Speaker 1: It is in the getting on with life that makes
Speaker 1: our lives, and that procrastination, in a very real sense,
Speaker 1: is an existential issue of not getting on with life itself.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 1: ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Tim Sitchell. Tim is
Speaker 1: an associate professor of psychology at Carlton University in Ottawa
Speaker 1: and has garnered an international reputation for his scholarship and
Speaker 1: a global audience for his I Procrastinate podcast. He also
Speaker 1: writes a popular Don't Delay blog with psychology today. His
Speaker 1: new book is Solving the Procrastination Puzzle, A Concise Guide
Speaker 1: to Strategies for Change. Hi Tim, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hi Eric, thanks for having me. I am really excited
Speaker 1: to have you on. Your book is called Solving the
Speaker 1: Procrastination Puzzle, A Concise Guide to Strategies for Change. You
Speaker 1: actually have a couple of books, but this is the
Speaker 1: one that that I read to focus on for the interview.
Speaker 1: And I know procrastination runs rampant you everywhere, and I
Speaker 1: know our listeners it's something they also are interested in.
Speaker 1: So I'm really looking forward to getting into that. But
Speaker 1: let's start like we normally do, with the parable. There
Speaker 1: is a grandfather who's talking with his granddaughter and he says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. What is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and she
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second and looks up at
Speaker 1: her grandfather and she says, well, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed so I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. Well. I've been looking forward to joining
Speaker 1: you on the podcast simply because I like the parable
Speaker 1: so much. I read it and i've I've enjoyed parables
Speaker 1: since I was a young man, especially Zen Collins and
Speaker 1: things like that. And I see the same sort of
Speaker 1: wisdom in that parable. And it fits my research so
Speaker 1: much in the sense that even the most recent research
Speaker 1: we've seen come out of Germany using functional magnetic residence
Speaker 1: imaging on the difference in brains between those who procrastinating
Speaker 1: those who don't, we see that the amygdala is larger. Uh,
Speaker 1: And it's about fear. It's very true in terms of
Speaker 1: understanding procrastination. So it fits with my research well. And
Speaker 1: in my own life, of course, I recognize it the
Speaker 1: habits that I developed, the things that I feed, the things,
Speaker 1: the things that I think make me happy but don't.
Speaker 1: When I feed those, they become habits and difficult to break.
Speaker 1: So I resonate to that both personally and professionally. That's wonderful.
Speaker 1: So do you have any parables of your own that
Speaker 1: are particularly important to you. Besides the wolf, parable that
Speaker 1: come to mind that might speak to procrastination, Yes, for sure.
Speaker 1: Act it's a zend story and it's the young novice
Speaker 1: who lists the Master and he said, Master, I've been
Speaker 1: doing my meditation and 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 call 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's because it's
Speaker 1: been a while since I wrote that book. Uh, And
Speaker 1: and I stand by that. It's it's good that I
Speaker 1: don't kind of craze to go who I wrote that. No,
Speaker 1: it is a sustinct summary of what keeps me interested
Speaker 1: in procrastination. There's so many layers to my understanding, you know.
Speaker 1: I started briefly with thinking about the latest German study
Speaker 1: that was neurophysiological, you know, based on understanding brain differences.
Speaker 1: But like all explanations, we can take it at different
Speaker 1: levels of analysis, and for me, the most profound one
Speaker 1: is this notion of getting on with our own lives
Speaker 1: because the one non renewable resource we have in our
Speaker 1: lives is time. You and I don't know how much
Speaker 1: we're gonna have, but we know we can't make any
Speaker 1: more of it. And I think that's probably why in
Speaker 1: every great world religion there's some notion of the sin
Speaker 1: of sloth, because you can't waste this thing called life.
