Alice Boyes, a former clinical psychologist and author, says breaking the habit is more than simply a matter of discipline. ALICE BOYES: Yeah, Im not sure that its that black and white. The podcast version of this story was produced by Audrey Nguyen. YANSS 253 - The psychology behind the world's greatest cons, . CURT NICKISCH: How do you know when theres a good reason for procrastinating or when its actually just being counterproductive? Gianni Dimacchia '24 brings immersive worlds and inspired characters to life as an artist, storyteller, and video game designer. Sometimes its just making sure you dont make that cognitive error, or catching the cognitive error when youre making it, as recognizing that its almost like theres an inverse correlation there between how awkward and yucky things feel. Yes, procrastination. In particular, starting new tasks is a problem. Why is procrastination so tied up with guilt and shame, even though it's something nearly everyone does? In addition to studying procrastination, she also researches perfectionism, self-compassion, gratitude, time and loneliness. Show more Download. Et la procrastination on peut la trouver aussi chez les personnes qui souhaitent gurir. Willpower is like a muscle. And we all want to think, Oh, well, I dont know anything about air conditioners. So rather than frame it in terms of productivity, which I think feeds into a lot of our social norms about what we should and shouldn't be doing and how much we should and shouldn't be doing, I'd rather frame it around whether you're reaching your goals or not or do you have all these things you started and never finished, do you have all these unfulfilled goals that you just never got round to doing because of fear of failure or just worried it wasn't going to be good enough or worried whether you could manage maybe some of the challenges that you might face when you engage with that task? And this is what I'm saying, sort of the tolerance for procrastination, I think, differs across different cultural contexts. Heres the quick breakdown of how you can look at your thinking patterns when you decide to procrastinate: Recognize when you have the emotion about the task you want to delay. Emotions pretty much always come with thoughts and vice versa. This is simply not true. Then maybe a quick walk to clear your head. So there's short-term health impacts, but there's also some more serious long-term health impacts as well. Because youve given us a lot of tips on managing yourself individually. So for me, my system is quite tailored to my personality. Thats episode 295. And that's enough to keep us from actually getting started on the task. We all feel guilty about it. Such as, This is stupid, I dont even care about it.. Yes. CURT NICKISCH: Well, Alice youve given people a lot of tools to deal with something that can really be frustrating. Or can you get to a good emotion from that? So there's this task, we may not have enough information about it, and we start imagining how difficult it's going to be and how complex it's going to be and how we're going to fail or struggle. So people think a lot about learning from other people and learning from science when it comes to productivity. The presence of ambivalent emotions tends to put us on alert. That if you notice a funny mole or you notice a funny lump or something, or change in your bowel habit of it or whatever it is, that is an area where procrastination can be deadly. And if you look at something like bedtime procrastination, which is a particular form of procrastination where you say, Hey, I've got an important meeting tomorrow morning, I'm going to go to bed at 11 o'clock, and here we are 1:00 AM in the morning and you're still on your social media. And so what does this system look like? So the classic example is the student who the only time they ever clean their dorm room is when they should be studying for exams. Avoidance brings immediate relief from the distress associated with the task. There are fixed factors related to procrastination, things that are innate to each of our different psychological experiences. When we shift over and we look at adults who are now out in the workforce, they've got their degrees and they're out there just getting on with their lives, it's still fairly high in terms of the chronic procrastination. But if it were that simple, it wouldnt be a problem anymore. ALICE BOYES: Yeah. So get over it, get on with it and move forward. Does that actually have an impact on their ability to stop procrastinating and get things done? Is the task actually stupid, or is it something you should do, youre just afraid to do it, so youre demeaning it in case you fail? ALICE BOYES: Yeah. And it can have very real physical health effects. CURT NICKISCH: One of the really fascinating things that jumped out at me in your work was this idea of emotional granularity. Perceptions of procrastination range from being the topic of jokes to being associated with mental illness (Svartdal, Granmo, & Farevaag, 2018). And then also studying it naturalistically, so recording behavior. And in the workplace as well. So we talk about sagacious delay where on the surface when somebody puts something off, we might look at them and say, Hey, they're procrastinating, or we might even look at our own behavior and just because it's a delay and we're not doing what we know we should be doing, we might say, Well, I'm procrastinating. But if you sort of look below the surface, it may be that maybe you haven't started that report because you're waiting to hear back with some key information that's essential for you to get going on this and if you started without