The Art of Manliness - The Real Reason You Procrastinate

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.660 If you or someone you know has a problem with procrastination, you've probably chalked it up

00:00:16.360 to deficiency in time management skills or self-control. But my guest says there are deeper

00:00:21.000 reasons underlying procrastination and I'll unpack what they are today on the show. Joseph

00:00:25.520 Ferrari is a Catholic deacon, a professor of psychology, and a foremost researcher and expert

00:00:30.060 on procrastination who has authored or co-authored 400 professional articles and 35 books and

00:00:35.600 textbooks. Today on the show, Dr. Ferrari explains the psychological dynamics behind procrastination

00:00:40.620 and what you can do to counter them. He also shares the difference between regular and chronic

00:00:44.980 procrastination, which of your parents you probably got your propensity to procrastinate from, and how

00:00:49.800 procrastination can manifest in indecision. After the show's over, check out our show notes at

00:00:54.360 awim.is slash whyuprocrastinate.

00:01:07.800 All right. Reverend Dr. Joseph Ferrari, welcome to the show.

00:01:12.420 Hi, I'm so glad you included me in your list of podcasts. Thank you.

00:01:16.480 Well, you are a professor of psychology. You have done a lot of research and writing about

00:01:22.760 procrastination. I'm curious, what led you down that research path in your career?

00:01:28.940 I think I have close to 400 publications and one of the main lines of research that people know me as

00:01:35.000 is the study of chronic procrastination. I don't do as much on that anymore. I do now join international

00:01:41.200 colleagues. I have work in Iran, Israel, and I'm trying to remember, Turkey is the other country. 0.88

00:01:49.300 So I work with people internationally. What brought me to this topic is, well, there's a concept in

00:01:56.100 research called research is me search. Perhaps you've heard of that.

00:02:01.280 Yes.

00:02:01.660 Where people study topics that all about them. Well, I'm, that's not my case. People know me,

00:02:08.620 no, I am not a procrastinator. I'm quite the opposite. I'm not a reformed procrastinator or whatever the

00:02:14.420 people use that jargon terms for. I got into this quite honestly through graduate school.

00:02:20.780 In late 1980s, I was studying my doctoral, doing my doctoral dissertation and research at Adelphi

00:02:29.480 University in Garden City, Long Island in experimental social psychology. And I'm in a class

00:02:35.560 being taught by a social psychologist who was transitioning into clinical psych. And she was

00:02:41.800 teaching a course on self-defeating behaviors, masochism, choosing to suffer. As she was moving

00:02:48.880 into clinical, she was studying these particular topics. And self-handicapping was one of the

00:02:54.920 concepts. And I remember, again, you got to realize this is middle to late 80s. I raised my hand and I

00:03:01.740 say, I don't know where it came from. I said, is procrastination a self-handicapping strategy?

00:03:06.820 And she says, oh, yes, yes, yes. Well, I'm not the one who just lets things die. I raised my,

00:03:11.900 well, raised my hand again. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? I don't know. She

00:03:16.060 goes, but I'm sure somebody has done that study. So in the back of my notebook, this is before

00:03:21.460 laptops and stuff, I write down procrastination and I go to the library and I go and I look up the topic

00:03:27.680 and I find nothing on the topic. All right. There was about 200 citations, but there were conference

00:03:34.320 presentations and most of the research was on writer's block or on career indecision. But I

00:03:42.120 wanted to understand what are the causes? What are the consequences? Why do people actively choose

00:03:49.500 to avoid things that they need to do? You know, procrastination. And I find nothing. Now for your

00:03:55.780 listeners in graduate school, there is a saying, at least we were always taught, when you go do your

00:04:01.380 thesis or your dissertation, you can either do a line of research that everybody else is doing.

00:04:07.260 So you can join the bandwagon, which is fine. You'll have references, but you'll be lost in that

00:04:13.180 crowd. Or especially for dissertation, you can take us into a new direction and go into something that

00:04:19.040 people haven't studied. And you will have lines of research, questions you can ask that'll last you

00:04:25.700 for years. And exactly what happened for a number of years through the 1990s, I was the only one

00:04:31.780 studying this topic. And every study I did was publishable because no one looked at the development

00:04:37.580 of it, the relationships of it. How does it relate to regret? Tell me how it excuse making and

00:04:43.520 procrastinating, everything, all these kinds of things. So it was very fruitful for me. Now, again,

00:04:48.300 I've moved into other topics. I do other things, but it's still the topic that a lot of people

00:04:52.560 associate with me. So I didn't do it to find out about myself. I did it because it was a novel area

00:04:58.000 and that's what scientists should do. Now, my current area, the last few years, has been looking

00:05:02.700 at clutter and how does clutter impact our lives. Again, nobody studied that. Hoarding, separate. So,

00:05:09.620 yeah. I thought it was interesting that there wasn't a lot of research about procrastination because

00:05:14.340 this seems like this is an age-old problem that humans have. I mean, there's stories in ancient

00:05:18.960 Greece talking about procrastination, Aesop's fables, right? The grasshopper and the ant,

00:05:23.540 and even in the Bible, like the parable of the 10 virgins is a story of procrastination.

00:05:28.900 So a number of years ago, there's a very famous psychology teaching conference that I approached.

00:05:34.780 This was back in 2010 when my popular book had just first come out called Still Procrastinating.

00:05:40.940 And that's why the title is that, and I'll get to that in a minute. But I approached him and I said,

00:05:44.980 you know, would you like me to come and talk on this? No, it's not a real problem, I was told.

00:05:49.620 And I was like, what? No, no. Students don't have a problem with procrastination. I'm like, what?

00:05:55.260 What are you talking about? Of course it is. And then they wanted me to jump through hoops to show

00:06:00.160 that it was really a legitimate thing and have, you know, focused table at one of their meetings.

00:06:05.300 And I did, and everybody came and still wasn't good enough. So I never got to present there.

