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This episode is all about procrastination and I'm joined by Professor Fuchsia Sirwa, who is a world-leading expert on the field of procrastination. We talk about all things related to procrastination, why we struggle with it, what the consequences of procrastination are, and what is the underlying emotional core of procrastination.

procrastination. By definition, there is no such thing as good procrastination. Procrastination can never be a good thing because there's always harmful consequences attached to it. We don't procrastinate because we have no sense of time. We don't procrastinate because we're lazy. It's going to the source and saying, what is the reason you're procrastinating? We don't procrastinate on things that are fun. Even though I've done loads of research and have written three of my book chapters about procrastination, just having that discussion with Professor Fuchsia was really interesting. And I'm actually going to go back through the edits of my book and add in a

a few bits just to kind of update it based on this conversation that we've just had. You know, the feeling of being a bad person because you're not productive. That's what happens when you procrastinate. I feel ashamed that I'm procrastinating. And so it makes it difficult to reach out and talk to people and say, I don't really know what to do here. Can you lay this task out for me? Especially if you've already started procrastinating. But that is the best thing to do.

Professor Fischer, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for coming on. Oh, my pleasure. Thanks so much for inviting me. So you are an expert in the field of procrastination. And so I wonder if we can start by defining what is procrastination? Yes, absolutely. I think that's a really great starting point because oftentimes people...

think they are procrastinating and they're not. They're just actually engaging in one of your kind of garden variety forms of delay. And so procrastination is a form of delay, but it's a very specific type of delay. So it's a delay that is unnecessary. So it's not like some family emergency came up and you put that task aside that you have to get done and done. It's also voluntary. So it's not that somebody told you to stop working on that and work on something else.

And it always involves intention, an intended task that's usually important, where you said, I'm going to do this. And you might even have a timeline set with that intention. And so we engage in that type of delay, either starting the task, or maybe we start and then we don't complete it. And we do that despite knowing that there's going to be negative consequences, either for ourself or for others.

And so that, I know it sounds very long-winded, but that's what makes procrastination a different type of delay rather than just putting something aside for good reasons or because you were told to and for a task that really isn't that important in the first place. Got it. One thing that I think

I think it's in Tim Pitchell's book, Solving the Procrastination Puzzle, the idea that there is no such thing as a good amount of procrastination. I wonder if you agree with that idea? Yeah. So by the definition I just said, that you engage in unnecessary voluntary delay of an intended task despite knowing there will be harmful consequences.

for yourself or others. So if we are taking that definition on board, by definition, there is no such thing as good procrastination. Procrastination can never be a good thing because there's always harmful consequences attached to it. And what are some of these harmful consequences?

So these range. I mean, the things that we think about most commonly, we think, oh, it's going to affect productivity. And yes, it does. It affects productivity. It affects performance. So numerous studies have been conducted with students over the past few decades. And what we find is that despite students saying, oh, I do my best work under pressure, they actually perform more poorly when they procrastinate. So grades are lower. Academic cheating and misconduct is associated with procrastination in students.

So those are the sort of things that we tend to think about typically, the productivity and academic performance sort of consequences. But what my research has been looking at over the past two plus decades is actually the health and well-being consequences of procrastination, which is not something we tend to think about. We tend to think of procrastination as a productivity or performance issue.

not something that actually is going to impact our well-being and even our physical health. Yeah. So what other health and what like how does podcast nation? I can imagine it in the sense of, you know, I intended to go to the gym yesterday and then 8pm roll rolled up and it was in my calendar and I was like, you know, I'm feeling a bit low energy today. I've got a bit of a pain in my hand. I'll just go out for dinner and have a more relaxing evening. Is that one of the

Yeah, that certainly is one of the health-related consequences of procrastination. So we can procrastinate on our health-related tasks like exercising or starting a diet or adhering to a diet or even seeking medical help. But it's not limited to that. And I think this is where it gets really interesting too is that, first of all, you understand when we procrastinate,

We don't like that we procrastinate. It's not something we go, oh, I'm so happy I just procrastinated, right? We feel bad about it. And we actually feel stressed because when we procrastinate, we know that time is ticking. And if we had already a short period of time to finish a task, especially if it's one where there's a really clear deadline involved,

that stress level is going to go up even more so. And so there's a high degree of stress. And so on the mental health side, what we see is higher levels of anxiety and depression associated with procrastination, especially chronic procrastination.

And if there's higher levels of stress, we know that stress does not do good things for the body, right? It can, in the short run, suppress your immune system. And my research has found that even in young, healthy students, students who chronically procrastinate tend to experience a higher number of acute health-related issues, such as flus and colds that are related to stress, insomnia, aches and pains, muscle tension, strains, so on and so forth.

So there's a higher degree of illness, stress, poor health behaviors, poor medical care seeking. All of these combined then can become, you know, cumulatively can add up to a recipe for poor health. So on the point of, you mentioned depression, anxiety, stress.

Do we have any evidence as to what direction the causality is? Now, that's a really good question. And I think, you know, I think these are dynamic and reciprocal and mutually reinforcing pathways. They have to be. You know, part of that has to do with sort of the causes of procrastination, which are involved in mood and sort of especially negative mood, which I'll get into shortly. But you can imagine, though, that if you're

If you are procrastinating on a regular basis, you're not going to feel good about yourself. You're going to get more anxious. Your levels of stress and anxiety go up because you're worried about the consequences of handing in that report late, of not meeting the deadline for the job application of your dream job. I mean, these sorts of things, not having that conversation with a loved one, that might make a huge difference to your relationship and the consequences of that.

not telling them some truth maybe they need to hear. So all these things sort of weigh on us in the background, and that can contribute to the anxiety and potentially also the depression. But when you're in an anxious and depressed state, it actually makes you more vulnerable for procrastination as well too. So you've got, I think, these bi-directional pathways.

So it becomes a sort of vicious cycle. Yes, very much so. And do we see any... So we mentioned the effects of stress in particular on like the negative physical effects of stress. Do we see any negative physical effects of like linked with procrastination that are not mediated by stress? I don't know if that makes sense. Yeah, I know what you're saying. Yeah, so...

In terms of the physical health pathway, so this is something I've looked at actually. I've tried to see which are the pathways. What we know is that any type of behavioral tendency, so if we think about

not just a single procrastination instance, which can create some stress, right? But if we look at the cumulative effect, which is where most of the evidence is focused on to understand these health effects, over time, that stress is going to add up. But over time, so can the poor health behaviors. And both of those will work with each other. When we're feeling more stress, we also tend to not engage in more health behaviors. And when we don't engage in the health-promoting behaviors, it actually increases our reactivity to stress.

Another pathway in there that I didn't mention is sleep too. So people procrastinate. I think I touched on it with the students. They tend to have higher insomnia, but there's numerous studies that now have shown that procrastination, especially chronic procrastination, is linked to poor sleep.

Sleep and stress get into a vicious cycle very easily too. So the evidence shows a bi-directional relationship there. And you can imagine with sleep and feeling too tired, in your example there, I'm feeling too tired to go to the gym, right? So you maybe didn't have a good night's sleep. So that gets put off too.

