And often it depends on the measures that you're using as well. We all feel guilty about it. Mills: Well, the crux of your research is that procrastination is not, as so many of us think it is, a problem of laziness or poor time management. You get rewarded for doing that. You cant just white knuckle it through things. Sirois: Great. People will say its an emotional thing and its caused by people being intolerant of emotions. One is quickly testing assumptions. So if you have a consistent study habit, it becomes easier to resist distractions. There hasIt's a little bit controversial. So thats obviously a huge problem, right? 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. Theres hope for all of us, even if its plagued us for a long time. About the expert: Fuschia Sirois, PhD It's a delay that's voluntary. More specifically, cognitive behavioral therapy will help you identify your cognitive distortions. Not just it's harmful for our mental health, it's also harmful for our physical health. 20 Best Procrastination Podcasts You Must Follow in 2023 - Feedspot Blog Sirois: The quick answer is you can't. I think that its often part of the creative process that sometimes we procrastinate because were doing something hard. 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. So itll be things like if your air conditioner starts making you funny noise. If you want a behavior to require less self control, then make it a consistent habit. But that's the closest we can get to it. CURT NICKISCH: Well, lets talk about the work setting a little bit in the sense of teams and organizational culture. 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. It's not like procrastinators are sitting around lazy, they're doing other things. ALICE BOYES: Yeah. Hidden Brain : NPR For good! And thats what we often think first about. I'm going to clean out the garage this weekend. You build new relationships, for example, by working with a new collaborator versus with someone youve already worked with 20 times before. Eve. 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. 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. Although we may experience discomfort in the final moments before a task is due, we rarely think about the past or future when procrastinating. Then you'll end up being both a procrastinator and very depressed. So it is really complicated, but theres always times where people need to get on to doing something. I naturally worry about things that could go wrong. So when you learn that actually strong emotions and tense emotions, diverse emotions are incredibly healthy, you can just fear them a lot less and have a more open attitude toward them. So a lot of things that we do where its of a lot of value, doing something for the first time, doing something that youve never done before, that feels really foreign to you, thats a huge skill building thing. Identify the emotions behind tasks you felt you didnt excel in, or that didnt turn out the way you wanted them to when you did complete them. Fear of failure, fear of . Part of it is Ill think about three ways I could approach the task at the outset. You're going to hand in things late or you're not going to do your best work. Finding productive reasons to keep working on tasks and commitments. And really that sort of perspective is more of looking at the symptoms of procrastination rather than the causes. Fuschia Sirois, PhD, is a professor in the department of psychology at Durham University in the United Kingdom. Alice Boyes is a former clinical psychologist and the author of the book Stress Free Productivity. Sirois: The best way to answer that, and I do agree there's different cultural norms, if you like, and just unspoken standards about what is and isn't acceptable across different countries and different parts of the world. He doesnt do pictures. And they should have an explicit system. So if you put those two things together, higher stress and poor health behaviors, and you tie that in with somebody who's got this pattern of dealing with unpleasant tasks in this very avoidant manner by procrastinating, over time, there's going to be some cumulative damage. So I think it can be quite mixed. If you want to pursue therapy for your procrastination, cognitive behavioral therapy can help. How do you think about separating emotions from tasks? Im thinking of putting something off until Friday afternoon and then writing an email to kick it into somebody elses pile of work at the end of the week. 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. And I think, yeah the digital media makes it easier for certain generations and I think that other generations might equally find other types of distractions and activities to engage in. Yes. She also wrote the HBR article, How to Stop Procrastinating. According to some psychologists, the answer is not that people are lazy or have poor time management skills. 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. Their self-worth is contingent upon whether they live up to some sort of idealized standard that they think society or their friends or their family expect of them. Humans are terrible at predicting the future. Sometimes doing good for awhile gives us permission to do bad.This is stupid, I don't even care about it.Our fear and insecurities can lead to us devalue the entire project altogether. Its not necessarily just about thought processes and habits, but it is such an emotional process too. The Psychology of Procrastination (Podcast Episode 2018) - IMDb So depending on how complex this task is, my system can have up to six or seven steps. And push comes to shove when we actually do it, it's like, Wait a second. Mills: Right. But that again, it's an emotion regulation issue. What do you find your cognitive distortions arewhat are the things you tell yourself to make yourself feel better about putting things off? 