that information, you actually would be wasting a lot of time. Sirois: Well, I think that's really key. We think well drink caffeine, get a mental boost, or find the perfect time to do the task, but it never comes.I did pretty well, considering I waited until the last minute.This is a self-protective belief. If you want a behavior to require less self control, then make it a consistent habit. Sirois: There is indeed a difference. Mills holds a bachelors degree in biology from Barnard College and a masters in journalism from New York University. Well, thats really helpful. I would think that it's more aboutit's not necessarily that you would procrastinate more or less necessarily depending on what the restraints were. So one of the projects I want to look at, I know there was this type of work that was done with perfectionism showing that perfectionism is increasing over time. Why is it so easy to fall into this trap even when we know better? CURT NICKISCH: We talked about emotions previously, emotions clearly have a big role in procrastination. And so procrastination becomes a way to cope with that negative mood and those negative emotions, especially if you're someone who hasn't had a lot of experience managing your negative emotions effectively, or maybe you've got a lot of other stressors going on in your life that you've sort ofyour resources, your inner resources for coping with a task that might be really unpleasant or stressful or frustrating or creates a lot of worry for you, in those sorts of situations, you might resort to procrastination. And how can we be more conscious of that? So for every one point increase on that measure, their chances of having poor heart health increase by 63%, and that's after accounting for a lot of other factors. ALICE BOYES: Yeah, its actually just what I was talking about before. J'aurais pu dvelopper sur la gurison d . And yet, we still do it. So my strategy and my system is kind of tailored to that. CURT NICKISCH: For me personally, the idea of a pre-mortem and testing your assumptions is kind of attractive because I expect that could help a lot with things that always seem to take longer than you thought they were going to. whose new podcast explores the world's greatest con artists and con jobs from World War II to modern game shows. He doesnt do pictures. Because what procrastination does is it gives you immediate relief. And of course, we all know about productive procrastination. He doesnt do video. And I think people tend to oversimplify that. There are also variable factorsthings like our environment, our health that day, and other things that might affect our tendency to procrastinate. Sometimes its just noticing that relationship. Being unwilling to ask for help can relate to Impostor Syndrome, and can fuel procrastination. Then, merely focus on starting the tasks, not completing them. Why we procrastinate and what to do about it, with Fuschia Sirois, PhD, Procrastination: What It Is, Why Its a Problem, and What You Can Do About It. Best Procrastination Podcasts (2023) - Player This can help you rebuild a habit of identifying the things we tell ourselves and have always accepted as truth. There really is so much that goes on with it psychologically. This Mindset Change podcast contains powerful subconscious training meditations, interviews with cutting-edge experts, and host Paul Sheppard's unique holistic blend of psychology, hypnosis, neurobiology, NLP, psychotherapy tools and strategies to help you create the life you truly want to live. Not just it's harmful for our mental health, it's also harmful for our physical health. How can we create better habits to avoid procrastinating? Its the equivalent of the Instagram image of perfection. What tasks are they most likely to avoid? Sometimes we need that incubation period. Sirois: So yeah, I mean there's a lot of myths out there about why people procrastinate and the common wisdom out there is that, oh, teach somebody to manage their time better and they'll stop procrastinating, or give them better self-control or tell them they're lazy and crack the whip and get them going and that'll reduce it. What are the sort of consequences that they experience? Often it is. What are the next things that you're looking at in the realm of procrastination or even the other areas where you're doing research? Knowing what the strengths of people are or knowing how to discover them from conversation. But I remember some years back at one of our conferences, we had some students presenting posters about their research on procrastination and there was this, what did they call it? Be honest with yourself in your answer. And then also, cut yourself a little bit of slack about some of the creative procrastination, like recognizing that weve got this image of a productive person being this person who is never distracted, whos always focused, who never procrastinates, whos just hustling all the time. The real reason you procrastinate | WorkLife with Adam Grant (Audio And coming at it from this mood regulation or emotion regulation perspective then, what that suggests is that we need to find ways to manage those emotions first and foremost. And we know that self-compassion can be a very powerful tool for regulating negative emotions, and that's another approach too, especially if we're really struggling and just sayit's not giving yourself a free pass. I'm really thrilled to be here. Our sound editor is Chris Condayan. overcome the tendency to put things off. Humans are terrible at predicting the future. How do you think about separating emotions from tasks? Its the idea that you can use your emotions as fuel for your