But some of my research has tried to see which of those pathways is the most potent one in understanding the links to stress. And we recently published a study, this is with Tim Pitchell, looking at students and their stress and health behaviors and illness over time, over three time points across the academic year. And even though we did find that procrastination was linked to poor health behaviors and poor health and higher stress at each time point,

When our statistician, Chris, went in and looked at a really interesting model to see, let's test all backwards and forwards models and see which is the best pathways here, right? And the strongest pathway for explaining that link was stress. That makes sense. So for someone listening to or watching this right now, what are some questions that they can ask themselves to see like,

Is procrastination really a problem in my life? I'm imagining there's some sort of procrastination inventory that psychologists would use, but what are some questions that people might find helpful to answer for themselves? Yeah, so you're right. So we do have these self-report inventories and typically these are...

I mean, there's ones that can measure momentary procrastination, like in an academic setting, for example. But there's also ones that get at, as I was saying, a behavioral tendency, which is more like a personality trait. So we can look at procrastination or chronic procrastination or procrastination as a personality trait by getting people to answer these questions. So things like I'm always...

saying I'm putting off things and saying I'll do it tomorrow. So, you know, these types of questions as opposed to we also have the opposite which is, oh, when I get a task I try and take care of it as soon as possible. So if you don't agree with that statement, you say, no, not too often, then that might also put you at a higher score in terms of assessing your procrastination or chronic procrastination level, shall we say.

Got it. And so presumably there's a correlation between chronic procrastination and lack of conscientiousness as the personality trait? Yes, yes. So this procrastination sort of as a chronic personality style, if you like, or behavioral tendency has been linked in and looked at in relation to these big five personality factors. And the two that it was most strongly related to was conscientiousness negatively, but also neuroticism positively.

But it's interesting, though. It's not conscientiousness as a whole. So there was initially some debate. Well, is it just low conscientiousness? Someone's just careless and they don't plan things. Actually, it is just one component of conscientiousness that tends to be most strongly related to procrastination. Negatively, of course, again. And this has to do with the planning component. So some of the other, the discipline and all that, it's not actually...

That's strongly correlated. The strongest component of conscientiousness is the one that has to do with forward thinking and planning. Ah, okay. So people who are not very good at forward thinking and planning or tend not to do it so much also tend to be procrastinators. They tend to be more prone to procrastination, and there's some good reasons for that too.

Which are? So, yeah, so we have sort of suspense, right? So, I mean, this is where Tim and I about a decade or so ago looked at the existing research and we formulated this new view of procrastination as being what we call based on sort of an issue of temporal mood regulation. In other words, a prioritization of short-term mood regulation over long-term goals. Hmm.

And the idea here is that when you have a task that's unpleasant or difficult, or maybe there's not anything inherently difficult about that task, but something about that task triggers within you self-doubt, perfectionism, negative feelings, you know,

Basically, you're in the same negative state as if that was a horrible task. It may not actually be a horrible task. It's just your interaction with that task that makes it feel horrible to you. So that aversiveness of the task, whatever its source in that relationship with you and the task, is what prompts people to procrastinate.

And so we see procrastination, what we suggest is procrastination then is a form of avoiding coping. So if you don't have that internal good mood management skills, and no one likes to feel unpleasant, we don't like anxiety and stress, we don't wanna do something right away, which is why we develop emotion regulation skills.

But if you don't have a good repertoire of those skills or maybe the intensity of that emotion related to that task is too high, you might default to procrastination as a way of managing those emotions. So that's where the prioritization comes in. Now what's priority is the goal of managing your mood.

Not achieving that task. So you're not thinking about that task anymore. You're thinking about right now, I don't want to feel this way. I don't like this, the frustration and the self-doubt and everything else that's coming out. So you take that task, you put it aside. You might even engage in something more pleasurable. And now you've got immediate mood relief. You've just managed your mood. And that is the essence of procrastination.

But in doing so, you're not thinking down the road. You're not thinking about the consequences. You're only thinking about right now. You're prioritizing the goal of managing your immediate mood over the goal of achieving your long-term goal. Is that a, I mean, is that always a problem? Or is there like a threshold beyond which you'd be like, okay, I've got a problem here?

Well, okay, so I think when we're talking about intensity of things, so if something's really just like, I don't know what to do, yeah, if you put it aside. But if in that time putting aside, you're then trying to find ways to approach that task so it's less of an issue for you, then that's different. That might be problem solving. That might be initially procrastination. Mm-hmm.

And this is where you start splitting hairs here a little bit. So if you're actually going, "I can't deal with that right now because I'm just too stressed by it. I'm putting it aside. I'm going to take a breath. How can I manage that?" So now if you go into problem-solving mode, see, that's different, right?

But that's not usually what happens when we do that. We usually are just so much reinforced from the positive relief we have of not having to deal with that task. Because we put it aside that we often go on and do other things and kind of just forget about it. Or we go, hey, future me is going to take care of it.

Future me is going to have all the self-discipline in the world. Future me is going to know how to manage that stress that I can't manage right now. Future me becomes a superhero, at least in our minds. And that's future me tomorrow, next week, next month, whatever the timeline we put it off to. The problem is all we're doing when we do that is we make future me our beast of burden.

because the future me now has to deal with all those unfinished tasks, rushing deadlines and all the other stress. So everything just gets amped up. It's quite a stressful place to be when that happens. Yeah, well, this is why we see such high levels of stress and people who chronically procrastinate. Do we have a sense of what proportion of people struggle with this?

So it's a great question. I think it's different in different populations and there's also cultural differences as well too. So in the student population, it's been estimated that at least occasionally 80 to 95% of students procrastinate. So quite frequent. But 50% do so chronically.

Oh, wow. That's a lot. That is a lot. My goodness. Yeah, that's quite a bit. Yeah. And that's our best guess and estimates. And I think one of the reasons I study so much in students too is that, you know, in an academic setting, we have clear

guidelines as to when something should be done. It's harder to track procrastination when there isn't a clear deadline or it's an internally set deadline, but that doesn't mean that procrastination isn't happening. So this is why when you look at adult populations, it can range anywhere from 15 to 25%, again, depending on where the study was conducted.

And then you see cultural differences as well, too, where some cultures are more forgiving and kind of tolerant of procrastination and other cultures are not. What sort of cultures are in each camp?

So, you know, we've done some international research conferences, which is great because we get to see these different perspectives on procrastination. These are conferences that are just on procrastination. And I always tell people, oh, we have them every other year because, you know, we just can't get around to it every year. But that's not the truth. It takes two years to be able to get enough evidence to make things new at each conference. Yeah.

So some of our colleagues from South America and Peru, basically procrastination is very much like, you know, that's okay, manana, right? It's more acceptable and you see it across all levels. So there's more tolerance for it there. And then you see other cultures and specifically ones where there actually is a lot of research

going on on procrastination where you can tell the tolerance is less. And I didn't recognize this until one of the procrastination conferences a couple of years back. Mm-hmm.

