CURT NICKISCH: Yeah. Look at the cognitive distortions that came with the thought. So I think that's kind of the extreme case over several decades. Feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and a lack of energy can make it difficult to start (and finish) the simplest task. Danny draws on the expertise of clinical psychologists, physicians, psychiatrists and researchers in his new podcast, and he has already taken on a variety of challenging and interesting topics. Sirois: The quick answer is you can't. So whats a good way to overcome that, to accept that this friction-filled work, as you put it, is good for you and may help you? One of the findings I really like is about ambivalent emotions. 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? Recent episodes of Hidden Brain podcast can now be found at hiddenbrain.org. So the classic example thats always used in any intro psych textbook is driving: that once were not a novice driver anymore, whenever we sit in the driver seat of a car, we go through a sequence of behaviors without really even thinking about what we are doing. It's really about the emotions that are associated with the task and not necessarily the unpleasantness of the task. 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. Often it is. When you can't figure out how to tackle a project or feel insecure about your abilities, you might find it easier to put it off. The adrenaline spike and stress of the situation make us think we are better off waiting, but in reality, its unlikely that our delay will make the final product any better.Ill feel more like it later.We deceive ourselves into thinking that we'll feel like completing the task later. I often recommend this to psychiatry residents and NPs I train, challenging them to read 3 books in 60 days using this method. So that's conducting some experiments now to see if maybe people prone to procrastination are over-anticipating how difficult that task is going to be. 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. Theyre the same thing he does everywhere else, but he puts them on Instagram. And being able to help the person see ways of approaching tasks from the perspective of their strengths is something thats useful. If you want a behavior to require less self control, then make it a consistent habit. Procrastination can also be a result of depression. I mean, if you bring people in to be observed and to be experimental subjects where you tell them to procrastinate, I mean how do you do this? In this podcast, we will explore moving from procrastination to your destiny. Guilt is a useful emotion because it causes us to want to repair things. So depending on how complex this task is, my system can have up to six or seven steps. YANSS 253 - The psychology behind the world's greatest cons, . Because what procrastination does is it gives you immediate relief. As we build a habit of procrastinating, we develop false beliefs that worsen the habit. Why is it so easy to fall into this trap even when we know better? So it's actually quite high in college and university samples. Mills is senior director of strategic external communications and public affairs for the American Psychological Association, where she has worked since 2007. There might be some really monumental delayers out there, but they could be sagacious delayers, wise delayers who are doing it with purpose. Mindfulness is another way to help fix procrastination. 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. That's why we say it's sort of a short-term mood repair. And so some of the estimates, the rough estimates we've gotten for that versus somebody who procrastinates on a fairly regular basis, almost to the point where it's like part of their personality, we can almost look at it like a personality trait, that percentage of the population in student samples, for example college and university students, it's estimated about 50% of college and university students procrastinate chronically, whereas about anywhere between 80% to 95% procrastinate at least once or more, but not necessarily to a large degree. Its why people have workout playlists. And people really think about habits in a very narrow way. Alice Boyes is a former clinical psychologist and the author of the book Stress Free Productivity. And this comes from a lot of the research that suggests that the type of tasks that we procrastinate on are ones that we don't enjoy. We all want to pick up little tips and tricks from people about their morning routines or whatever it is. And we can all do that with everything basically. "There hasn't been any convincing scientific evidence to say procrastination is the result of poor time management. And the research bears this out. You said, I'm going to do that. 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. Our sound editor is Chris Condayan. For the American Psychological Association, I'm Kim Mills. Whatever the causes, those other causes will be mixed in. And if somebody is not being productive and procrastinating, we think if we push them harder and get on their case, then they'll actually be more productive, rather than saying, Hey, it's okay and taking more of a compassionate approach. About the expert: Fuschia Sirois, PhD He doesnt do pictures. Mindfulness will help you be able to identify mental patterns, such as cognitive distortions. 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. There hasIt's a little bit controversial. That's Germany. Willpower is like a muscle. A lot of studies haven't found any difference and sincesome more recent evidence does suggest that men tend to procrastinate a little bit more than women. Look at the thoughts that come with that emotion. Its incredibly successful. 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. Then maybe a quick walk to clear your head. So there are some sort of useful forms of it but obviously it can also tie people in knots and lead to lots of self-criticism. Avoidance brings immediate relief from the distress associated with the task. . Advancing psychology to benefit society and improve lives. This automatically undercuts any excuses youll have because ultimately, the task, if youve signed up for it, aligns with your values. So sort of drilling down into understanding better that emotional side. You can use the same psychology behind that to prepare for even daily tasks. So that just prevents premature foreclosure one route. Planning more than only the first step can be its own form of procrastination. Procrastination is a common problem among people of all ages and backgrounds. What theyre much better at is actually using their emotions as fuel for their goals. They tend to also have more insecure job status, in other words, they're jumping from job to job and they never really advance much, and they actually make less money than people who don't chronically procrastinate. 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 that is a real challenge. Scan . And they showed the data suggesting that their program worked and they showed the mean scores on this measure of chronic procrastination at the beginning of them coming to the clinic and at the end so they could say, Oh look, there's some improvement. And I remember standing there with a colleague of mine and we both were looking at the scores on this measure of procrastination at time one, and the level of procrastination that they found troubling was well below the average national mean for the procrastination in the U.S. and Canada, but this was troubling in Germany. How does procrastination affect others around us? The trick is to have a lot of less important things on your list, so that by doing the less important things, you can avoid doing . And so what does this system look like? They have career issues, health issues, they're not fulfilling their dreams, they're not reaching their goals. 