00:06:09.040 I don't go there anymore. The title of my popular one was called Still Procrastinating,

00:06:14.300 The No Regrets Guide to Getting It Done. It came out in 2010. So some might say it's a little old,

00:06:20.780 but I don't think so. How did it get that title? Well, here's the history on that, if I may. I told

00:06:26.340 you, Brett, I have lots to say. News reporters would call me and say to me, you know, in the 90s,

00:06:33.420 in the 20s, the 2000s, and say, you know, Dr. Ferrari, this new book came out and this person is taking

00:06:40.240 this angle or that angle on procrastination. And I would say, tell me more. I don't know the book.

00:06:45.040 And I would say, no, because it's not a time management issue. To tell the chronic procrastinator,

00:06:52.060 just do it, would be like saying to a clinically depressed person, cheer up. That's not going to

00:06:58.280 work. That's not what it is. It's an active avoidance strategy. It's not that they're lazy.

00:07:03.720 Oh, they work very hard on doing other things, things they're not supposed to be doing than

00:07:08.980 what's important. So I called it still procrastinating because I was trying to tell

00:07:13.440 the readers and anyone listening now, yeah, you've tried these time management books and I bet you

00:07:18.020 they haven't worked and they're not going to work. All right. What you need to understand is that this

00:07:22.740 is something much deeper, something much more active. Now you mentioned a few minutes ago, you know,

00:07:28.420 why hasn't people studied this? It's so common. Yes. One of the things I've shown 96,

00:07:33.680 was the first publication where I showed that 20% of adult men and women are chronic procrastinators.

00:07:43.860 Now, what does that mean? That means they do it at home. They do it at school. They do it at work.

00:07:48.380 They do it in relationships. You know, they're going to RSVP late. They're going to wait till the

00:07:53.020 gauge goes on empty before they get more gas. They'll get the third message bill to have to pay it.

00:07:59.160 All right. They're actively, you know, they're not going to get you their Christmas gift or their

00:08:03.080 birthday gift or their birthday card on time. It will always come with, Oh, I'm sorry. I missed it.

00:08:08.560 You know, because that's who they are. All right. 20%. Well, that's all you might think. No,

00:08:14.520 that's higher than depression, phobias, panic attack, alcoholism, substance abuse. And yet

00:08:21.600 our cultures see this as a funny topic. Oh, they're just procrastinating. Oh, I'm going to listen to that 1.00

00:08:28.600 podcast tomorrow. No, this is, I don't take the joke serious because I've seen too much damage

00:08:35.340 along the way. Too many lives broken. Too many people have missed things in life that they regret

00:08:41.220 later on. So I finally wrote that book saying, still procrastinating. Try this.

00:08:47.180 So that's interesting. You talk about how 20% and this cuts across demographics. So men and women,

00:08:52.220 men and women, young and old. In fact, not only the U S one common concept I get from people is,

00:08:59.960 well, this may be a U S thing. No. In fact, we find 20% in Britain, Australia, Canada, Germany,

00:09:06.440 Polish, Austrian, Czechoslovakian, Spanish, Irish, Italian, Peruvian, Venezuelan, Turkey, Israeli,

00:09:14.000 Saudi Arabia, Japanese, Korean. Now I've done work in Iran, finding this men and women, young and old

00:09:20.140 urban and rural communities, all races. Now, does that mean it's genetic Ferrari? You're mentioning

00:09:26.760 all these people. It's just human nature, whatever that means. We're born through evolution. No,

00:09:32.800 it's because our culture cultures, Western. And as we see even Eastern and middle Eastern,

00:09:39.340 because our cultures don't give the early bird, the worm anymore. You know, there was a time you did

00:09:47.480 things ahead of time. You got rewarded for that. We punish for being late. Oh, you're going to pay

00:09:54.200 a fine for that. Bill's not paid on time. You're going to pay higher prices for this or that last

00:10:00.200 minute. We punish you, but we don't reward you for being early. Right. Well, I want to go back to this

00:10:06.900 idea. So this 20%, these are chronic procrastinators. Yeah. This doesn't everyone. And you have this

00:10:12.940 phrase you say in your book, everyone procrastinates, but not everyone is a procrastinator. And that's

00:10:17.920 what you mean. Like the people who are procrastinators is this 20%, but everyone

00:10:21.620 procrastinates from time to time. Yeah. I don't know if I would say everyone, but yes, I would say

00:10:25.360 the vast majority. Hey, you might, everybody might put off a task. All right. And that doesn't mean

00:10:30.340 you're a procrastinator. For example, I'm not a fan of cutting my grass. It's something I have to do

00:10:36.200 only to water, to fertilize, to cut it again and again. So I delay as much as I can. Maybe not once a

00:10:42.420 week, I do it every 10 days or every two weeks. All right. So does that make me a procrastinator?

00:10:47.680 No. Anybody who knows me knows you don't have 115 page resume by being a procrastinator. You know,

00:10:54.180 you don't publish 15, 20 articles a year being a procrastinator. No, I'm not a procrastinator. I do

00:10:59.480 things, you know, on time because I value other people's time. If I may, let me go down, talk about

00:11:06.780 that. Okay. You see the chronic procrastinator doesn't understand that the world is not about

00:11:12.740 me. It's about we. And if I don't do what I have to do, then the next person can't do their thing.

00:11:19.620 And the next person can't do their thing. Oh, but I find it hard. Oh, I don't like it. It's

00:11:26.280 uncomfortable. Yeah, but it's not about you. You know, there's an old expression. If you want

00:11:31.420 something done, give it to a busy person. Why? Because they're busy. Ah, because that person

00:11:37.040 values your time and their time. They realize that you have things and I'm going to help you. It's

00:11:43.800 not about me. It's about all of us. And so, yeah. So everybody puts a task off, but not everyone's a

00:11:50.300 chronic procrastinator. So when does putting something off become procrastination, like clinically?