And there were some posters the students had out, and there were some German colleagues that had the poster out, and they were talking about this, what they called it, procrastination ambulance. That was a direct translation. It was kind of like this emergency on-wheels clinic for students who were distressed by their procrastination. And so they had sort of a regimen for them to go through, and they had some evidence to suggest that this regimen that they, you know,

had the students engage with, helped decrease the procrastination levels. And I remember with a colleague of mine, and we were looking at the mean levels of procrastination at the beginning and at the end, and indeed they had gone down. But the start levels, in terms of mean levels on this common procrastination scale, the Lay's General Procrastination Scale,

The mean level that students were so distressed about in Germany was well below the North American and the UK means for chronic procrastination, suggesting that there's probably less of a tolerance in places like Germany and that where punctuality and sort of sticking to deadlines is a little bit more valued. That's interesting.

Have you seen any research around South Asian countries, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, that sort of thing? There was some colleagues at the most recent conference that were presenting evidence. It certainly is an issue there too in terms of comparing mean levels. I don't think that's been done yet, but that is, I think, an interesting area to look at. Okay. That's interesting. Yeah. Because one thing that's

Well, one thing that comes to my mind, I don't know how reasonable this is, but sort of propensity to stick to deadlines and keep to time. I'm from Pakistan, and if you get invited to a wedding and it says 3 p.m., everyone's going to be there by like half past five. And it'll say the food's being served at four, but it'll be served at seven. And it's just an accepted part of the culture. And yet, I went to one of my English friends' weddings for the first time a couple of years ago.

And I just had no idea that 12 o'clock meant like the bride's literally arriving at 12. Oh, oh my goodness. Wow, I'm the last person here. I, you know, you know, I rocked up at quarter past thinking that like, everyone's gonna be an hour and a half late. And I wonder if there's some something there around kind of tolerance of procrastination.

Yeah, I mean it could be similarly. I think so one of the things is we do sort of look at on the surface anyways of procrastination as a time management issue, which by the way I will say flat out it is not. Okay, so the evidence on time management strategies for managing procrastination, the evidence is equivocal at best and certainly not long lasting. Because we look at somebody who's procrastinating, they're not getting their tasks done on time, right? So

Obviously, they can't manage their time properly, right? So these are the sorts of superficial conclusions that we can come to when we see someone who's procrastinating. So in terms of deadlines and not meeting them, I think there's some similar issues, but it's not necessarily the same, right? So people who procrastinate aren't necessarily not punctual. Hmm.

It's a slightly different issue there. It's time, both non-punctuality, for example, and procrastination have an element of sort of temporal thinking involved in them, but it is sort of a different, slightly different kettle of fish. That makes sense. So surely time management is like the first step, right? So, okay. So for example, let's say I'm procrastinating. I don't know. Let's use the gym as an example.

If I like, like for me, the first step, if I want to get something done is like, I'll put it on the calendar. And if it's in the calendar, then I know it's on the calendar. And then if I'm procrastinating from it while it's on the calendar, then I'll take, I'll think, okay, what's going on emotionally here. But until it's on the calendar, it's, it could just be that I just haven't made the time for it. Do you think that's a reasonable strategy or like, what am I?

Okay. So, I mean, there's different approaches. And I guess my perspective is that, you know, if you take that time management and some of these other approaches, you know, self-control, these types of things, they're all approaching the problem from up here at the superficial level. Okay. Right? They're not actually addressing why. Right? So we don't procrastinate because we have no sense of time.

We don't procrastinate because we're lazy, for example. I mean, one has nothing to do with the other people. Procrastinate, get very busy with all kinds of other things that they shouldn't be doing rather than the thing they should be doing, which is kind of clear evidence there, I think, of not being related to laziness. But, I mean, it's going to the source and saying, what is the reason you procrastinate? We don't procrastinate on things that are fun, right? We don't procrastinate the stuff that feels good, generally.

That's right. Procrastinating is stuff that feels bad. Stuff where the mood involves we're having difficulty, we're struggling with it, difficult task-related emotions. And so the first step then, if you want to be effective, is to actually look at those tasks, those emotions. Why, you know, you could probe and say, okay, first, I think first is what are you feeling, right? And is it something about the task?

which then maybe you can rearrange or reframe the task to make it less unpleasant, right? Or how you look at the task to make it less unpleasant. Or is it something about you, right? Is it something that's bringing up old feelings from the past that are uncomfortable? Is it bringing up insecurities? Is it bringing up self-doubt? Is it bringing up perfectionistic tendencies and fear of failure and all these other things, right? And so that's the place to start,

Because once you start becoming aware of those, then you can start to manage those feelings and use the strategies that are appropriate for managing the different emotions involved too. Time management is a band-aid solution.

It's not going to actually solve your problem. And if it's something, a deeper issue, then you're going to continue to procrastinate anytime you encounter that task. No matter how much, you know, you could actually get tied up in writing to-do lists and spending all this time blocking off your calendar instead of doing the thing that you're supposed to do. Fooling yourself into thinking that you're actually managing it when in fact you're not.

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Or is that too much of an oversimplification? No, I mean, I think, I mean, fear is often involved. That's a very strong emotion. Sometimes, you know, I think they trigger our different fears, but, you know,

I mean, this gets more into sort of a philosophical sort of area in terms of we're talking about what's at the root of all emotions and negative emotions, right? Sometimes it's sadness, right? And, you know, that might be a different type of emotional experience, right? And so you just don't, and you might experience that as a demotivation. I'm just not motivated to do this because it,

it triggers a deeper sadness in you. Maybe something where you're like, why am I doing this at all? Or what's the purpose in my life? Or, you know, like, so that's not fear-based per se, right? So I think it can be a full range and often it's a complex range. And some of the research that, um,

one of my former PhD students did, also suggested it can sometimes be mixed. Sometimes we can be both excited about a task and kind of like, "Oh, I can't wait to do this and really prove myself," and at the same time fearful or anxious or nervous about that task. And depending on how we manage that balance, you know, and I think one of the things that some of the research has shown that people who are prone to procrastination are more sensitive to those negative emotions.

Areas of the brain, the amygdala, which is sort of the threat detection center, right? That area of the brain is qualitatively different in people who are prone to procrastination versus those that are not, suggesting, again, a sensitivity to negative stimuli. And that includes the negative emotions that they have around a task.

Yeah, I definitely want to talk more about this emotion stuff. To what extent is uncertainty or a lack of clarity about the goal or the task, to what extent does that come into it? Because that strikes me as slightly different to the emotion stuff. No, actually, it's linked right into it. Oh, is it? Yeah, yeah, good one. I was going to get to that. Thank you. No, yeah. So, I mean, so think about it, right? If you have a task that's not well structured, it's uncertain, what do you feel?

Uncertainty, anxiety. Stress. Yeah, like, I'm not really sure. It's a big mountain. It's like study chemistry. What does study chemistry... Like, oh, the textbook's too big. It's emotions. Yeah. It's not just thoughts, right? So we can think about things in a way that trigger the emotions.

