other achievable goals like who like,
Speaker 1: doing my taxes gonna take forever. I'm not really certain
Speaker 1: about my ability to do it right. But I can
Speaker 1: wash that floor, I can feed that cat, I can
Speaker 1: I can unload that dishwasher. Um at a at a
Speaker 1: perfect level of of success. So you end up doing
Speaker 1: those things you can you feel you can succeed at better.
Speaker 1: But anyway, the structured procrastination idea is to not put
Speaker 1: the taxes at the top of the list. Put it
Speaker 1: a little further down, and then you will end up
Speaker 1: skipping the other things. She'll be thinking like, I don't
Speaker 1: want to just unload the dishwasher. I hate unloading the dishwasher.
Speaker 1: What's up? What's the else is on my list? Oh, taxes.
Speaker 1: I'll go to my taxes so I don't have to
Speaker 1: do the unload the dishwasher. And I cannot say I
Speaker 1: really buy this side. Just about to say that seems like,
Speaker 1: you know, you're trying to fool yourself into in your
Speaker 1: taxes and you're a little bit more wildly than that.
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, I feel like I'm too smart for
Speaker 1: for that particular well, even if I'm the one pulling
Speaker 1: it off. Also say that doing those the little tasks
Speaker 1: always makes me feel like I'm reading my brain for
Speaker 1: accomplishing the bigger and wheeldy tasks like clearing the slate.
Speaker 1: It's kind of printing, printing the field of my mind,
Speaker 1: and you know, so to speak, so that when I
Speaker 1: sit down and and you know, I have actually like
Speaker 1: no other recourse now because I've exhausted my list and
Speaker 1: I sit down and I have to do it. It's
Speaker 1: like in a video game, so you're fighting three lesser
Speaker 1: opponents in one like stronger opponent. It's the idea of
Speaker 1: picking off the three smaller ones so they're not nipping
Speaker 1: at your heels when you're trying to tackle the really
Speaker 1: dangerous exactly. And I don't know if that works for
Speaker 1: other people, but you know, it's certainly I mean, it
Speaker 1: is procrastinating, but it's helpful procrastinating if you actually follow
Speaker 1: through with the final thing that you're wanting to do, right.
Speaker 1: I do like the feeling, like if if I'm working
Speaker 1: on stuff for there are a lot of different tasks
Speaker 1: that fill our days. Here it how stuff works. I mean,
Speaker 1: it ranges from really cool stuff like podcast or writing
Speaker 1: an article to more mount mundane things like picking out
Speaker 1: which blocks to put on the homepage or you know,
Speaker 1: the things of this nature. And I feel like, even
Speaker 1: though those smaller tasks are not necessarily very skill intensive,
Speaker 1: I like the feeling of having the the day cleared
Speaker 1: to tackle one one challenging and or fulfilling task. And
Speaker 1: I think you'll see to your pattern there, because a
Speaker 1: lot of people will wait until that task, or rather
Speaker 1: wait until later in the week to fulfill that big task.
Speaker 1: So I've gotten all the other stuff done. Um, okay,
Speaker 1: let's talk about animals. Is it is there a possibility
Speaker 1: that animals procrastinate? I don't think so. I mean, um,
Speaker 1: anybody who has pets tell me when you have ever
Speaker 1: seen your cat or dog procrastinate, because generally they have
Speaker 1: certain needs and when those needs arise, they will take
Speaker 1: care of them. If the catter dog is hungry, it
Speaker 1: will eat or beg for food. If if it needs
Speaker 1: to use the restroom, uh, it will at least try
Speaker 1: to go outside or go to its required place of toiletry.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, you don't see a lot of procrastinating,
Speaker 1: but how would you Any behavior? Is is hard to report,
Speaker 1: right right, because the other big thing is they don't
Speaker 1: have a lot else to do. I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: like they have a lot of long term goals. Dogs
Speaker 1: and cats or any animal really. Even the really curriculan
Speaker 1: task that the various animals engage in, such as like
Speaker 1: long distance travel or some sort of like complex or taxing,
Speaker 1: um mating ritual, they're just gonna do them. There's no
Speaker 1: putting it off. It's just that's what you do that.
Speaker 1: And they don't have any any additional tasks, Like they're
Speaker 1: not wanting to become rock stars or write books, or
Speaker 1: or do their taxes or anything of this nature. Well,
Speaker 1: we don't know their hearts. Maybe they do want to
Speaker 1: become rock stars. But I will say this, uh Slate
Speaker 1: dot com again, the article Procrastinators Without Borders talks about
Speaker 1: lab induced procrastination in animals, so it's really important to
Speaker 1: talk about that lab induced. James emaz your he's a
Speaker 1: psychology professor, Sir. He was studying the percussion procrastination habits
Speaker 1: of pigeons, and he trained them to peck illuminated keys
Speaker 1: at regular intervals in exchange for a tiny worriage and
Speaker 1: bird feed at the end of their work day. And
Speaker 1: now all of this is crazy. The wage was higher
Speaker 1: for the birds that worked most consistently and didn't take
Speaker 1: any breaks, and the end pigeons turned out to be
Speaker 1: such a layabouts that even a fourfold increase in food
Speaker 1: could not incite them to peck in a timely fashion.