00:11:56.580 Great question. All right. What's the tipping point that some people might say, when does it become

00:12:02.020 delaying and all of that? We don't have an answer to that. When it interferes, like so many things in

00:12:08.040 life, when it interferes with your life, when it prevents you from living an effective life, when

00:12:13.780 other people's abilities are imposed on it, then yeah. But you know, just, and let me say that

00:12:20.400 procrastination is not the same as delaying. If I'm stuck on the air tarmac for my plane not to take

00:12:27.600 off and is delayed four hours for getting somebody, I didn't procrastinate. I was delayed. Pondering.

00:12:34.360 If I ponder something, I'm not procrastinating because I am gathering information. I am active. Some

00:12:42.820 people call it active stillness. You know, you're still actively collecting information and doing

00:12:47.840 things. So don't think delaying or pondering or just waiting is procrastination. Procrastination

00:12:54.280 becomes a problem when it's your maladaptive lifestyle, when you do it in all different

00:13:00.640 settings. I like to define it in my 2010 book as intentionally delaying a task and it's irrational

00:13:09.120 and it prevents you from reaching your goal. So you're intentionally delaying and it doesn't make

00:13:14.480 sense to do that and you're not going to achieve things and you feel uncomfortable about it.

00:13:19.920 So procrastination is the intentional putting off of things you don't want to do in all situations,

00:13:25.340 but it's maladaptive. It's irrational. So why would someone do something that's maladaptive or

00:13:31.980 irrational? Like why do people procrastinate? Do people procrastinate for the same reason or for

00:13:36.300 different reasons? Oh, a variety of reasons. Now, some people have said that there are types of

00:13:40.940 procrastinators and we really haven't found that. When I began the literature, I did talk about

00:13:46.940 arousal and avoidance procrastinators. Some people wait till the last minute for a thrill-seeking

00:13:52.880 experience, arousal. Well, a couple of studies came out years later that found, well, it's not arousal.

00:13:59.420 They're not doing it for that. It's not the thrill-seeking. You know, you'll hear people say,

00:14:03.260 I need to wait till the last minute because it gets me going. You know, it gets me excited to do this.

00:14:08.420 And I found that in a self-report study, but they did follow-up studies and didn't replicate that.

00:14:15.020 Interestingly enough, they did self-reports too. I would love any listener out there to come up with

00:14:20.040 some good physio measures to find out if these people who claim to wait till the last minute

00:14:24.580 really do have arousal, a change physiologically. No one's ever looked at those measures. I only found

00:14:31.140 that. So some people claim they wait because they want to thrill. But look, it's really fears.

00:14:37.320 Fear of failure is the most obvious. If I never finish something, I can never be judged. You see?

00:14:45.520 And I can come back and tell you that I'm really good at it because, as social psychologists, we say,

00:14:52.320 I'd rather people think I lacked effort than ability. Let me try to pick that apart for you,

00:14:59.260 break that open for you. Okay. In social psych, we try to ask the question of where do people attribute

00:15:06.460 their cause of their behavior to be, internally or externally? What are some of the factors?

00:15:12.400 And in helping us explore that, social psychologists have talked about two aspects.

00:15:17.680 Does the person think they have the ability or, and do they apply effort? Ability is a much more

00:15:24.720 stable concept. Either I have it or I don't. Now, I could develop it, sure, but that takes time.

00:15:31.620 Either you have the ability or you don't. Effort is much more fluid. Effort can change. I can try

00:15:37.980 harder. So if I have to give a image to other people, and what I have found over all these 30

00:15:45.500 years of research is that procrastinators are very concerned about what others think about them.

00:15:51.220 If I, you know, I don't want you to think bad of me. So if I have to give a negative image,

00:15:56.320 I'd rather you think I lacked effort than lackability. Because if I finish something and

00:16:02.640 it doesn't meet the standards, it doesn't meet your standards, my standards, if it isn't good

00:16:06.660 enough, then you're going to think less of me. He can't cut it. He just can't do it. You see?

00:16:12.460 And that's sticks. But if I don't try, if I can tell you, oh, I'm really good at this. If I had more

00:16:18.300 time, I'd show you, oh, I'd really get this one much better. You know, if only you can get me more

00:16:23.280 time, this is the best I can do on this. Well, you see, then I'm blaming it. It's not me. It's

00:16:28.680 something else. So they'd rather have to protect that fear of failure. They're protecting their

00:16:34.060 social, we call it social esteem. I'm sure you're familiar listeners and Brett, to self-esteem.

00:16:41.680 That's how I feel about myself, self-esteem. But social psychologists, we like to look at

00:16:46.920 social esteem. How do others think about you? How do others feel about you? And you see,

00:16:52.980 by procrastinating, I can kind of protect my social esteem. Sure, you may not think I'm,

00:16:58.820 you know, dependable, but you're not going to think I'm bad. Because our culture doesn't

00:17:03.640 encourage people, as I said earlier, to get things done on time. Fear of failure. Even fear of success

00:17:10.800 can cause people to procrastinate. Now, you might be listening and thinking, what? Why fear of success?

00:17:16.520 Why should I put something off if I'm going to do well? Because I might not be able to live up to

00:17:22.860 that the next time. I don't know if I can keep that standard. So if I delay, if I don't finish

00:17:28.960 that law brief on time, if I don't show up on the date on time, then you don't have to go out with me

00:17:36.280 again or give me another law brief that's even more impressive, you know? So it's a very protective

00:17:42.880 strategy that culturally, 20% internationally, we say, okay, we won't hold you to the deadline.

00:17:52.940 So this self-protection aspect of procrastination, this is the self-handicapping. This is kind of-

00:17:58.560 It's part of self-handicapping. Yeah. Let me talk about that if I may,

00:18:02.140 unless you have your question for me.

00:18:03.480 No, let's talk about self-handicapping because I think this is really interesting.