It's not necessarily that the emotions are coming first, but the way we think about a task or even the way a task is laid out to us. So going back to where I said, okay, what's the first thing to do? Well, probe the emotions. What do you feel? I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by this task because it's so big and it's so uncertain. There's so many moving parts and I have no idea if I'm making progress or where to begin. So that then would identify that something about that task

is not clear enough to allow you to engage with it in a way that doesn't invoke these feelings of uncertainty and stress and anxiety and self-doubt and everything. And so then, okay, right, let's get some clarity. Ask somebody, what do I need to do? Can you lay this out? Can you give me sort of a little bit more detail? And this happens often with tasks that are new to us that we've not done before. We have no clue. We can relate to them to things we've done before, but then again...

There's always that sort of gnawing uncertainty that is this really what I should be doing? And so getting clarity around the task, getting structure around the task, that brings down all those emotions. And even though it might be the first time doing it, okay, there's a little bit of uncertainty, but I can manage that little bit of uncertainty versus that large amount of uncertainty because I don't have a clue at all.

So that's a really good place to start. Yeah. So what sort of things can people do to, like, if, if let's say someone listening to this is about to embark on a thing and they're like, they recognize, oh,

uncertainty is involved here. What are some ways to sprinkle in more clarity into the task? So I think, first of all, getting information, talking to other people. And this is often a tough one, especially if someone's prone to procrastination and has found themselves procrastinating because of task uncertainty, because there's a lot of shame around procrastination and a lot of guilt around procrastination. So even though we might have that immediate mood relief,

Though we know the task is still sitting there and we realize that, you know, we feel bad that we should be doing it. But I think the other thing too that I hadn't spoken about is that, you know, we have –

We have these social norms around productivity right now, right? Do more in less time. Like how many books are there out there that tell you like, you know, how many more things you can squeeze into a day and how to be uber productive, you know, all this type of culture now that really values productivity. And so we have an unspoken cultural norm that if you're a productive person, you're a good person. If you're not a productive person, you're a bad person. And those norms,

norms, the feeling of being a bad person because you're not productive, that's what happens when you procrastinate. They're triggered. You know, okay, I'm going against what society expects of me. I feel ashamed that I'm procrastinating. And so it makes it difficult to reach out and talk to people and say, I don't really know what to do here. Can you lay this task out for me? Especially if you've already started procrastinating. But that is the best thing to do. And I think this is

where we're talking about procrastination and managing it a little bit too and where to start with things is we also, we need to be aware that being hard on people when they procrastinate or anything that induces that guilt or that shame is only gonna make people make it worse and make people procrastinate more. So we need to have an open culture where people can come and ask.

questions without feeling judged. Yeah. You know, and without feeling that that's no, you shouldn't, you should just know what you're doing, even though you've never done this before. Right. Yeah. So I think, yeah, reaching out and asking for help first off, or, you know, right when the task is put in front of you, make sure you've got that clarity, talk to the person. This is actually, I think one of the reasons why there was not that many studies that went on, but there was a couple of studies that looked at procrastination levels during the pandemic. And there was a bit of a spike.

And one of the reasons I suspect, there's other reasons relating to sort of background stress levels, but I think one of the reasons too in a work environment is that everyone was remote. So if you're in an office and you've got this task and you're like, I don't know what to do, you just walk over and you talk to somebody. Hey, I'm not really sure what I'm doing here. It's the first time I've had to write this sort of report. Am I structuring it the right way? You get advice on the spot.

What happens when everybody's remote? You can't just jump in on a Zoom thing and ask them. You could try and email them, but it's a lot harder to get that instant advice. And so a lot of people were left with doing things and feeling a lot of uncertainty, on top of all the uncertainty of living during a really dangerous time, you know, in terms of people's –

know, security with their health and their well-being and their economic security and a variety of other things, social connections being cut off. So yeah, anyways, I've gone off on a tangent there. No, that's so interesting. I think, yeah, just actually getting clarity on what the task is, what the goal is. I find it useful to understand like the why behind the goal, because often like a manager or someone will give us a task and they'll have a lot of context in their mind, but without the context,

it's easy to go down the wrong route or think, I'm not quite sure why I'm doing this. Yeah, so that's a really, really important starting place is to make sure you've got some clarity, you know exactly, or have at least enough of an idea and you've got the information you need too. So you might say, oh, this is a structure and steps, but if you don't have all the information to help you complete those steps, you're going to get to that spot where you go,

I don't share what I'm doing now anymore. Right? You know, so you can have clarity at the beginning and then making sure you've got the resources and the information available to you so that if you reach a point where there's a less amount of clarity about what you're doing, you can actually have those resources to help guide you. Nice. Yeah.

I mean, for context, this might be interesting for you to hear. So I'm writing one of these productivity books, which I finished yesterday. Wow, congratulations. Thank you. Handed to the copy editor. The title is Feel Good Productivity.

And the middle three chapters are about procrastination and prompted by my reading of some of Tim's work, which I suspect is also some of your work, just sort of really leaning into this emotional side of procrastination. And so the first chapter in the procrastination section is about uncertainty. And so the solution is clarity. The second chapter, we're still not entirely sure what to call it. Initially, it was called, it was about anxiety or it was really trying to get at the emotional side. And then this was a week where it was...

I think at one point we called the chapter fear and sometimes at some point we called it negative emotion. And so we're still trying to figure out the naming of that middle chapter. But then the final chapter in the procrastination section is about overcoming inertia and just getting started, like taking that next action step, just doing the thing for five minutes. Because once you've gotten started with something, it's generally easier to continue going.

But it's that middle bit that's like trying to address all of the emotions, but like in a pithy sounding chapter title. Does anything come to mind while we're here? Yeah. I mean, just, yeah, difficult, difficult emotions. I mean, I mean, that's what they are. They're difficult. We struggle with them, right? Yeah. But I mean, I would, I mean, that sounds great. I would argue though.

Even though you've put uncertainty, that's still emotion-based. And even at the end, I know that's Tim's favorite thing, just go. Motivation follows action, not the other way around. But what that does is it short-circuits all the thoughts that can stir up the negative emotions.

And so you're still addressing the emotions when you do that because you don't give yourself a chance to basically start going, well, what if I don't get it right? And what happens if it's not perfect? And, oh, I'm never going to do this. And those types of ruminative or procrastinatory types of thoughts, they dial up the negative emotions that are just going to push you further away from that task. So they are still tapping into that same thing.

Emotional core.

I'm just going to, if it's all right with you, I'll just run you through my method and you can tell me what you agree with and what you potentially disagree with, because we still have like a month to make the final changes. So the way that I'm trying to introduce this is that we all have these things that we struggle to do.

And society tells us that the solution is like a bunch of different options. So option number one is motivation. This is, you know, if you wanted it enough, you would do it. Just like if you wanted that thing more than you wanted to breathe, then you'd find a way to make it happen. Where there's a will, there's a way, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. No pain, no gain. Yeah, all of that. And then the issue with motivation is that it waxes and wanes. Sometimes I feel very motivated to go to the gym. Other times I don't. And so if I'm pegging my...

going to the gym on motivation, it's not particularly sustainable. So then some people would say, well, the problem is that you're relying on motivation. Instead of relying on motivation, rely on discipline and willpower and grit and persistence and all of those things.