Speaker 1: And with procrastination, you know, for me, it's not a
Speaker 1: matter of becoming some uber productive earning machine, but a
Speaker 1: person who lives the life here, she wants to achieves
Speaker 1: the goals that he or she wants to achieve, and
Speaker 1: doesn't kind of stew on his own juices in the
Speaker 1: guilt and shame that's so commonly defines procrastination. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's such a big piece of it. I often
Speaker 1: talk with people about when we know there's things that
Speaker 1: we want to slash need to do and we don't
Speaker 1: do them, it feels awful. And I think one of
Speaker 1: the most important skills we can build in life is
Speaker 1: to sort of make promises to ourselves and then keep
Speaker 1: those promises. And procrastination stands kind of right in the
Speaker 1: middle of that. And you actually say that there's some
Speaker 1: research that shows that procrastination actually compromises our health in
Speaker 1: two different ways. Could you share a little bit about that. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm working on another paper with my colleague at the
Speaker 1: University of Sheffield right now. We're reanalyzing some of our
Speaker 1: data and the first path is a direct path with
Speaker 1: stress across theination causes more stress, and of course we
Speaker 1: know there are many mechanisms in terms of our physical
Speaker 1: health how that undermines our immune system and creates uh
Speaker 1: less resistance to all sorts of illness. So procrastination stress
Speaker 1: route to an effect on our health. But there's also
Speaker 1: an effect in terms of fewer wellness behaviors and treatment delay,
Speaker 1: more treatment delay, So procrastination has indirect effects. So we
Speaker 1: have this this this direct route through stress, but there
Speaker 1: are two interesting indirect roots that procrastination has an effect
Speaker 1: on our health, and that's from fewer wellness behaviors. So
Speaker 1: we don't sleep is when we think we should be sleeping,
Speaker 1: don't exercise, don't eat well. These are typical wellness behaviors,
Speaker 1: and sleep is interesting on its own. I have colleagues
Speaker 1: in at Youtubact University in the Netherlands who've been studying
Speaker 1: sleep procrastination in fact. And the other indirect route is
Speaker 1: treatment delay. Oh, I'll get look look after that later,
Speaker 1: and that has significant effects, and I'm interested in studying that,
Speaker 1: especially in older adults when things are more fragile in
Speaker 1: terms of you need to have fixed things looked in
Speaker 1: sooner than later. So we have all these roots to
Speaker 1: the connection between procrastination in our health. The one we
Speaker 1: have the most research evidence on is the direct effects
Speaker 1: of stress. But then there's the indirect effects of fewer
Speaker 1: wellness behaviors and treatment delay. Yeah. Actually makes me think
Speaker 1: of a story. And I'm not sure that I can
Speaker 1: blame this on having better control of procrastination or just
Speaker 1: pure terror. But this week I got a call from
Speaker 1: my dentist. I had been in last week to get
Speaker 1: some work done and they called and said, we see
Speaker 1: something in your X rays and we think we think
Speaker 1: it might be cancer. And I thought, oh my god.
Speaker 1: So I called oral surgeons until I could find one
Speaker 1: that would see me like now, and uh when over
Speaker 1: got it looked at and it was absolutely nothing. But again,
Speaker 1: I think that was more driven by fear than not
Speaker 1: being a procrastinator. But it it just made me think
Speaker 1: of that. When you're telling that story about delaying going
Speaker 1: to the doctor. That was one time I was not delaying.
Speaker 1: But you know there are people who get news like
Speaker 1: that and do put it off. It's quite incredible. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Now I just was like, I don't I don't want
Speaker 1: to live for two weeks worrying about this, like because
Speaker 1: I know I will, you know anyway. So there's lots
Speaker 1: of things that cause procrastination, but at the heart of it,
Speaker 1: you say that one of the biggest things is that
Speaker 1: it's a form of self regulation failure. Can you explain that? Sure,
Speaker 1: so many people think procrastination is a time management issue,
Speaker 1: and although time management is a necessary skill in our lives,
Speaker 1: it's not sufficient because you've come to the point in
Speaker 1: time where you say, okay, this is the project. I said,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna 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 rid of the task,
Speaker 1: for that moment, you feel better. So you get this
Speaker 1: negative reinforcement that creates a habit. So procrastinations an emotion
Speaker 1: focused coping habit, and it's a problem of self regulation.