goals, that you dont need to reduce your negative emotions. That frustration is a sign we are trying to change, but it isnt helpful in the actual change. When procrastination is a problem, thats when you want to have some strategies so that you can feel confident that you can get out of the weeds whenever you really need to. Another will power builder is to choose a difficult book, decide to read it in let us say 60 days, and then divide the book up into 60 parts to read every day. Impostor Syndrome involves feeling like you're not the person people think you areas if youre deceiving everyone. And then some of the other work I'm doing is just, again, trying to maybe get some more hard indicators of the health effects. And I'll mention one final thing too. She is a social, health and personality psychologist who is broadly interested in how self-regulationhow we manage our thoughts, emotions and behaviorsaffect our health and wellbeing. Sirois: Myself as well. Dans ce podcast, j'aborde les deux thmatiques, notamment sous le prisme des troubles du comportement alimentaire. So people who are prone to procrastination do tend to use more social media, tend to be engaged with their digital distractions. Make those goals realistic so you dont talk yourself out of them. Its a really false image. This content is disabled due to your privacy settings. Sirois: The quick answer is you can't. Mills: So a moment ago you mentioned the couch and the screen, being able to get away from those things, and I'm wondering whether does the ubiquity of social media and electronic devices have an impact on procrastination or have procrastinators always been able to find excuses to put things off? And we all know that it helps to identify emotions. They're ones that we find unpleasant, aversive and that can range the full spectrum from just simply boring to gut wrenching, nerve wracking and anxiety provoking. Im Curt Nickisch. This is good for willpower training. If you want to pursue therapy for your procrastination, cognitive behavioral therapy can help. Mills: Well, somewhat related to my last question, are there cultural differences among people who procrastinate? And there's multiple layers of doing this. And so because of that, they might sort of not be able to savor their successes when they actually reach those standards. So sort of drilling down into understanding better that emotional side. Hidden Brain : NPR Where can you place it? So if youre like that, then it is thinking about, Well, I need to this thing because I need to be reliable for somebody else. And when we're faced with the temptation to put something off, how can we change our mindset and our environment to help us buckle down and do what needs to be done? For example, if theres a task associated with your job that you dont want to do, you can still link it with something you believe in. Recent episodes of Hidden Brain podcast can now be found at hiddenbrain.org. More specifically, cognitive behavioral therapy will help you identify your cognitive distortions. Adam also tackles emotions and mental obstacles that impact our work, like loneliness, procrastination, burnout and bouncing back from rejection. And there might be some generational influences there too. That's why we say it's sort of a short-term mood repair. And then I think of one way to mitigate against each of them. Maybe with the exception of form filling and really basic things, but most things that we procrastinate we can approach through the perspective of our strengths. Im not advocating anyone adopt my system. So think, again, using your values is a really good thing there. No one feels good about it, but most of us do it at least occasionally. So it's actually quite high in college and university samples. He does whats in his wheelhouse. I'm going to start with a quote that a colleague and friend of mine who got me into this area of research, Tim Pychyl at Carleton University in Canada, one that he often uses to make the distinction between procrastination and delay. Putting aside whether these lists are historically accurate, they raise the question, is it possible to be a chronic procrastinator but also extremely productive? So a really good way to find a system for you for approaching double tasks is when you successfully do a novel task, look at the system that you used to get it done. It's just not that thing that they should be doing right now that's looming and important and will have negative consequences if they don't get it done. Some people find it easier to do things for other people than themselves. Produced by the American Psychological Association, these podcasts will help listeners apply the science of psychology to their everyday lives. She explains the different causes of procrastination and shares three. And when were on alert more, thats often what sparks creativity. And so thats useful. CURT NICKISCH: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. Advancing psychology to benefit society and improve lives. iProcrastinate Podcast on Apple Podcasts The second episode of the Psychiatry and Psychotherapy podcast deals with cognitive distortions. And I think the people that I've spoken to who really struggle with procrastination, they are in a bad way. Far more than a productivity hack. And again, we think of Germany is being highly efficient, trains running on time and everything sort of very precise, and the tolerance there for procrastination is quite low. Also, take up some form of regular willpower exercise. So actually looking at more objective measures using Smart watches to track people's behavior, their physical activity and seeing again, if in fact