And you'll get like Navy SEALs being like discipline equals freedom. Like, you know, you just got to... And it's a very sort of warmongering almost like battle language around discipline. But then what I'm kind of trying to propose or slash explain in these three chapters is...

There's a third method and, you know, we're kind of calling it the unblock method. It's like figure out what are the blockers that are blocking you from doing the task and then address the blockers. And then A, at least you'll know what it is and B, you won't have to rely on motivation or discipline. Maybe there's a little bit of discipline to just take that next action step, but it's discipline in small doses rather than the entire strategy. And so we're saying that the three blockers are uncertainty, anxiety, and inertia. And if you address them one at a time,

fundamentally you're addressing the underlying, hopefully, the thing that's blocking you. How does that land for you?

Yeah, I mean, I think that sounds all right. Again, I'm very situated in sort of that, because I've looked at all the research and even the brain imaging research, and it all supports this view, which is that it's emotions first underneath. So what's blocking you? Yeah. So that's true. So you can remove roadblocks, but how did that block get there in the first place? Right? Yeah. Right? So what brought that block into being? Yeah.

The negative emotions. The emotions and something about the task, something about yourself. And I see it's an interaction between you and the task. Ooh, nice. Yeah. So it's that interaction between you and the task that gives rise to these negative emotions that then creates blockages, right?

So, you know, you can start telling yourself that, oh, it's not the perfect time and I've got to be more motivated. And that's where sort of the inertia kind of kicks in. But that we keep ourselves stuck in that inertia through the thoughts that keep stirring up these negative emotions. Anxiety and fear is there, but there can be other types of emotions too. And certainly that hits closer, you know, to the core. What was the first one again? Uncertainty.

That's just getting clarity over it. Yeah. So that's more about the aspects of the task. Yes, quite. So something about the task that's eliciting the emotions. The second one is more about something within yourself. Yeah.

That's coming up. And then the last one is more of a, okay, so stop doing things that keep stirring up these emotions and just get on with it, right? So you've got to just short circuit that pathway. And engage the positive emotions. And that's what that last strategy does is you're engaging the positive emotions.

You know, we've done some research to show that actually it's not just high levels of negative emotions or difficult emotions that drive procrastination. It's also low levels of positive emotions. Right? So, you know, we had a study where we had students who had to study over a 48-hour period and we had adults who were trying to make progress.

you know, healthy changes in their life over a six-month period. In both instances, what we found is that, A, people who were prone to procrastinate were less likely to achieve their goals. Big surprise there. But they also not just felt more frustrated and found their, you know, their goal less pleasant, right?

But they found it less enjoyable. So there's lower levels of positive emotions. And those positive emotions, that link between seeing this doesn't make me happy enough, right, was amplified in the presence of temptations.

especially social temptations. Okay, nice. Yeah, so if there was something, and you can see it's a relative thing. Here's this task I have to do, which I rate really low in terms of how pleasant and how fun and enjoyable it's going to be. Here's this other thing that looks really super enjoyable, and it's going to look even more enjoyable relative to this task. So relative to that, your task starts looking less and less pleasant, and then you're going to be like, I'm not feeling good about this task, and it doesn't look like it's going to bring me any joy. So I'm going to go to the thing that's going to bring me joy.

And of course they procrastinate. One thing I've often heard in this context is, well, some of us just have to do things that we don't like. Like, I don't like paying my taxes. I don't like paying the bills, but I've just got to do it. Like, how does that fit into your...

Yeah, and I mean, this is the thing. I mean, most of us will go out and for certain tasks, we have to do it. And we just do. But in those instances, I would say there's a couple of things going on. You've

realize that you can manage those feelings. You have confidence in your ability to manage those feelings, perhaps because you have a good repertoire of emotion regulation skills. You're able to find some humor in it. You're able to reframe it in a way that's not just unpleasant, but that actually is meaningful. One of my former PhD students, she did a really nice experiment to show quite clearly that when you ask people to frame a task that they were at risk for procrastinating,

in a more meaningful way compared to someone who was just told to write something about the task. And she followed up with them, I think it was like 36 to 48 hours later. They procrastinated on average two hours less just from writing out, this task is important, valuable to me because this task is important for my connecting to others, people, because this task is important for my personal growth, because simple things, just finding that meaningfulness

was enough to actually reduce that tendency to procrastinate. Some people just have a good range of skills or are well-practiced at managing those difficult emotions. They might

might engage in this sort of meaning making, for example, or they might find other ways to look at the task in a different way so that it feels less stressful to them. But I think the other thing we need to consider, and this is something that I've just recently written a paper about, and I think it again comes on the heels of the pandemic and some of that research showing that people procrastinate more, is that sometimes though, if we think about procrastination as a coping mechanism,

method for dealing with these difficult task-related emotions, right? What happens when you're in a situation where you've got a whole bunch of other

things to cope with, like a pandemic and the health of yourself and your family, your financial well-being and job insecurity and uncertainty of when this thing's going to end and all this sort of thing. So that's going to eat up all your coping resources or most of them. And now you've got this nasty report that you've never written before. You're not uncertainty. You don't know what you're doing. You can't go over and ask somebody at the desk because you're working remotely. And what are you going to do?

Well, quick and easy, dirty method. It works. You're going to procrastinate it. Right? You've just managed your mood and you've saved, you know, basically protected those coping resources, those limited coping resources you have to deal with all the other big background stuff. And that's, I think, the other thing we have to think about too. Sometimes we may find ourselves procrastinating because there's a lot of background stress going on in our lives. And it just becomes...

a convenient way, although albeit not a great way, of dealing with things. And from that perspective, I think that's where we need to be compassionate, both to ourselves and others, when we see them struggling with procrastination. Maybe there's something else going on in the background of their life. It's not strict discipline, do this and just get on with it. There's...

And it's so many people do this and there's a reason we do it and it's instantly rewarding. It's convenient, especially in circumstances where there is a lot of background stress. And I think we have to kind of get out of seeing it as a character flaw and instead see it as just simply part of being human. What, if any, is the role of discipline in this? Like what is discipline like from a psychology professor's perspective and what's the role in getting things done?

Yeah, I mean, so I think we often kind of conflate discipline with self-control or willpower even. And these are, you know, willpower. Now we're getting into the realm of philosophy, right? Oh, yeah. You know, what is willpower? What is the will? Where does the power come from that allows us to sort of move forward on things? Yeah.

I think, you know, with discipline, one way of looking at discipline is that, you know, you set up habits for yourself and you stick to those habits. So it has to do with sort of adhering to a set of guidelines, more generally speaking. Willpower is slightly different because, you know, and this is something that is hotly contested. I remember one evening I sat with a colleague of mine and he was like,

How come there's no studies on willpower? It's like, well, how do we even define it in the first place? How are we going to measure this thing? It's just this sort of entity that we understand is existing as somehow you should just do it and bring yourself forward. Yeah.