Speaker 1: In the same way that eating at the second row
Speaker 1: of cookies in the bag isn't going to make you
Speaker 1: feel better, Putting off these things isn't gonna make you
Speaker 1: feel better. We have the naive belief is this is
Speaker 1: what we need right now. Present self believes he or
Speaker 1: she will benefit future self pays the price, right. And
Speaker 1: I think what's so tricky about procrastination or cookies or
Speaker 1: drugs or all these different things is if they didn't
Speaker 1: work at all, it would be easy to see through them.
Speaker 1: But they work for like a minute or five minutes
Speaker 1: or ten minutes. They've got an initial okay, that feels better,
Speaker 1: and then it fades and we pay more later. And
Speaker 1: you've got a phrase that you use related of this
Speaker 1: um that that people can use, and you say it's
Speaker 1: I won't give in to feel good and recognizing that
Speaker 1: feeling good now comes at a cost, right, it does
Speaker 1: have this immediate fix, albeit really specious because even especially
Speaker 1: with procrastination and eating more so than the other alcohol
Speaker 1: and drugs work a bit longer because they can actually
Speaker 1: do a bit of mood altering. Right, But the food
Speaker 1: and the procrastination, a part of you is quite aware
Speaker 1: that the guilt almost the surfaces immediately, especially for some
Speaker 1: of us. Yeah, one of my favorite ways to think
Speaker 1: about this and I don't I would imagine being as
Speaker 1: involved as you are and procrastination. You have seen um
Speaker 1: the posts he did in the Ted Talk but um,
Speaker 1: Tim Urban with the blog weight but why and um.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just so many brilliant things in there,
Speaker 1: but the one that struck me probably the most was
Speaker 1: this idea of the dark playground. And the dark playground was,
Speaker 1: all right, we've decided that we're going to crastinate again.
Speaker 1: It's not usually that conscious of a thought, I'm going
Speaker 1: to procrastinate, but we've decided we're going to do something else, right,
Speaker 1: but we don't really enjoy it. 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 you 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: gollwooz 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: contrasts that with implementation intentions, which is the how how
Speaker 1: are you going to actually implement this goal? Because goal
Speaker 1: intentions don't have a lot of more to motivational force,
Speaker 1: but an implementation intention, which they've shown over and over
Speaker 1: again in their research, makes it more likely than I'm
Speaker 1: going to act. And the classic implementation intention, in terms
Speaker 1: of what they've found in research, is most effective, is
Speaker 1: a conditional statement if then, or as I like to say,
Speaker 1: when then, when this happens, then I do that. And
Speaker 1: when we set things up like that, what happens is
Speaker 1: we put the queue for action in the environment. So,
Speaker 1: for example, I want to speaking of dentists as you
Speaker 1: did a few moments ago, I wasn't flossing my teeth
Speaker 1: enough and it was leading to some gum disease at
Speaker 1: the beginning of it, at least that my dentist would say,
Speaker 1: you 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 teeth quite regularly, really
Speaker 1: regular day, every day, twice a day, and so I
Speaker 1: just made the intention when I pick up my toothbrush,
Speaker 1: I'll put the floss on the counter, and when I
Speaker 1: put my toothbrush down, I will pick up the floss
Speaker 1: when then, and the most important one is really just
Speaker 1: getting the floss onto the counter, because sometimes I wouldn't
Speaker 1: even remember it. This prospect of memory is a big
Speaker 1: part of not being able to self regulate because you
Speaker 1: don't even remember what you're supposed to do. But the
Speaker 1: implementation intention puts that queue in the environment. Oh, I'm
Speaker 1: picking up my toothbrush, I'm putting the floss on the counter,
Speaker 1: and so I'm leveraging a habit already have. That's a
Speaker 1: really important part of this. And by putting the queue
Speaker 1: for the action into the environment, it helps me create
Speaker 1: a new habit. Now, what's interesting about all that is
Speaker 1: there's so many days where I thought, oh, I don't
Speaker 1: feel like I don't want to act like a little
Speaker 1: boy because we have a six year old alive well
Speaker 1: in us, or a little girl as the case may be,
Speaker 1: and I look at myself and say, wow, you know,
Speaker 1: what were you going with this? You know how long
Speaker 1: it takes to flash your teeth. It takes like thirty
Speaker 1: seconds and it feels great, and then I get on
Speaker 1: with that. So there's layers of working there, but the
Speaker 1: implementation intention was the foundation. I've mostly looked at implementation
Speaker 1: intentions really in using the if then statement, but also
Speaker 1: a lot about you know, the studies that show if
Speaker 1: you decide how and when and where you're going to
Speaker 1: do something, you're way more likely to do it. So
Speaker 1: it's one thing to say I need to work out tomorrow.