Speaker 1: This may be the most ridiculous thing I've I've ever heard.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's it's insightful. Don't get me wrong.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying this is like wasted science or you know,
Speaker 1: shrimp on a treadmill or anything like that. Did you
Speaker 1: say shrimp on a treadmill? Oh? Yeah, it's the latest
Speaker 1: thing making the news is that, you know, it's like
Speaker 1: certain groups politically love to rail against scientific studies that
Speaker 1: they that they judge as ridiculous and reformless. So they'll
Speaker 1: pick out one little aspect of a study, such as
Speaker 1: shrimp on a treadmill, and then they'll go nuts over
Speaker 1: money university or oh, tax money is paying for shrimp
Speaker 1: on a treadmill, Whether tax money is actually involved, or
Speaker 1: if the study involves a whole lot more besides shrimp
Speaker 1: on a treadmill, but at any rate, um the idea
Speaker 1: of teaching teaching pigeons to progress, and I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's such an artificial scenario here, because you're taking an
Speaker 1: animal and then you're imposing this very human giving them
Speaker 1: a wage and a task, and then then you're judging
Speaker 1: them on their ability to on how steadfast they are
Speaker 1: with this, with this stupid job you just gave them. Well, see,
Speaker 1: if anything, I think that it just can like it
Speaker 1: points to the fact that procrastination is inherently a human
Speaker 1: invention and it's probably just a clause that we have
Speaker 1: in the invention of time, right. Yeah, Well, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like we've we've given these pigeons some stupid things
Speaker 1: to do and then they're not that really into doing them.
Speaker 1: We give ourselves so many stupid or unachievable things to do,
Speaker 1: and then we have a hard time rallying to go
Speaker 1: do them. So it's it's it's actually a very telling study,
Speaker 1: I think. Yeah, that's what I think. It's just it
Speaker 1: just keep pointing back to the humans, not the animals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like why like why did you invent taxes? Why why
Speaker 1: do you have these taxes to do every year? Because
Speaker 1: you're you know, it's like like that's the same system.
Speaker 1: We have invented it, and we're not that into it.
Speaker 1: So we by inventing complex tasks and long term goals,
Speaker 1: we invented procrastination because it's just doesn't really gell naturally
Speaker 1: with the brain that we've evolved. Well, you know, if
Speaker 1: you're following the matrix uh theory, then it's just one
Speaker 1: of the ways to occupy ourselves, right, so that we
Speaker 1: just don't all die in the vine. We need something
Speaker 1: to get our tackles raised up. About speaking of tackles,
Speaker 1: I got a couple of emails from folks who commented
Speaker 1: on our parasomnia podcast. This is one about the crazy
Speaker 1: sleep and extremes. Yeah, extreme sleep, And I think at
Speaker 1: one point you had mentioned that, you know, people should
Speaker 1: you know, contact their doctor and get this sort of
Speaker 1: medication that might need. And I made the remark which
Speaker 1: was sort of out of context. Um that I think
Speaker 1: I said something like I'm not want to seek sleep aids.
Speaker 1: And so this raised the hackles of a couple of
Speaker 1: people because they interpreted that is is me saying like,
Speaker 1: I don't condone sleep aids or medications. So I just
Speaker 1: want to make a clarification that I do condone medication
Speaker 1: in sleep aids. Okay. Um, I think that I had
Speaker 1: said that I was trying to remember this because we
Speaker 1: had had a previous conversation and I had said something
Speaker 1: like I don't usually use sleep aid but I probably should. Right,
Speaker 1: So that's the out of context part well. And then
Speaker 1: of course the added layer that like some sleep there
Speaker 1: are certainly sleep problems, and then there are sleep problems,
Speaker 1: and right, I don't think either of us um have
Speaker 1: had to really deal with actually like real hardcore sleep
Speaker 1: problems like oh no, I mean some people, yeah, they
Speaker 1: are completely you know, dogged by insomnia for four or
Speaker 1: five nights in a row. So and obviously there's you know,
Speaker 1: at any point, whatever someone's personal choices to make with
Speaker 1: a step medication is you know that throwing choice, and
Speaker 1: they should pursue that um. And I should also mention,
Speaker 1: on a lighter note, there have been times where we
Speaker 1: have said Richard Attenborough when we, of course meet David Attenburgh.
Speaker 1: David Attenborough has the naturalist who has given us so
Speaker 1: many great um um you know it shows up on
Speaker 1: BBC and Discovery, so much great narration, so much messing
Speaker 1: around with animals. His brother Richard basically, Sir Richard, sir well,
Speaker 1: all right, sir Richard. But basically, I mean, for all
Speaker 1: my money, all he's done is he got eaten by
Speaker 1: a dinosaur once, so there you go. Or maybe he didn't.
Speaker 1: He didn't get eaten by a dinosaur in the movie
Speaker 1: just in the book. M okay. Anyway, David Attenburgh, he's
Speaker 1: the one we like. Ye. So there you have it.
Speaker 1: If you would like to keep up with us, find
Speaker 1: out what we're blogging about, what we're podcasting about, what
Speaker 1: we're thinking about podcasting about, you can find us on
Speaker 1: Twitter and Facebook. We are blow the mind on both
Speaker 1: of those. One word yeah, and I'm very curious to
Speaker 1: know what your favorite procrastinating activity is. You know what
Speaker 1: do you do to to put off the inevitable? So
Speaker 1: listening to this podcast, keep it up? Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: So feel free to share with us at blow the
Speaker 1: Mind at how stuff works dot com. Be sure to
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Speaker 1: Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
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