And I think, again, discipline, all this, you know, from a psychological perspective is probably the closest construct having to do with self-control, being able to self, which includes being able to self-regulate, which includes being able to self-regulate your emotions. So it's not just emotions, but thoughts and behaviors, et cetera. But again, I would say that that is another layer on top of it, right? So we can talk about

Ground zero for procrastination as being some difficulty in managing emotions. And all of us, like you said, we all encounter tasks that are difficult. Some people have, they bring, they might either have less, was it less, higher tolerance for those negative emotions, perhaps combined with

greater practice and capacity to then just say, yeah, this is uncomfortable, but I'm going to push myself through it. That's where the self-control comes in. So it's an asset. It's a resource you can draw upon when you're struggling with those emotions.

And I always try to make that clear because you often see, well, people with poor self-control procrastinate. Well, yes, of course, because they're not easily just giving up on managing those emotions. They're struggling and working through. They're keeping that focus and they're also...

You know, the same areas of the brain that has to do with self-control or also prefrontal cortex and that also are involved in similar regions anyways to being able to think ahead and thinking about the consequences of our actions. We often think of the opposite of self-control as being impulsivity, right? Yeah.

So we can't control, we just follow our impulses wherever they go. Impulse shopping, impulse eating, you know, nothing. I'm munching away. Impulse eating. I sold the grapes. I haven't had a grape in a while. There you go. But, you know, so we think of that as being undisciplined, right, or poor self-control. And, you know, there's some, you know, some research that suggests that, you know,

All procrastination is just impulsivity. Well, being impulsive doesn't cause you to procrastinate because if that was true, you'd procrastinate on even things that were fun. Yeah, true. Right? So what impulsivity does, it layers over. You've got this task that's difficult. You're struggling with the emotions. You don't know how to manage them. Instead of staying focused on how can I manage these emotions, if you're more impulsive, you're going to be more easily distracted by things within the environment that will offer you a quick emotional fix. Got it.

Right? And that's where the impulsivity comes in. So it facilitates, just as digital distractions and so many other things in the environment do, it facilitates procrastination but does not cause it per se.

An image that's coming to my mind is that it's, if emotions are ground zero for procrastination, it's almost like the emotions are sort of the hump we have to get over to get started with a task. That's right. And for some people, their level of discipline is, or the level of self-control is higher than that hump.

And so they can be like, you know what, the hump's there, but like I'm sufficiently self-controlled to get over the hump. But for other people, the self-control level is below where the hump is. Yeah. And so the only option there is to then actually try and reduce the size of the hump by addressing the emotions and getting back.

developing the skills of emotional regulation. Yeah, that's a cool way to visualize it, I think. And that's just it. If you've got that greater degree of self-control, you can sit with those emotions and work through them and struggle through them because you're not going to be

wanting to just avoid, right? Self-control helps reduce a tendency to avoid things, including those negative emotional experiences, and focuses you in on, okay, what do I need to do to manage these emotions?

right so it also helps you kind of say here's the problem i need to solve yeah right and it's still problem doesn't make the problem go away and and again it could be as simple as oh i've just got to look at this task this way and find a meaningful thing about oh if i rearrange this task this way it's actually not that stressful overall um the other thing that can happen though too and this is like sort of going back to the the ground zero with emotions and i think it's a really good example of it is often we procrastinate

Not because of the emotions we're experiencing right now with that task. They might actually be fairly manageable. But because of the emotions that we imagine that we're going to experience once we start engaging with the task.

Ah, okay, yeah. You know? Have you ever been in that situation before where you've had something and you're like, I don't know what this is. I've not done it before. Oh, boy, this is going to be really hard. This is going to be really stressful. I think when I start doing this, I'm just going to get so frustrated. I'm just going to want to give it up. I'm not even going to start it.

So that is actually, that's an interesting phenomena emotionally because now what we're doing is we're sort of time traveling. And we're doing some emotional time traveling as well. And we're picturing ourselves in the future with this task and trying to sort of simulate what our emotional experiences are going to be. Big problem with that.

That, by the way, is that particular phenomenon is called effective forecasting. And the problem with that is that numerous scientific studies have shown that as human beings, we're terrible at actually being able to predict accurately our emotional states. We tend to see those emotional states as being way more intense than what they're going to be and lasting way longer than what they're going to be too. Yeah.

And so that becomes a bit of an issue as well, as I call making emotional mountains out of molehills, right? Yeah. Like it's usually not that bad once you get started, but it's easy to convince yourself it's going to be really bad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what we're doing is we're experiencing those emotions. We're time traveling ahead and thinking that those emotional states are going to be really difficult. And they never really are, mostly because we forget about something that, I really love the label of this, we forget about our emotional immune system. Oh, okay.

Yeah.

help bring down the intensity and the duration of those emotional experiences that we might have when we're struggling with the task. But we forget about our emotional immune system because we don't have the context. We're sort of seeing a sliver of time with this task, and we forget about all the contextual elements around it that are going to be there to actually support us and make it actually not anywhere near half as bad as what we're imagining it to be. Nice.

I'd love to move on to talking about the things that we can do if we're struggling with procrastination. But one question before we go there. Is there any evidence that we struggle more with procrastination later in the day? I guess I'm thinking of like the whole ego depletion thing and like the controversy around that. Like if you've just had a high glucose meal, you're less likely to...

Yeah, the whole fatigue thing. Yeah, so there's still a lot of controversy around that ego depletion and whether it is actually a thing. And I don't, I think that's not something I personally, you know, as a psychological scientist would say is a thing that actually comes into play. I think fatigue can certainly make it easier, right? So if you think about it, if you've got something to struggle with, these emotions, and you're tired, right, to cope, right?

You're going to put it aside. Right? But I don't think we can assume that everyone feels more tired later in the day. Right? Because there has been some work done on morningness and eveningness. Yep. Um, and some people are more tired earlier in the day and more alive later in the day. Um,

and different diurnal rhythms on that. So I think it has more to do with individual diurnal rhythms of when you feel more energized than that. If you are more depleted than that, it's going to be easier to put something aside. But are you actually, when you're doing that, I would ask, are you actually procrastinating or are you just making a wise choice that, you know what, I'm too tired to do a good job on this right now. And so I'm going to put it aside, but first thing tomorrow morning I'm going to get up and do it. And you get up the next morning and you do it. That's actually not procrastinating.

Yeah. That's just good time management, I guess. Well, yeah. It's just prioritization of your goals and your energy levels and everything. Yeah.

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there's that whole theory around, um, eat that frog, you know, if you're struggling with something, just do it first thing in the morning and then you'll have it out of the way. What? The whole Mark Twain thing. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's fairly old school, but yeah. What are your thoughts on that theory? Um, I,

You know, works for some, doesn't work for others, right? Because if you're someone who is prone to procrastination and, you know, your emotion regulation skills are more precarious or more taxed or less developed or you're less confident about them, taking on the big thing, it could be just the thing that triggers you to go,

No way. I can't do this. It's just too much. You can't manage those feelings. And you may need just to step into things with smaller things first to build the confidence, right? And build that sense that, yeah, I am actually doing things. Which is why, you know, taking a large task, building it into small bits. You know, they always say, well, that works because it builds your confidence. It does that.