Speaker 1: It's a different thing to say, Okay, I'm going to
Speaker 1: run for two miles at the park by the Lake
Speaker 1: tomorrow at six pm, right Like, You've got a way
Speaker 1: better chance of doing it if you've got that second
Speaker 1: statement versus the first, I'm going to work out tomorrow.
Speaker 1: You know what interests me about implementation attentions. I did
Speaker 1: speak a great deal about it in the book, but
Speaker 1: since writing that book, I've focused a lot more on
Speaker 1: even finer tuned statement around this that I find is
Speaker 1: a real game changer for most people. And that really
Speaker 1: draws on the work of David Allen, who's written books
Speaker 1: like Getting Stuff Done and Ready for Anything. He argues
Speaker 1: really clearly, we don't do projects, we do actions, because
Speaker 1: I would say to people, as as you saw in
Speaker 1: the book, a key thing is just get started. And
Speaker 1: people would say to Tim, if I could just get started,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have a procrastination problem. That's not very helpful.
Speaker 1: And so as I thought through that and looked at
Speaker 1: how we think about all getting started, the question then becomes,
Speaker 1: what's the next action? If we go back to you
Speaker 1: when you asked me earlier about the parables or stories
Speaker 1: in our lives, and I went immediately to a Zen
Speaker 1: Buddhist cone or a Zen Buddhist story, Well, the Buddhists
Speaker 1: will often also say that we have monkey mind busy places.
Speaker 1: You know, we think and we feel, and we think
Speaker 1: and we feel, and you can't get rid of the monkey.
Speaker 1: It's just part of the human condition. But as one
Speaker 1: monk I heard say so clearly and so eloquently, you've
Speaker 1: got to give the monkey something to do. And it's
Speaker 1: the same for psychologists will tell us you know, you
Speaker 1: can have all these emotions, but you can't suppress them,
Speaker 1: and you can't ignore them. They're real, but we can
Speaker 1: direct our attention somewhere else. So now not only do
Speaker 1: I think about implementation intentions is a really important tool,
Speaker 1: but I also used this simple stay eatement those what's
Speaker 1: the next action? And I keep that action as small
Speaker 1: as possible, so it's a very low threshold for engagement,
Speaker 1: so that I look at and go, well, who couldn't
Speaker 1: do that? And that primes the pump for going. And
Speaker 1: I thought of that really when you were talking about
Speaker 1: the implementation intention to go for the run. Yep, the
Speaker 1: when or the how you're going to do it and
Speaker 1: when and for what distance. But as soon as you
Speaker 1: said two miles, I thought, for many people that just
Speaker 1: sets up the barrier. Or two miles that's too much.
Speaker 1: And so instead I'd be looking at at when I
Speaker 1: get home from work. The moment I get home, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna put on my running shoes and walk back outside
Speaker 1: the door. That might be as much as I have
Speaker 1: to say to myself to get me started. Now, the
Speaker 1: interesting thing about how predictably irrational human beings are is
Speaker 1: that as much as some of us almost fight with
Speaker 1: ourselves to get started. Ten minutes later, we're on the
Speaker 1: run and we think we could be in the next Olympics.