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? ALICE BOYES: Yeah, Im not sure that its that black and white. Sirois: Yeah, it's a great question, and indeed, a lot of us can procrastinate just occasionally, which we would call sort of more of a situationally based procrastination. Yeah, I'm doing a few different things. So I think that's kind of the extreme case over several decades. Since becoming aware of the problem is one of the first ways we are able to change, mindfulness helps us be more aware of our actions in general. Understanding the psychology of procrastination is key to overcoming it and achieving success in our personal and professional lives. It would be more accurate to say, "I work under pressure." But the minutes you take action and start to encounter problems, which we all do, right, it's never a straight direct path from point A to point B when we're trying to reach our goals, there's ups and downs along the way, but people who have these sort of self-critical perfectionism, the minute they hit one of those bumps in the road, so to speak, on the path to their goal, they give up. You might have a big work project that's due, you feel stressed about it and suddenly you realize you can't possibly get started until you clean your desk. We can't impose that on them. And the general gist of it is that habits make behaviors more automatic. What are you working on now? Because what procrastination does is it gives you immediate relief. 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. So anxiety is both the strength and a weakness for me in that Im good at foreseeing problems. . 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. Bottom line is that we value patient care, so even we dont necessarily feel like doing small tasks throughout the day, we still do them because we link them to our deeper values. When we pay attention to ourselves through the gentle observation of mindfulness, we arent striving to fix or self-judge. Mills: All right, well, let's not put it off any longer. Fuschia Sirois, PhD: Oh, thanks for having me, Kim. And then back to the psychological flexibility concept of using the difficult emotions that arise. Speaking of Psychology is produced by Lea Winerman. Can you explain what that is? How does this play out interpersonally? And its this notion of accepting that work will be filled with friction that is actually a productive step in getting past procrastination. Mindfulness is another way to help fix procrastination. But people have to have their own motivation. I just want to ask if perfectionism and procrastination are linked and are perfectionists more or less likely to procrastinate? CURT NICKISCH: That was one of the things that I really learned from reading what you wrote, is just how much emotion is wrapped up in procrastination. 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 then you've got this other flavor of perfectionism, which is this perfectionist strivers, which is more someone who's driven by their own internal standards, but these standards are still quite high. 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. Kim Mills: You know the old saying, never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow? 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. Potentially youre going to need more reflection after youve done something. Because youve given us a lot of tips on managing yourself individually. The Psychology of Procrastination - Scribd Since using all of these tools to beat his habit of procrastination, Dr. Brammer has been able to add more things to his life, and is still able to accomplish it all and feel confident. Mills: You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology on our website at www.speakingofpsychology.org or on Apple, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. In immersive interviews, Adam vividly brings his observations to life, weaving together stories with social science and revealing key insights in a friendly, accessible style. When youre doing work that has more potential to be impactful, its usually more uncertain. This episode was produced by Mary Dooe. People who chronically procrastinate or procrastinate regularly don't progress through their company as well. 3 Ways to Beat Procrastination | Psychology Today He does whats in his wheelhouse. Doer: Overcome Procrastination on the App Store And then yeah, what we see that as procrastination. For a lot of tasks, Ill just do one or two of them. Making things easier on people, like finding out if theres some sort of basis to the procrastination, learning how to support people. But it makes sense though too, because if you're stressed all the time and you're not looking after your health, these healthy behaviorsand stress and health behaviors are two key pathways to good health and when you don't engage in them, we know that they are risk factors for poor heart health. So people who are prone to procrastination do tend to use more social media, tend to be engaged with their digital distractions. Avoidance brings immediate relief from the distress associated with the task. So that just prevents premature foreclosure one route. Procrastination | Psychology Today I mean, that being said, there has been some experimental research done where they gave students a range of tasks easy and more difficult and looked at the time on task and what things they did otherwise.