But more importantly, what it does is it takes away the stress. Yeah. Right? Large tasks that are overwhelming seem stressful. Breaking into small bits takes it down to a less stressful, manageable bite. And so for some people, that strategy works. I would say that others can go in and do the hard thing first. You know, that's that.

That's kind of like not sitting and letting those thoughts sort of drum up all those emotions. And those people probably have higher levels of self-control as well. So they're probably less prone to be procrastinating in the first place anyways. Makes sense. So what are some of the most effective strategies that you've come across for overcoming procrastination? So there's a couple of different approaches. I think if it's something to do with the task, as we talked about, getting clarity on tasks that are uncertain, if the task is too big, and

and isn't structured well, give it some structure, break the task down into small pieces. So all these things can kind of bring down and quiesce those potentially high negative or difficult emotions that might prompt you to procrastinate. I think there's other dynamics that go on too, especially once we start procrastinating that are really good to kind of be aware of in terms of when you're trying to manage the procrastination. And so

You know, how you see the task, obviously the meaningfulness we just spoke about, that's a really effective strategy that can certainly help. But I think when you're dealing with the task as more, especially with the emotions and you're really struggling with those emotions, an important thing is to actually, you

you know, not be so hard on yourself. Like don't do anything that's going to generate more negative emotions or throw more layers of negative difficult emotions onto something that you're already procrastinating because you've got difficult motions in there in the first place, right? So a couple of key strategies, and again, it depends on whether you've already procrastinated or if you're struggling with a task, right? So if you're struggling with a task,

I would say that self-compassion is an effective strategy. And that's basically recognizing that to struggle with things is part of a learning process, it's part of being human, not getting it right on the first time. And that's often people, they start things and then they realize...

Oh, it's not going the way I planned. Right. And that's when they can abandon it because they've made a mistake and the perfectionism kicks in and everything. That's when you need to be self-compassionate. And so self-compassion kicks in when we're struggling with our own personal failings, shortcomings, difficult thoughts about ourselves and the task, etc.,

And basically, it's just being kind rather than critical, rather than saying, what's wrong with me? Why can't I get this right? And recognizing that this is something everybody does. People tend to be critical, but also they all struggle. And that's just part of being human. And then not getting over-identified with those negative emotions. Yeah.

Keeping them in a mindful balance state so that you're not overcome and just sucked into that vortex of negative emotions, which can be really, really difficult to get out.

And the thing with the self-compassionate response there too is that people have a hard time with it because they think it's like giving a free pass for procrastinating. They think it means self-indulgence. There's studies looking at this, the difficulties that people have and why they think self-compassion is not a great thing. Actually, what the science says is that it will motivate you.

Right. People who don't waste time, you know, just whipping up more of those negative emotions and instead say, yeah, I procrastinate, you know, I'm struggling with this task and I'm at risk for procrastinating. But you know what? I'm not going to get caught up in that. I'm just going to focus on what I need to do and kind of keep going.

going ahead and being kind and changing that internal dialogue, right? Like things we say to ourselves when we're, you never say that to a friend. Like when you go, oh, what's wrong with you? Why can't you get this done? You wouldn't say that to a good friend or someone you cared about. But we so easily say that to ourselves, right? And that really just doesn't help anybody and doesn't help ourselves. This makes it more likely we're going to continue to procrastinate. And, you know, same thing applies if you have started to procrastinate, right?

Being self-compassionate to your procrastination. You're not the first person to procrastinate, nor will you be the last. There's nothing particularly special about your procrastination, so get over it, you know. Cut the drama, right? Just kind of get on with things, right? Figure out what you need to do, right? But self-forgiveness has also been shown in at least a couple of studies.

to be effective. So, you know, it was one study where, you know, they asked students about, students who procrastinate studying for an exam and they asked them to the extent to which they forgave themselves. They followed up with them a couple of weeks later. And those who forgave themselves procrastinate less. And the reason they procrastinate less is their level of negative emotions went down around the task. Yeah.

Yeah. Right. So those are... It comes back down to the emotions. It comes back. It all comes back down. It's ground zero. Emotions are ground zero. It is ground zero. You need to make sure I've got that line in the book. What are your thoughts on easy versus challenging goals as it relates to procrastination? So, I mean, this is where it kind of gets tricky though too. And I think this, for me, I always think about that. I mean, there's a couple of different ways and maybe I'm not completely understanding the question, but...

You know, we can always take a goal that's challenging and reframe it in a way that's less challenging to make it easier. And I think that's part of the mental work that we can do before we start. That's part of the preparatory stuff before we engage with that task. I also think, though, that...

Easy tasks tend to be the ones we use to procrastinate on the more challenging tasks. We've got a bunch of little things we have to do, and we know there's this big pressing task and it really does need to be done. It's going to take some time and it's going to take some challenge, but we decide not to engage with that and instead do all these little things.

Well, what are we doing? Right? Well, we're procrastinating the big task, which was the important one. And we're doing all these little things and we're feeling like, hey, look, see, I'm not lazy. I'm productive. Right? We're countering those social norms that we're so afraid that we're going to be transgressing by procrastinating. Right? And now going, oh, look, see, I'm a productive person. Look at all the stuff I'm doing. Yeah, but what you're doing really isn't important. Right? And so we can fool ourselves into thinking that. We're also getting a sense of confidence. We're getting a little bit of a mood boost. So it's a very kind of

I find that a very particularly tricky way to, well, it's not tricky, it's a clever way to deal with procrastination, but it's a tricky thing to break out of because you're getting some other types of rewards that are not so apparent for the procrastination. And you can go on fooling yourself that you're being really super productive and that you're not procrastinating and being in complete denial of the fact that, yeah, but there's this thing over here that you're supposed to be doing and you're not really doing it.

Yeah, absolutely. Have you come across anything around input goals versus outcome goals? By which I mean like the outcome of...

hit X revenue for my business, which is somewhat outside of my control because it's like based on other people giving me money versus I will make 50 sales calls a day. I'll focus on the thing that's within my control rather than focusing on the outcome that's outside of my control. Yeah. So I think that that aligns with some of the research that's been done on whether the goals are autonomous or not.

Yeah. Right? So if a goal feels more controlled, that somebody else is pulling the strings, that tends to be the type of goal that we will procrastinate on. Yeah. Right? It lacks meaning. Yeah. Right? And so there's a number of different reasons for that. We don't have that sense of meaning or accomplishment. And that's, you know...

And it can also be if someone else is controlling that goal, there can be fear of disappointing them or fear, you know, so it elicits all those emotions. Whereas when it's something we have a sense of control, we take ownership over that goal, right? It now becomes immediately meaningful.

And the one thing I didn't say about the meaning making before, so yeah, sure, finding meaning in the goals works. But one of the reasons that Cece found it worked in her study was it actually reduced those challenging negative emotions. So it reduces negative emotions. And I think the other reason it works too is it doesn't make them all go away. I want to make that really clear. So finding meaning isn't going to make you feel like, oh, there's no negative feelings I have about this task. No, those negative feelings are still going to be there. But now they have context.

Now, if I struggle with this emotion, it's important. It's meaningful. It's part of this bigger picture of these larger goals that I want to accomplish. And so somehow when we have the context for those negative emotions as being part of a bigger picture, it's okay to work through them. We're less likely to want to disengage from them because now...