Speaker 1: We're just it's just so crazy, you know. We think,
Speaker 1: now I could run forever. It feels so good. So
Speaker 1: we go from not being able to run at all
Speaker 1: to thinking that we're an Olympic athlete. And of course
Speaker 1: that's just the way the mind is working, and we
Speaker 1: have to understand that we have these predictably irrational aspects
Speaker 1: of our human thinking and we have to have these
Speaker 1: hacks to work around them. Yeah, you you brought up
Speaker 1: in that statement there. I think at least three different
Speaker 1: important points. The first is the ambiguity of a lot
Speaker 1: of the things that we have on our task list.
Speaker 1: I might have on my task list, I actually have
Speaker 1: had on my task list record video. I've got a video.
Speaker 1: I've got a record for something I'm doing well. The
Speaker 1: problem with that is that that is about eight or
Speaker 1: nine tasks. You know. First I have to uh write
Speaker 1: the script for the video. Then I have to get
Speaker 1: somebody to review it. Then I have to practice it.
Speaker 1: Then I have to set up the video equipment and
Speaker 1: set up the lighting, and then I have to record it,
Speaker 1: then I have to edit it. I mean, and so
Speaker 1: when I have a task on my list, like get
Speaker 1: video done, I'll procrastinate it forever because it's not clear
Speaker 1: what the next action is. And so as you were saying,
Speaker 1: deconstructing that down to the very simplest and next action
Speaker 1: I can. I often say that, you know, ambiguity is
Speaker 1: really a huge cause of procrastination for people and when
Speaker 1: they look at their task list, because we tend to
Speaker 1: have projects on our task list, not tasks. Uh. The
Speaker 1: second thing that you talked about there is just that
Speaker 1: idea of getting started, and you know, you use the
Speaker 1: analogy of I'll just put on my shoes. I mean,
Speaker 1: I use that one all the time for the gym,
Speaker 1: like just get into your gym clothes, or just get
Speaker 1: to the gym. Or with cleaning, you know, all right,
Speaker 1: all you have to do is clean for three minutes.
Speaker 1: I set myself a timer and I get going for
Speaker 1: three minutes and I'm usually off. And then the last
Speaker 1: thing that was embedded in what you said is is
Speaker 1: a really important idea that you talk about. It is
Speaker 1: that we often think that the order of operation is
Speaker 1: motivation and then action but it is just as common
Speaker 1: the other way around. If we can take the action,
Speaker 1: the motivation tends to follow after it. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: this is a really important point that when I when
Speaker 1: I was writing that book, one of the things I
Speaker 1: focused on is that I don't know where we get
Speaker 1: this belief as adults, but we seem to have this
Speaker 1: belief that we have to be in the mood to
Speaker 1: do something, that motivation precedes action, But as you're noting,
Speaker 1: it's often the other way around. In fact, social psychologists
Speaker 1: showed us years ago that attitudes can actually follow behaviors,
Speaker 1: not behaviors following attitudes, and it's so true motivation. In fact,
Speaker 1: there's some very interesting research that shows even a little
Speaker 1: progress on a goal fuels our well being, which is
Speaker 1: a great thing considering what the procrastinations typically that downward spiral.
Speaker 1: So it's really the antidote in some ways to how
Speaker 1: do I get out of this trap? A little bit
Speaker 1: of progress fuels our motivation. We don't wait for the
Speaker 1: mood or the muse. We'll be waiting there a long time. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: And know that idea of I have to feel like
Speaker 1: something to do, It is so fundamental to this whole
Speaker 1: issue of procrastination. And you know, the phrase I use is,
Speaker 1: you know that I don't want to let my moods
Speaker 1: drive my action. And I usually make a joke out
Speaker 1: of that, like, if you had a mood system like mine, right,
Speaker 1: if you let your moods drive your actions, it would
Speaker 1: be a disaster. And my past is littered with disasters
Speaker 1: of allowing my moods to determine what I do. Because
Speaker 1: you know, people have some you know, some people wake up,
Speaker 1: you know, peppy and happy and ready to take on
Speaker 1: the world every day. And then there's the rest of
Speaker 1: us who, um, you know, often don't feel that way.