00:18:05.680 So a lot of people these days, I don't know who else you've been talking to,

00:18:09.360 but if readers too, listening, they say procrastination is what they call a self-regulation

00:18:15.580 failure problem. In other words, the person is unable to regulate their time, regulate the tasks

00:18:22.900 that they have to do. We used to call this years ago, delay of gratification. They can't regulate the,

00:18:29.160 they're thrilled, the excitement, the pleasure they might get out of doing projects. So they want to

00:18:34.380 do the good ones now and they don't want to delay and wait for the past ones. Well, I agree with that,

00:18:39.860 but here's the problem with those authors and those people is that they say that's the only reason

00:18:46.280 people procrastinate. And I say, no, this is a complex phenomenon. It's more than that. Yes,

00:18:52.580 for some self-regulation is the issue, but for others, Brett, as you just said, it's self-handicapping.

00:18:59.820 It gives me a nice ready excuse for why I don't have something done on time. You know, human beings are

00:19:07.080 great excuse makers. In my book, in the 2010 book, still procrastinating, there's a chapter called The But

00:19:13.620 However. It's all about excuse making. Human beings are great excuse making. There's always a reason.

00:19:20.700 And we listen to them and we go, oh yeah, that makes sense. You know, it's never my fault.

00:19:25.780 There's always something else that is the reason. The problem is with these people is you listen,

00:19:32.060 you go, oh, okay, that makes sense. And they go, oh, that one makes sense. They never take ownership.

00:19:37.920 So there's always a reason. Yeah. So if I can blame something else, it's not my fault. It's this

00:19:44.460 thing in our culture. We do a lot of that. All right. So I'll put something in my way. I'll put an

00:19:49.920 obstacle in my way or I'll claim I have some handicap. It's called choosing handicaps or

00:19:55.520 claiming a handicap. Those are the two lines of research in this field. I can, I have something 0.91

00:20:00.600 else. It's not my fault. And I come across looking good because here's the cool thing,

00:20:04.600 Brett. I put the obstacle in my path. Let's say, let's say, I don't know. I have a basketball game

00:20:10.100 coming up. Okay. And I love pizza. And so right before the game, I eat half a pie. Okay. And I don't do

00:20:20.260 well on the game. I is, I could say, yeah, you know, I missed the shots and I didn't dribble well

00:20:26.360 enough. And I, I didn't, you know, do good, good shots at the foul line. Uh, because if I hadn't

00:20:31.600 had, it's not my fault, I'm really good. See, I'm a really good basketball player, but it's that pizza,

00:20:37.480 you know, it's the, if the pizza hadn't affected me. So I have an excuse or what we would say is I can

00:20:44.380 disclaim me, but you know, here's the other side. Life is interesting. Doesn't mean you're going to

00:20:51.380 fail. What if you led the team to win the game and you ate that pizza, then you, well, we would say

00:20:59.680 in psychology, you enhance your self-esteem, your social scene. Cause now I look even better. Cause

00:21:05.460 you can say to people, yeah, yeah, we won. And I did, I sunk those shots and I even had a pizza on

00:21:11.360 top of that. And look how good I am. See? So either way you come across looking good,

00:21:17.240 either blame it on something else. You discount yourself or you enhance yourself. Does that make

00:21:23.980 sense? No, that makes perfect sense. So bringing this back to procrastination, someone can put on,

00:21:27.960 like a student puts off a report that they had to turn in. They put it off and they do at the last

00:21:33.620 minute. If they don't do well, they can say, well, I didn't have enough time. I had so much else going

00:21:38.360 on in my life this semester. I just didn't have the time. So they have an excuse, but if they do

00:21:43.460 do well, they can say, man, I'm just really smart. Cause despite all this stuff I had going on in my

00:21:47.320 life, I was able to knock this out of the park. Look at that, man. I work. And then that leads to

00:21:51.660 that. And I work best on the pressure. You see what happens when exactly, exactly. I have a nice

00:21:56.800 ready phenomena that I can blame. If the problem is, I just was telling my students this about the

00:22:04.840 whole notion of cramming, you know, people wait till the last minute and sometimes it does pay

00:22:09.660 off, but most of the time it doesn't. And what did they remember that time it paid off. So, you

00:22:15.840 know, I'll tell my students, yeah, you remember that time in fourth grade, you crammed at the last

00:22:20.100 minute and you got that great job on that exam. But look at all the exams since when cramming really

00:22:26.980 screwed you up. If you had only been calm and relaxed, you know, yeah, you lost one question,

00:22:32.460 but you gained 12 more, you know, but no, no, I remember man, cramming at the last minute,

00:22:38.100 it paid off. You see, cause we remember that. So yeah, the person will hold onto that one time

00:22:42.800 when the other pizza didn't affect me, man, I can do this. And not all the other time.

00:22:48.640 We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:22:54.460 And now back to the show. Okay. So sometimes people procrastinate as a way to self-handicap.

00:23:00.420 It's a way to avoid taking responsibility for something not working out or them not doing

00:23:06.880 well. And you also say that perfectionism can be related to procrastination. Like people

00:23:13.040 will keep putting off doing something because they're afraid they can't do it perfectly. And

00:23:18.720 so they just, they never work on it or, you know, they get close to finishing, but they don't

00:23:22.520 finish him because they just don't think they can get it just right. And it sounds like the

00:23:25.780 remedy for these reasons to procrastinate is just to get more comfortable with failure,

00:23:32.620 not be afraid to fail.

00:23:33.720 Look, I didn't do this study, but studies have shown that the most healthy individual,

00:23:40.760 the person best adjusted person, best able to live life succeeds 85% of the time. Well,

00:23:48.520 that means they fail 15% of the time. That's right. That's right. But our culture says you have

00:23:56.300 to have a hundred percent or you're nothing. No, no, you succeeded most of that. Now 85 is not

00:24:05.000 mediocrity. That's not 50%. You know, it's more than half. All right. But you succeeded most of the

00:24:11.660 time. That 15% failure can be a life lesson. You can learn from this. The Native Americans say

00:24:19.740 that the white man has it wrong. We want to walk through, they say, through clear water. We want

00:24:26.500 life to be easy and walk through clear water. Native Americans say, no, no, you really want muddy 1.00

00:24:32.260 water. Why muddy water? Because with muddy water, you put more energy. You try harder. All right.