There's a purpose to them. I think it's when we have negative emotions that don't have a purpose. It's just like, I don't want to feel this. Put it aside. But now, oh, that negative emotion has a purpose. It's telling me I'm learning. It's telling me I'm becoming stronger. It's telling me I'm becoming better at what I'm doing. Then we're more inclined to want to engage with that and find a way to work through it rather than put it aside and procrastinate.

Fantastic. Is there any evidence that our environment has a role when it comes to combating procrastination? Yes. And I think here, this is what I was saying earlier about sort of distractions and things that facilitate procrastination, right? And so you hear a lot of talk about digital distractions and environments that aren't properly set up to work and productivity, they can be distracting.

The reason that, you know, what I call these procrastinogenic environments, you know, kind of like the obesogenic environment, right, with all the fast food. The procrastinogenic environment is one where there's tons of, you know, digital distractions and technology and all kinds of things that are going to pull your focus away from the tasks that you have to work on. And because, or offer a pleasurable alternative, because what those types of environments do

First of all, again, you've got a difficult task, so motions is ground zero there, but

Now, whether you continue to focus on grappling through those difficult emotions, maybe finding some meaning or something else, or put it aside to do something more fun, is going to be driven more by the environment. Because what happens with these cues in the environment, these social cues, social media, your phone dinging, whatever, check the latest message, right? And what that does is it offers, it focuses you on the goal of managing your emotions.

Right. And so, right, I can feel better by going to check my social media. I can feel better, you know, if you're working from home and you like baking and you're working in the kitchen. Oh, why don't I go bake some cookies? You know, I mean, so all of these things in the environment, they prime people.

short-term goals of mood management rather than priming the long-term goals. So if you want to set up an environment that's going to be less procrastinogenic, you've got to remove all these other things that would be pleasurable and would facilitate you

disengaging from that task or avoiding the task to find some immediate mood and maybe help find meaning. So putting meaningful symbols of that task that you're working on. It's a big report or a book. Put things around you. Surround yourself with things that trigger that meaning, that make you think and contemplate the meaningfulness

to yourself and to other people, like why it is that you're doing this thing. And that's going to help you sort of drive through without, you know, and again, reducing those distractions that are going to pull you off task and make you say, oh, no, my goal is to feel good right now. No, no, your goal is to get this thing done. Yeah.

One of the unreasonably effective techniques that my brother used when he was applying to study maths at Oxford, and there's a lot of practice papers he had to do. So he just changed his computer wallpaper to be a photo of Oxford. And every time he turned his computer on, he'd be like, right, let's go. That made it more meaningful. That's meaningful, yeah. He was evoking the meaning of that larger task. So that's what you want to do.

Is there any role in positive self-talk or affirmations, which are often used as like a way of combating negative emotions to deal with procrastination? I guess it depends on how they're targeted. You know, and that's not something that's really been studied much per se. I mean, I would speculate here to say, you know,

It depends on what they're dealing with, you know. So are those affirmations. If you're just layering over some positivity on top of negativity, well, then you, you know, it doesn't, it's not going to, certainly going to do anything because you're not addressing. So if it's, if something that is specifically targeting those negative emotions that you have. So maybe it's, you know, around fear or fear of failure or, you know, getting it perfect or displeasing somebody. If it's some sort of positive thought that, that, that,

tackles that specifically, that might be useful. Okay, but again, there's not been any studies that have necessarily looked at that. Nice, that's useful to know. I think that covers all of our bases. Any other sort of cures or treatments for procrastination or mitigating strategies that we've not yet covered that come to mind?

I mean, we didn't get into the whole future self part of things. Oh, the whole like superhero thing. Yeah. I mean, there has been some strategies to suggest if you, people prone to procrastination tend to have a weaker relationship with their future self.

Weak horizon. They don't feel that close to them. They feel like they're a stranger, which is why it's easy to put them on a pedestal and think they're a superhero because it's no longer like them anymore, right? Yeah. And most of us have difficulty, especially for our future selves, of connecting with them. Some people are very good at doing that, though. The people prone to procrastination because their focus is so much

on the now have some difficulty with that. And I mean, I didn't get into that dynamic, but I think about it. If you're stressed about a task, if you're feeling negative emotions around the task, right, you're activating sort of the sympathetic nervous system, the stress response, amygdala, threat detection, everything is focusing your attention to the now. It's not focusing it.

to the future. You need to be in a positive state to be able to think abstractly and think about the future. And so it's a very vicious circle there, and this is why we see the people prone to procrastination. And this has actually been shown in fMRI studies, scans of the brain show that people who chronically procrastinate have deficits in two areas of the brain, one having to do with future-oriented thinking, the other having to do with motion regulation. And it's because it's a dance between the two of them, right?

You're more stressed. You're thinking about the now, which means you're not thinking about the future. You're not thinking about the future. So it comes down to the emotion thing. I guess the broaden and build theory. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Fredrickson. So that's engaging positive emotions. Meaning making does that. Oh, yeah, yeah.

That broaden and build is like the core piece of evidence that's like backing up my whole thesis for this book. Yeah. So what that does is you're engaging the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps quiesce the sympathetic nervous system, which has us running around stressed and just focusing on rushing and just trying to deal with immediate threats. And yeah, there's a few things that you need to do to be able to engage that system. Breathing.

Yeah. And one thing I didn't talk about is mindfulness, actually. We did publish with some Iranian colleagues a paper this year where we showed for student procrastinators, an eight-week course of mindfulness training actually significantly reduced their procrastination.

Because mindfulness is a way of managing emotions, right? Yeah. Yeah. And then people earlier, we did a study showing people who chronically procrastinate tend to not engage in mindfulness-based practices and tend to score lower on these self-report measures of mindfulness. And that's very much highly related to the self-compassion again. But anything that manages emotions is going to be effective there. Fantastic. Yeah. Yeah.

I think that's a great place to end this. Professor Fuchsia, thank you so much. If someone has gotten to the end of this conversation and they're like, oh, you know, I really want to find out more. Can you recommend any resources, yours or anyone else's, that would be a good kind of starting point or next place to go to after this conversation to help?

people struggling with procrastination? Yeah. So I put together last year a self-help book on procrastination that goes into a lot more detail on some of the things I touched upon today. It's basically quite simply called Procrastination, What It Is, Why It's a Problem, and What You Can Do About It. It's published by APA Publishers Life Tools in print.

And each chapter, I've got exercises that you can go through to sort of test yourself on some of the concepts and actually start to sort of probe some of the emotions and start trying to put some of the techniques I've talked about into practice. Okay, brilliant. And we'll put links to that and also your website and everything down in the video description and in the show notes so people can feel free to have a browse around if they would like. Yeah, sounds great. All right. Thank you so much for coming on. No, thank you for having me.

All right, so that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are gonna be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, then do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast. Or if you're watching this in full HD or 4K on YouTube, then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode. That would be awesome. And if you enjoyed this episode, you might like to check out this episode here as well, which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode.

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