Speaker 1: And it's learning to get started even when we may
Speaker 1: not feel like it that is so critical. But I
Speaker 1: want to bring up another point. This leads us into motivation,
Speaker 1: and we talked about how, you know, if we can
Speaker 1: just get started, motivation or our attitude changes. Just getting
Speaker 1: started makes us feel better about the task. It makes
Speaker 1: us feel better about ourselves. But let's talk about the
Speaker 1: role of remembering our motivation as a way to help
Speaker 1: us with self regulation and is a way to deal
Speaker 1: with um potentially depleted willpower in what regard eric remembering
Speaker 1: our motivation, like remembering our commitment to what it is
Speaker 1: we're trying to achieve, yeah, or you know you've got
Speaker 1: to You've got a chart in the book where you
Speaker 1: show this idea of you know, it's worthwhile to look
Speaker 1: at your goal and look at the costs associated with
Speaker 1: procrastination as well as the benefits of acting in a
Speaker 1: timely manner as a way, you know, for me, I
Speaker 1: sort of think of that as like remembering my why,
Speaker 1: like why is this important? Definitely? For sure? In fact,
Speaker 1: everything is foundation. The foundation for all of this is
Speaker 1: in commitment. And even Peter Gollwitzer, who's written extensively on
Speaker 1: implementation intentions, is acknowledged in quite a few papers and
Speaker 1: book chapters that without commitment and won't happen, there's no
Speaker 1: technique that's going to save you. You do have to
Speaker 1: be able to look at your own life and understand
Speaker 1: why it is that you're even going to use a strategy,
Speaker 1: like what's the next action or when then? And so
Speaker 1: we have to have a clear idea of the meaning
Speaker 1: behind our goals. In fact, another way that I often
Speaker 1: think of it, and I learned this from my past
Speaker 1: own dissertation advisor who worked with an area called personal
Speaker 1: projects analysis. The balance between meaning and manageability. It's always
Speaker 1: a balance between those two. It has to be meaningful
Speaker 1: for us to want to do it, but it also
Speaker 1: has to be manageable. It goes back to your notion
Speaker 1: of ambiguity. I've certainly found in our research that uncertainty
Speaker 1: is a very high correlative procrastination, and uncertainty can be
Speaker 1: there when you have ambiguous goals. So but if you
Speaker 1: if you focus only on manageability the next steps and
Speaker 1: you go, oh, like a monkey, you could do this
Speaker 1: what I'm not interested anymore. But if you work only
Speaker 1: on meaning, then you don't know how to manage it.
Speaker 1: So it's this interesting balance and at any given time.
Speaker 1: Some days I have to emphasize more than why, which
Speaker 1: is your original question about you know, why would I
Speaker 1: engage and this? Why is this important to me? And
Speaker 1: other times I know exactly why I want to do it,
Speaker 1: and then the question becomes more of yeah, but how
Speaker 1: am I going to manage this? And then I go
Speaker 1: back to Okay, what's the next action? Or do I
Speaker 1: need to call a friend? That sort of strategy. But
Speaker 1: it is this balance between meeting and manageability. And then
Speaker 1: there's other times whereas I said in the book, sometimes
Speaker 1: you simply have to look at the cost, like what
Speaker 1: is this going to cost me if I put it
Speaker 1: off exactly? Um. And so one of the things that
Speaker 1: you talk about is that sometimes when we do stop
Speaker 1: to think about it for a second, we will say
Speaker 1: something to ourselves like it's just not important, or um,
Speaker 1: you know, a variety of other things. So there there
Speaker 1: are common biases that get in the way of us
Speaker 1: looking at this clearly and um. One of those is,
Speaker 1: you know, saying to ourselves, for whatever reason, it's not important, right,
Speaker 1: and and being able to record now is that if
Speaker 1: it's something that we thought was important before, when we
Speaker 1: weren't faced with the task, it's probably important. And you
Speaker 1: use an implementation intention here. Actually you say if we
Speaker 1: say it's not important, then we stop and remind ourselves
Speaker 1: that this is self deception. Or if I say it's
Speaker 1: not important, then I will just get started. But there's
Speaker 1: some other biases I thought would be useful in talking about.