people who are prone to procrastination are actually being less active than others. Im an anxious person. I often recommend this to psychiatry residents and NPs I train, challenging them to read 3 books in 60 days using this method. Procrastination is a common problem among people of all ages and backgrounds. Mastering Procrastination: Understanding the Psychology Behind It And yet we still do it. But what we dont really think about is learning from ourselves. Scan . Youre going to need more working up to doing things. CURT NICKISCH: You mentioned earlier that when people do the tasks they know, those are often the easiest to do, and they put off the harder ones. It is important to be able to make all of those distinctions. And this sort of fits in with an area of research that's called affective forecasting, which basically says that as human beings, we're not very good at predicting our future emotional states. Can you feel a good emotion from that? There are a lot ofthere's some procrastination research that did just that, just looked at the sort of social media and digital distractions, and that's a whole research program is in that area. Fuschia Sirois, PhD, is a professor in the department of psychology at Durham University in the United Kingdom. And they should have an explicit system. Mills: So what are some strategies or techniques to combat procrastination and just get things done, and how does thinking of it as an emotion regulation problem change how we approach the situation? CURT NICKISCH: But thats never addressing the emotion that goes with it. Students who forgave themselves for procrastinating on academic work were found two weeks later to actually procrastinate less. Understanding the psychology of procrastination is key to overcoming it and achieving success in our personal and professional lives. You can learn about my research at procrastination. So often what we put off is stuff thats novel. You can find her article, How to Stop Procrastinating in the May/June, 2022 issue of Harvard Business Review and at hbr.org. How does this play out interpersonally? So it's much easier to study it instead of a naturalistic setting by just getting people to self-report or to look at people who chronically procrastinate because what you study in the lab is going to be delay for sure, but it not isn't necessarily going to be procrastination. Procrastinators may find themselves unable to start something because they dont know how to start, but they dont want to show weakness by needing to ask for clarification. She also wrote the HBR article, How to Stop Procrastinating. Our guest today offers three strategic paths to beat procrastination in a comprehensive way. And so we actually conducted some research a couple years ago where we did this thing called a meta-analysis, which is just basically a review of all the research that's ever been done looking at the associations between perfectionism, both perfectionism dimensions there, and procrastination. You get rewarded for doing that. And really that sort of perspective is more of looking at the symptoms of procrastination rather than the causes. How do you do that? Try to place your willpower-hungry tasks at the beginning of the day. Sirois: That is a really good question. And this is something that I've found in my own research too, that students who chronically procrastinate tend to report more of these sort of stress-related mild health complaints, but they also can impact engaging in health behaviors. Then you'll end up being both a procrastinator and very depressed. For a lot of tasks, Ill just do one or two of them. Psychologists have identified various drivers of procrastination, from low self-confidence to anxiety, a lack of structure, and, simply, an inability to motivate oneself to complete unpleasant. CURT NICKISCH: Yeah. A former reporter and editor for The Associated Press, Mills has also written for publications including The Washington Post, Fast Company, American Journalism Review, Dallas Morning News, MSNBC.com and Harvard Business Review. Go through the list of false beliefs we listed and journal your common cognitive distortions. And although I've only done one study in this area, one study that I did do looking at people with hearttheir heart health, so in terms of having hypertension or cardiovascular disease, I found that those who scored higher on a measure of chronic procrastination, when you controlled for all kinds of other factors that might account for poor heart health, they were more likely to be in the group that had poor heart health. So you've chosen to delay and there's no really good reason to. Its something that is potentially really harmful. It's really about the emotions that are associated with the task and not necessarily the unpleasantness of the task. It's a habit of putting off tasks that we know we need to complete, and it often leads to stress, anxiety, and missed deadlines. And this makes some sense if we think about how harmful stress is to our bodies. He approaches the platform of Instagram through his strengths and his posts get like 40-50,000 likes each post. And there are more steps that are part of my process. Episode 210: Why we procrastinate and what to do about it, with Fuschia Sirois, PhD. So depending on how complex this task is, my system can have up to six or seven steps. Make the goals small and manageable, and focus only on what the very next step should be. So I think it can be quite mixed. In psychology, we never think of cognition, emotions and behavior as being separate. Its probably going to be really expensive. So why do people procrastinate? Sirois: So that's a great question.