00:24:39.200 The obstacles. Life shouldn't be clear. Look, if all I had in life was sunny days, what would I wind

00:24:46.620 up with? A desert. I need rain, not thunderstorms, you know, tsunamis or hurricanes. Okay. But you need

00:24:56.520 some rain in life because nothing will grow without some of that water. But we have this notion that we

00:25:03.140 can't fail. Again, I'm not saying fail most of the time. That's not what the data says. No, you've got

00:25:08.960 to strive to succeed. You've got to be good at what you do. But so what if you fail? You know,

00:25:14.140 this is what I'm telling my intro students in intro cycle. This is the place to raise your hand and ask

00:25:19.120 me a question. It's not a stupid question. It might be, I might have a stupid answer, but how are you 0.99

00:25:23.780 going to learn? You know, it's okay to ask. You got the next four years of college to ask those 0.99

00:25:29.480 questions and be wrong. Because when you get out in the real world, people are going to expect you to

00:25:34.040 succeed more often. And as you said earlier, it sounds like procrastination isn't a time

00:25:39.340 management issue. It's a mindset issue. You're right. There actually have been two

00:25:43.440 meta-analyses. Now, do you know what that is, Brett? Yes, no. Yeah, it's like studies of studies.

00:25:49.420 Like they look about a bunch of studies and kind of look, see what they say. Right. In a meta-analysis,

00:25:53.160 what the scientist does is they take, I don't know, a dozen, two dozen, whatever. They take all the

00:25:57.840 studies that have happened before, put them into a formula, and they look at what's effective. So there have

00:26:03.280 been two meta-analyses on the effective treatment of procrastination. And in both of those, the least

00:26:11.180 effective, please, listener, listen to this, the least effective technique to help people who are

00:26:17.260 procrastinators is time management. All right? So two independent studies have been looking at these.

00:26:23.540 What is the most effective? And I'm sorry, listener, you may not like to hear this, but CBT. You need a

00:26:30.820 good professional who is trained in cognitive behavior therapy, CBT, because you need to learn

00:26:39.400 how to change your thoughts and your actions. The time management approach is not going to work

00:26:45.460 because you know what, folks? You can't control the wind. You can only adjust your sails. What does

00:26:53.660 that mean? That means you can't control time. We don't manage time. What do we manage? We manage

00:27:00.040 ourselves. No matter what you're doing, if you've been listening to us, time has gone by. You can't

00:27:04.480 get that back, whether you like this podcast or not, right? Time has moved on. It's like a stream.

00:27:09.340 It's moving. I can't control time. I don't manage time. I manage me. I manage who I am. I can't control

00:27:17.140 the wind. I can only adjust my sails. Life happens. Things will happen. And the Japanese like to say, 0.99

00:27:24.560 and if there's no wind, you row. You can control that. One last thing, Brett, if I may, about this

00:27:32.400 is be patient. Be patient with yourself. Have you, a listener, and I don't know, Brett, have you ever

00:27:38.500 heard of the story about the little boy with the butterfly in the cocoon? Oh, yeah. Yes. Okay. Well,

00:27:44.540 be patient. And for those who aren't familiar, let me briefly explain to it. So this boy has this thing,

00:27:49.260 this cocoon, and inside is this butterfly. And he sees the butterfly trying to get out, and it's

00:27:55.720 struggling, and it's breaking it open. So what does he do? He wants to be kind. He wants to help. So

00:28:02.260 what does he do? He breaks open the cocoon to let the butterfly fly out. Well, what happens then? The

00:28:09.000 butterfly flies, flies, flies, and then it crashes and dies because we need the struggles in life. The

00:28:15.220 struggles in life help us grow. You might be thinking, listener, I'm listening to this. It's

00:28:20.840 not me who's a procrastinator, but I got a kid. I got a spouse, a partner. I got a coworker, and I got

00:28:26.680 to help them do that. No, you've got to sometimes let people fail. All right? My Italian grandmother

00:28:33.460 had a great expression that we used, but it loses in the translation. But she would say,

00:28:39.240 for some people, they will not get off the beach until the water hits their behind. 0.81

00:28:46.080 Now, what does that mean? That means you can tell somebody all along, hey, the tide's coming.

00:28:50.900 You're going to get wet. You really should move. You got to do this. Some people will not move

00:28:56.420 till they get wet. Notice I didn't say drown. Never let somebody hurt themselves or drown. But

00:29:04.620 sometimes you've got to let the person fail. You've got the kid who's not doing papers in

00:29:09.220 on time. Let them get some Fs. You're the administrator at the school, and you don't

00:29:14.120 want the kids to fail. You can't always break the rules and say, well, let you register for

00:29:19.140 that class four weeks late. You missed it. You're the employee, and your boss said, I needed this

00:29:24.840 thing. I'm not saying fire the person, but simply say, sorry, I can't give you that extra day off that

00:29:30.420 I promised you for this or that. You have to let people sometimes get wet, because only after

00:29:36.440 getting wet a few times, will they move their blanket. All right? So you got to be patient.

00:29:42.300 Let the butterfly come out of its cocoon. You can't manage time. Please, listener, understand it.

00:29:48.860 Manage yourself.

00:29:50.400 Something you talk about in your book is that procrastination is learned. How do we learn

00:29:55.380 procrastination?

00:29:56.420 Yeah. You know, so much in our culture today, we want to turn to biology. I'm born this way. It's just

00:30:03.220 who I am. No. No, I guess because I'm a psychologist, and my early training was in

00:30:09.960 operant and learning conditioning. I believe you've learned to be the person you are, and that's so

00:30:15.080 optimistic, listener, because that means you can unlearn. Yeah, it's hard. Where did you learn it?