Speaker 1: One is prefer tomorrow over today, because this is such
Speaker 1: a classic one. I'll do it tomorrow, and I think
Speaker 1: inherent in I'll do it tomorrow is I will feel
Speaker 1: like doing it tomorrow, which is obviously a fallacy. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about that bias, about how we prefer tomorrow
Speaker 1: over today, and how we think we'll actually want to
Speaker 1: 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 of
Speaker 1: book affective forecasting. We know what weather forecasting is trying
Speaker 1: to put it, but the weather is going to be
Speaker 1: like tomorrow. Affective forecasting is how are we going to
Speaker 1: feel tomorrow? And what he's learned through his research is
Speaker 1: that we rely on the present to predict the future.
Speaker 1: So we all know what it's like to go grocery
Speaker 1: shopping when you're hungry versus when you're full. Your cart
Speaker 1: looks distinctly different. Hunger you're pulling a second card full
Speaker 1: of your favorite snacks, and when you're just finished a
Speaker 1: big meal. When you're going shopping, go oh, I don't
Speaker 1: need so much milk this week. And again, we're predictably irrational.
Speaker 1: So how that applies to procrastination is that that moment
Speaker 1: when you decide, no, I'm not going to do this today.
Speaker 1: How do you feel a while while and I give
Speaker 1: talks to students or general audiences, the first word that
Speaker 1: comes to mind is relief, And then many other people
Speaker 1: just say I feel good exactly so that when you
Speaker 1: use that momentary feeling to predict how you're gonna feel tomorrow,
Speaker 1: you say, oh, yeah, I'm gonna feel like it's tomorrow.
Speaker 1: So there's one cognitive bias that leads us to believe
Speaker 1: I'm going to want to do this tomorrow. But more importantly,
Speaker 1: and this is something that I didn't write back in
Speaker 1: two thousand. Two thousand eleven, was some work by hal
Speaker 1: Hirshfield that U c l a is use functional magnetic
Speaker 1: residence imaging to look at the brains of people while
Speaker 1: they were thinking about either their present self, their future self,
Speaker 1: or a stranger. To make a long story short, what
Speaker 1: he learned was that the areas of the brain that
Speaker 1: are active when we think about present self are different
Speaker 1: than when we think about future self. In fact, the
Speaker 1: areas of the brain that are active when we think
Speaker 1: about a stranger are the same areas it's processing information
Speaker 1: about the future self. So we seem to think about
Speaker 1: future self like a stranger, and that leads us again
Speaker 1: to think, uh, that that's that person will handle that,
Speaker 1: and so tomorrow that person will feel like a present
Speaker 1: self is processing information much differently. So these are biases
Speaker 1: in the way that we think about the future. In fact,
Speaker 1: we've done some research on that too, where we had
Speaker 1: people imagine their future self, in this case students, because
Speaker 1: that's a population we're working with h and when they
Speaker 1: thought more about future self, present self made different choices.
Speaker 1: And in fact, how her Field did some of this
Speaker 1: research too before we did, but he did it with
Speaker 1: digital avatars, so you'd see a picture of yourself either
Speaker 1: as you look now or yourself digitally aged into your
Speaker 1: sixties and lo and behold, if you're sitting in experimental
Speaker 1: situation looking at your older self, and the experimental task
Speaker 1: is to allocate funds, you allocate more funds to retirement
Speaker 1: savings because you've got 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 that,
Speaker 1: he says, you know, we're more like Homer Simpson than
Speaker 1: we are Homo economicus. And it makes me smile because
Speaker 1: I love Homer. And I'll put up a picture of
Speaker 1: 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 future self present self dichoonomy 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 future 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, let's talk about one other bias
Speaker 1: that you mentioned in the book. And um, I thought
Speaker 1: this one was really interesting and you refer to it
Speaker 1: as self handicap to preserve self esteem. My colleague at
Speaker 1: the University of Sheffield who started her graduate studies with
Speaker 1: us here at Carlton University in Ottawa, she did some
Speaker 1: research looking at how people make upward and downward counter factuals.