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. 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. And procrastination is a form of delay, so we can say that all procrastination is delay, but not all delay is procrastination. And really what that means is that procrastination is a very specific type of delay and how researchers in the field, how we define it so that we can go out and explore what are the consequences and causes of procrastination, we define procrastination as an unnecessary form of delay. We often dont start the project early enough to know how much time well actually need.Ive planned and organized how I will complete the task, its time for a break!. This creates a problematic cycle, one that erodes our self-confidence. Sirois: Well, I think that's really key. 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. ALICE BOYES: Yeah. Perceptions of procrastination range from being the topic of jokes to being associated with mental illness (Svartdal, Granmo, & Farevaag, 2018). Theres no pictures. So we think about having systems for tasks we do all the time, but we often dont think about having a system for novel tasks. I'm going to write that report by Friday. And that's the other thing too, it's usually a task that held some importance. So what does that mean? So often what we put off is stuff thats novel. (Message automatically replaces this text). Sometimes we just overestimate how much we can focus in the day. Mills: Given that these famous alleged procrastinators maybe weren't procrastinators at all, I thought it was interesting that there weren't a lot of women on the list that I saw. And so we label our downtime as procrastination. I naturally worry about things that could go wrong. Its really been great to have you on the show to talk about it. And then only later maybe realize that a different way of approaching it wouldve been more useful. Im Curt Nickisch. Adding your daily task unlocks deep insights about your psychology. How do you think about separating emotions from tasks? And then we do a bit of a calculation to get an idea of how many minutes they were procrastinating. CURT NICKISCH: So lets start down the line here and go through three different areas where we can really make a difference when it comes to changing how we work. Procrastination thrives in secrecy and isolation. And that's probably why there's a lot of research into it there too. For good! Potentially youre going to need more reflection after youve done something. And then yeah, what we see that as procrastination. I just need to work through that rather than getting hard on getting hard myself or beating myself up about this and making it worse, which actually can make it worse, the more that you get more critical about yourself about procrastinating, that can actually increase the chances that you'll continue to procrastinate. Yeah, I'm doing a few different things. We think about the immediate damage it can cause. Identifying the role of procrastination in your life. One is quickly testing assumptions. Im not advocating anyone adopt my system. ALICE BOYES: It can be both. Tackle the high-willpower tasks earlier in the day. The psychology of procrastination is complex, and there are several factors that contribute to this behaviour. Sirois: That is a really good question. Mills: Procrastination has to be a tough thing to study in a lab. For many of us, its a hard habit to break. There's nothing special about my struggle. What does emotion regulation have to do with procrastination? She explains the different causes of procrastination and shares three approaches to beat it: through habits, emotions, and thought patterns. It can also serve as a form of willpower training. If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, you can email us at speakingofpsychology@apa.org. 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? Fuschia Sirois, PhD, of Durham University, talks about why procrastination is an emotion regulation problem, not one of laziness or poor time management skills; how it can harm our mental and physical health; why it's so tied up with guilt and shame; and how self-compassion can help us overcome it. And the general gist of it is that habits make behaviors more automatic. Yes. And really that sort of perspective is more of looking at the symptoms of procrastination rather than the causes. Fuschia Sirois, PhD: Oh, thanks for having me, Kim. When we pay attention to ourselves through the gentle observation of mindfulness, we arent striving to fix or self-judge. It has an impact on our immune system, makes us more vulnerable to catching bugs and flus and colds and all kinds of other stress-related illnesses. CURT NICKISCH: Lets say its not an organizational culture issue or a team culture issue, but you do notice that theres procrastination as an issue within your team, among team members. CURT NICKISCH: Thats Alice Boyes, a trained clinical psychologist and the author of the book Stress Free Productivity. Where can you place it? And so it's not surprising that we find that people chronically procrastinate also tend to put off engaging in those health promoting behaviors that would really help their health overall. Dans ce podcast, j'aborde les deux thmatiques, notamment sous le prisme des troubles du comportement alimentaire. So why do people procrastinate? Alice, thanks for being here. 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. I just want to ask if perfectionism and procrastination are linked and are perfectionists more or less likely to procrastinate? But that again, it's an emotion regulation issue. Do you know what percentage of people are chronic procrastinators to the point where it's really affecting their health? Rooted in psychology, our personalized lessons help you develop strategies to overcome procrastination. How do you do that? And some very simple ways that the research has borne out and that takes the edge off them is forgiveness and self-compassion. 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. What do you find your cognitive distortions arewhat are the things you tell yourself to make yourself feel better about putting things off? So its also using that strength. They called it a procrastination ambulance, which was I think their way of translating saying it was like a clinic for procrastination at a university, for students who were really troubled by their procrastination. It would be more accurate to say, "I work under pressure." Can you explain what that is? ALICE BOYES: Yeah, Im not sure that its that black and white. And there's multiple layers of doing this. We get technical help from Rob Eckhardt. 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. Were all prone to it. If you need help finding a therapist, check out this episode of Life Kit. For Dr. Brammer, Imposter Syndrome came from his ability to excel in school, despite consistently cramming for assignments and tests. Other people have struggled with this task too. Well, I want to thank you for joining me today, Dr. Sirois. And help from a managers perspective, drawing that out of people is something that is a skill that any manager should have. Habits, emotions, and thought patterns. Get a pour-over, trendy coffee, plan a reward for when you complete the task, figure out what makes you want to follow through, and do it. Its the idea that you can use your emotions as fuel for your goals, that you dont need to reduce your negative emotions.