00:30:20.860 Well, one of the first studies on the development of procrastination I did in 93, a couple of studies,

00:30:26.580 was looking at parental influence. You know, who causes kids to become procrastinators? Mothers, 0.65

00:30:32.960 are fathers. And the answer, interestingly enough, was fathers. Fathers caused kids to become

00:30:39.660 procrastinators, which is nice because we always blame mom for everything. But usually, procrastinators 1.00

00:30:45.240 report a poor relationship with their father, lots of conflicts, and a shallow relationship. And the

00:30:51.320 father's parenting style was that of authoritarian. What does that mean? That's that cold, demanding

00:30:58.440 father who says, hey, as long as you live under my roof, you do what I say. I don't want to hear

00:31:05.140 any lip. You do it, and you do it now. Well, the kid can't rebel. So what does the kid do? Pulls back

00:31:11.560 and just takes their time, which makes the father even more angry. And very interesting dynamic.

00:31:17.720 Okay, we find the father is authoritarian, and the mother is indecisive. So the child runs to mommy and

00:31:24.080 says, mommy, daddy wants me to do this. Well, I don't know, honey. He is your father. And this would,

00:31:30.600 so you've got a very interesting dynamic in life. So we learned to do that. And I replicated that in

00:31:35.380 a couple of studies. In 2017, I hosted the 10th biennial meeting on the international meeting on the

00:31:43.140 study of procrastination here at DePaul University in Chicago. When I brought them together, I had a

00:31:49.040 researcher from Colorado come, and he actually looked at identical twins. Because if there is a

00:31:55.240 genetic basis to procrastination, you should find it in both twins. Well, they found nothing

00:32:00.600 genetically in terms of this. So where he just supported, you know, 14 years later, what I showed

00:32:06.780 earlier. And now I've recently saw an article recently in a prestigious journal that again,

00:32:12.260 showed the learning aspect. So don't turn to biology. It's not biological. It's learned. It's

00:32:19.320 culturally determined because we see internationally cultures are saying it's okay. We don't want to

00:32:24.820 pressure you. We don't want you to feel bad. Life is short. You know, life is too short.

00:32:31.400 Yeah, I'm a Catholic clergyman. I'm a deacon. And if anyone listens and knows their Bible,

00:32:37.660 you know what the psalmist tells us. In the psalms, we hear, we live 70, 80 years if we're strong.

00:32:44.760 That's right. We have a short time here. My God, leave a legacy. Make a difference. Make the world

00:32:51.700 better. Don't procrastinate. Don't put it off. Do what you can. How do I help other people? Because

00:32:58.280 I don't have a lot of time. What is 70 to 80 years to earth that's millions, billions of years

00:33:06.140 old? So don't sell yourself short. Yes, you can change. Yes, you learned to do this. You're not born

00:33:14.680 this way. Yes, you're not alone. Change and make life better. All right? You're going to fail,

00:33:21.580 but you're also going to win sometimes. If you want to walk on water, you got to get out of the boat.

00:33:27.260 So let's say someone who has got a problem with procrastination and they go to, you know,

00:33:30.460 cognitive behavioral therapist. Like what sort of things would they be doing? Like the therapist

00:33:36.080 helping this person walk through to help them overcome their procrastination?

00:33:39.600 I'm not a therapist, but they would probably ask them, so what would be the worst thing if you

00:33:45.040 failed? Does life really end? All right? Let's play that scenario out. You know, we need air. We

00:33:52.840 need water. We need security in life, but you don't need an A on that test. You'd like to get the A.

00:34:02.220 You'd be happy if you got the A and mommy and daddy might like you and the boss might give you a rate,

00:34:07.440 but you don't need. So I, if it were me, I would help them. Let's look at the difference between

00:34:12.420 wants and needs. And why are you making wants, things that I want, needs, gotta haves, if you

00:34:19.940 would. So they, I would hope, again, I'm not a clinician and I'm not a cognitive therapist,

00:34:25.140 but I would assume, I would hope they would help them break apart these attributions and these

00:34:31.280 things, exploring what would be the worst problem. And again, if I was a cognitive behaviorist, I would

00:34:36.780 also say to them now, between now and next week, I want you to try A, B, and C. And if you can't do

00:34:41.980 A, B, and C, definitely do A. Give them homework. Give them something that they can work on, some

00:34:47.720 actual tangible behavior. You got to start small. Change happens small.

00:34:54.220 Let's say that someone's listening to this and they feel like they have a problem with

00:34:57.040 procrastination and they might be thinking to themselves, well, you know, it's not that I'm

00:35:01.000 afraid of failure. I'm okay with failure. I'm not a perfectionist. They'd say, the reason I

00:35:05.680 procrastinate, I just don't find the things that I procrastinate on interesting. Like,

00:35:10.140 there's, like, you know, like taxes, like taxes are so boring. Who wants to do taxes?

00:35:14.420 What's going on there?

00:35:15.920 Yeah. What happens is our culture is not making doing taxes or early Christmas shopping attractive.

00:35:22.100 Let's take taxes. Taxes. I don't want to do my taxes. It's unpleasant. Yeah. Our culture has it

00:35:28.100 wrong. If you don't pay your taxes by April 15th in the United States, you get a fine. So it makes

00:35:35.040 sense that you wait to send your check in on April 12th or April 14th or something. Yeah. If you owed

00:35:42.020 money, why should you pay your taxes earlier if there's no incentive? So I say, why don't we say

00:35:48.920 February 15th, you get 5% off what you owe or some denomination. You know, I'm not an economist,

00:35:56.500 but they can figure it out. You can't do it in January because you're still collecting all your

00:36:00.460 paperwork. I get it. Okay. But if you can owe money and you can send the money to us earlier,

00:36:06.240 like February 15th, we'll let you save 5%. March 15th, 3%. April 15th, owe it all. It goes back to

00:36:15.240 what I said before. We've got to give the early bird the worm. So what can you do if you don't like

00:36:21.040 to do your taxes? Well, let's culturally change this. All right. And start rewarding people for doing

00:36:27.000 things early. For yourself, if you're an individual, okay, and you're procrastinating,

00:36:32.540 reward yourself for doing things early. All right. Limit your options. Don't overload your options. So

00:36:39.160 you say, I just got too many to do. All right. Outsource if you can, if you have employees,

00:36:45.080 take your time to make a good informed decision, but not delay. Pondering is good,

00:36:51.420 but get things done. Hold yourself accountable. All right. Let me give you one

00:36:55.560 quickie social esteem kind of social aspect. We've known since the sixties, a thing called

00:37:03.180 a public posting. Researchers found out years ago that if you post something that you want to do,

00:37:10.960 that you're going to do in life, you're more likely to do it because other people will see it.