Speaker 1: And so let me just take a minute and talk
Speaker 1: about what those are. Downward counter factual we're really familiar
Speaker 1: with them. They happen all the time. They have they
Speaker 1: start in school. So you get a C grade and
Speaker 1: it's not what you're hoping for, your shooting for an A.
Speaker 1: Let's say, but your downward counter factual is at least
Speaker 1: I didn't fail. It's counterfactual to what happened. I'd say
Speaker 1: at least 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 C, but when you've put it against failing, you
Speaker 1: feel better. The upward counter factuals is just the opposite,
Speaker 1: of course, and that is well, 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: shouldn't look at my phone when I'm trying to park
Speaker 1: the car, So you learn from upward 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 upward 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 that.
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 amp 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: argue between that sort of delay and procrastination assuming that
Speaker 1: that's all happening at a conscious level. Right, So yes,
Speaker 1: if I consciously say, oh well, I just won't study
Speaker 1: so much so I don't feel bad if I don't
Speaker 1: do well, that's very much a conscious decision and that's
Speaker 1: not procrastination. And that's actually a point you make very
Speaker 1: early in the book. Is not all delay is procrastination.
Speaker 1: There are valid reasons to delay, so you know, but
Speaker 1: but on a on a more subconscious level, perhaps there
Speaker 1: might be some of that. It's it's always interesting because
Speaker 1: I hear people use a term a lot self sabotage,
Speaker 1: and I never quite know what I think of that term.
Speaker 1: I don't know whether that's just like sort of woo
Speaker 1: woo word that sort of you know, brings up a
Speaker 1: lot 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: De Paul University in Chicago, and some of those earlier
Speaker 1: research showed that procrastinators generally didn't want to get feedback
Speaker 1: that would reflect on them in a way they're can
Speaker 1: affect their self esteem. So you could see that sort
Speaker 1: of protective factor coming up, so that you delay needlessly
Speaker 1: and in a way that's going to be self defeating.
Speaker 1: But part of the motivation for that is that your
Speaker 1: feel you're going to fail anyhow. And in fact, when
Speaker 1: we listen to UH procrastinators in either therapy sessions or
Speaker 1: in research from thinking of Bill McCowen Louisiana State has
Speaker 1: done some interesting research where he had students when they
Speaker 1: were procrastinating, go online and talk about what they were
Speaker 1: thinking and feeling, and he captured a lot of the
Speaker 1: irrational thoughts and there were things like, well, what's the
Speaker 1: point of me trying? I'm not any good anyhow. So
Speaker 1: sure we get that sort of thing happening inside of ourselves,
Speaker 1: all this negative self talk, and then procrastination could become
Speaker 1: a mechanism which was self protective, and in that sense
Speaker 1: we might be talking about this elusive notion of self sabotage. Well,
Speaker 1: tim we are at the end of our time, and
Speaker 1: this has been enormously helpful and a fun conversation for
Speaker 1: me because I'm so interested in this. You and I
Speaker 1: are going to continue the conversation in our post show
Speaker 1: conversation and a couple of things we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about our um. The procrastination is not only an inability
Speaker 1: to get started. Sometimes we get started and then we
Speaker 1: get off track from a variety of ways. And we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about how to bounce back from that
Speaker 1: type of procrastination in the post show conversation. Listeners, If
Speaker 1: you're interested in that, you can join us and be
Speaker 1: a member of the one you Feed Patreon community and
Speaker 1: you can get access to all the post show conversations,
Speaker 1: add free episodes and many episodes by going to one
Speaker 1: you feed dot net slash support. Again, Tim, thank you
Speaker 1: so much. We'll have links in the show notes for
Speaker 1: where people can see you and see your book and
Speaker 1: I just thought it was a great book and this
Speaker 1: has been such a fun conversation for me. Thank you
Speaker 1: very much. Thank you, Bye m M. If what you
Speaker 1: just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a
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