00:37:14.540 These were early studies. People would post things outside their office and, you know, before social

00:37:19.400 media, but now we have social media. So why not post that friends? I need to get this thing done.

00:37:26.860 And, um, you know, uh, I'm telling you if, if I don't get this done, don't let me buy the tickets

00:37:32.440 to this of concert, or don't let me join you when we go out on Friday at this or that, whatever,

00:37:38.080 you know, I can't answer what people are doing, but you know what I'm saying?

00:37:41.540 So have yourself publicly held accountable for doing that. Will it work for everybody? Probably

00:37:49.160 not. The 20% person will engage in saying that's nice for a rebut for me, blah, blah, blah, blah,

00:37:55.240 or however it doesn't work. Remember they're the excuse maker that are great excuses, but you might

00:38:01.120 get some people to work things more. All right. I'll give you one more. The Premack principle that 0.80

00:38:06.540 also comes up from the sixties where we found David Premack found that if you take a high rate

00:38:12.760 of behavior, you can make that a reinforcer for a low rate of behavior. Oh, too much jargon. What

00:38:18.300 are you talking about Ferrari? In other words, if you can take something you like to do, you can make

00:38:23.340 that a reward for something you don't like to do. So you don't like to do the dishes. Well, for every

00:38:31.060 six dishes you do, you'll watch 10 minutes, a wheel of fortune or whatever it might be you like

00:38:36.440 to do. Or you'll listen to your favorite hip hop artist for 10 minutes. You want to listen to them

00:38:42.400 longer? Do 10 dishes. So you make a behavior you like to do as a reinforcer for something you don't

00:38:48.800 like to do. Does that make sense? That makes sense. That reminds me of Katie Milkman. She's a social

00:38:54.260 psychologist. Okay. And she has this idea of temptation bundling. So if there's something you

00:38:59.480 don't like to do, then you do something you like to do along with that thing. So she gives the example

00:39:04.340 of exercise. So if you don't like running on the treadmill, what you can do is during that time,

00:39:09.440 you can use that time as the only time you get to watch your favorite show on Netflix.

00:39:13.620 Or like I tend to do, I have to do as a clergyman say morning prayers. And they can be tedious. And I

00:39:20.560 don't like doing on the treadmill. So I do my morning prayers on the treadmill. So something I have to do,

00:39:26.680 I'm doing it. So I know for 20 minutes, I'm going to be exercising as I read these prayers.

00:39:31.120 Sure. Yeah. I never heard it called bundling. I always heard, but it's an offshoot of this

00:39:36.760 pre-MAC principle from the 60s. So you mentioned earlier this one type of procrastination. So I

00:39:42.000 think typically when we think of procrastination, we think of tasks, like taxes, cleaning the house,

00:39:46.880 writing a paper. But you also done some really interesting research on procrastinating decision

00:39:51.280 making. And that's- Indecisive, decisional procrastination.

00:39:54.680 Yeah. What contributes to indecision? Is it the same sort of factors that contributes to

00:39:59.020 procrastination? Yeah, that's a great question because some people don't see, they think of

00:40:04.060 procrastination as only behavioral. You make a good point, Brett. That's true. No, you can also

00:40:08.280 be cognitive, which we call in the field decisional procrastination or indecision. Small area of

00:40:15.140 research, listener, if you're looking for something to really do, it's really kind of interesting and odd

00:40:19.740 that cognitive psychologists have not explored this. They have looked at response time,

00:40:25.420 how long it takes people. And they say that is indecision. But, because I remember talking at

00:40:31.340 decision-making conferences, they would say, oh, yours is a different angle than what we normally

00:40:35.820 do. You're looking at more of the personality style and how that, and yes, that's right. So I've

00:40:40.740 looked at how indecisive search information, experimental tasks, by how much information and

00:40:46.840 how much information on any one item that they had to do. How did they search? What's their search

00:40:51.380 patterns? We've looked at their reaction time speeds. And so really quick, okay, what I've found

00:40:58.200 is that indecision is really more an aspect of cognitive failures that they do. The person

00:41:05.240 ruminates about their failures more than their successes. In psychology, we talk about rumination

00:41:13.880 and a small body of literature on savoring the good times. So we ruminate, but it's not about the

00:41:20.820 failure. We're ruminating about the good times. I like to tell students it's always like the way

00:41:25.480 we were from the Barbra Streisand song. You look back on the memories of all the good times. Oh,

00:41:30.760 yeah, it was a horrible relationship, but boy, I remember this or I remember that. So they're

00:41:35.520 focusing on the failures. Indecisives are much more likely to be easily distracted and daydream,

00:41:41.980 and they engage in a lot more self-critical thoughts on who they are. We looked at time

00:41:48.340 orientation, not only for indecisives, but behavioral procrastinators. What do they focus

00:41:53.720 on? The present, the past, or the future? Rarely the future. They tend to focus on the past and

00:42:01.860 failures. Now, this is controversial, and I talk about, maybe controversial, I talk about it in the

00:42:07.000 book, Attention Deficit and Procrastination and Indecision, because one of the characteristics

00:42:12.340 of defining someone with ADHD is that they procrastinate. Well, what I found in the only

00:42:18.840 study that was ever published on this with two normal populations, but one clinically diagnosed

00:42:25.080 ADHD population was no relationship between procrastination and attention deficit. What was

00:42:31.760 related was boredom proneness and distractibility. Those are related to attention deficits. But again,

00:42:40.520 back to experimental studies, we've shown that with simple or complex tasks, indecisives tend to take

00:42:47.640 longer. I was interested in those studies, wondering, is it maybe a physiological thing? Maybe

00:42:53.240 indecisives can't decide because they just have cognitive inability, you know? They just can't do this.

00:42:59.140 We found, no, it didn't matter. They were choosing to delay. So, it shows, again, it's much more

00:43:04.860 motivational than physiological. The person chooses to do that. And as I said before, we looked at how

00:43:10.960 they search and make decisions. So, what can you do if you're indecisive? Limit your number of options.

00:43:16.940 I live out here in the western suburbs of Chicago, and there is a movie theater that has 31 movies.

00:43:23.940 Please, you don't bring the indecisive to 31 movies. Why? Because you stand there with them and you say

00:43:30.720 to them, well, what do you want to see? And I can tell you, they're going to say to you, I don't know.

00:43:35.440 What do you want to see? And you say, no. You decide, I don't know. I don't know. There's too many

00:43:40.240 options, right? And then you look at your watch and you say it's seven o'clock and most of the movies

00:43:44.640 are starting at 7.15. Come on, what are we going to do? I don't know. Now, this is a brilliant

00:43:48.720 strategy on the indecisive. If I let you make the decision and it's a dud, it's not my fault.

00:43:56.220 You chose it. You said we should watch this movie. At the end of the movie, they walk out.

00:44:00.760 Why did you choose that? I just wasted $14. Oh, that was terrible. Why did you choose that car?

00:44:07.160 I never liked that car. Why did you choose that dining room set? I didn't want to live here.

00:44:12.780 Whatever, you know? So, if you let somebody else make the decision for you, it's not your fault.

00:44:18.080 So, you don't give them tons of options. You limit the options and you have them make the decision

00:44:24.080 because they're going to let you make the decision when push comes to shove because if I don't have

00:44:29.500 to make the decision, it doesn't look bad on me. It makes it look bad on you. And if the decision

00:44:34.120 works out well, if we love the car, the vacation was a great space we went to, you know? I loved

00:44:40.360 living in that neighborhood. Then everybody's happy. But it goes back to, Brett, before that,

00:44:45.780 protecting self and social esteem. It's not my fault.

00:44:49.420 So, it sounds like if you have a problem with putting off decisions or being indecisive,

00:44:53.020 one, limit your choices. And then two, just you have to start practicing making decisions.

00:44:56.840 Yes.

00:44:57.240 And accept that sometimes you're going to make bad decisions.

00:45:00.240 That's okay. As long as you're 85% of the time you're succeeding, you're okay.

00:45:04.220 You're okay.

00:45:04.740 Well, let's do a recap of what we've talked about with procrastination. First thing, it's

00:45:09.880 something that's learned, so it can be unlearned. And the way you do that, it's not through time

00:45:15.580 management because procrastination isn't a time management problem. It's a mindset problem.

00:45:20.800 And you have to start getting more comfortable with failure to overcome that mindset problem.

00:45:26.220 And if you've got a serious problem with procrastination, you're a chronic procrastinator

00:45:30.860 with everything you do, then you might want to look into something like CBT or cognitive

00:45:36.300 behavioral therapy to change your thinking patterns. Well, Joseph, this has been a great

00:45:40.380 conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

00:45:43.620 Oh, sure. You may want to try the 2010 book called Still Procrastinating,

00:45:48.940 The No Regrets Guide to Getting It Done. You can buy it through Amazon. That would be one source.

00:45:55.640 If you're interested in from a scholarly point of view and you want to learn more and you find this is

00:46:00.680 the topic I need to research or it relates to something else that I want to study, then I

00:46:05.520 invite you to get Procrastination and Task Avoidance, Theory, Research, and Treatment, 1995. It's old

00:46:13.420 book, but it's still considered the classic textbook, if you would, in the field. It's expensive because

00:46:20.800 it's hard to get. If you want to deal with how do I, maybe you're a teacher or a professor, you're an

00:46:26.680 academic, you're an administrator in a school setting, and you want to know, how do I treat

00:46:31.160 procrastination in the academic setting? Then I invite you to get Counseling the Procrastinator

00:46:37.560 in Academic Settings. It came out in 2004, so it is also getting a little old, but it's still a

00:46:45.920 really good book. These are the three classic books in the field that I would recommend,

00:46:50.360 and I hope they help people. I really do. Listener, I really hope you realize you're not

00:46:56.120 a bad person. There's no blaming here. We're just saying you can change and you should change because

00:47:02.080 life's too short. I'm hopeful for you, I guess is what I'm thinking.

00:47:06.320 Fantastic. Well, Reverend Dr. Joseph Ferrari, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:47:10.060 Thank you. Thank you for listening to me, and thank you, listener, for listening for the whole thing.

00:47:13.680 And please don't say, but however, for yourself. Go do it. Go change.

00:47:17.660 My guest today was Dr. Joseph Ferrari. He's the author of the book,

00:47:21.520 Still Procrastinating? The No Regrets Guide to Getting It Done. It's available on amazon.com.

00:47:26.160 Make sure to check out our show notes at awim.is slash why you procrastinate,

00:47:29.700 where you can find links to resources where we delve deeper into this topic.

00:47:39.480 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website

00:47:43.620 at artofmanliness.com, where you can find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles

00:47:47.640 that we've written over the years about pretty much anything you'd think of. And if you haven't

00:47:51.120 done so already, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give us a review on the podcast or

00:47:54.320 Spotify. It helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing

00:47:58.800 the show with a friend or family member who you think would get something out of it. As always,

00:48:02.740 thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay. Remind you to

00:48:06.280 listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

00:48:09.320 Thank you.

00:48:09.380 Thank you.

The Art of Manliness - October 02, 2023

The Real Reason You Procrastinate

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript