The Real Reason You Procrastinate
Episode Stats
Summary
If you or someone you know has a problem with procrastination, you ve probably chalked it up to deficiency in time management skills or self-control. But my guest says there are deeper reasons underlying procrastinating, and I ll unpack what they are today on the show. Joseph Ferrari is a Catholic deacon, a professor of psychology, and a foremost researcher and expert on Procrastination who has authored or co-authored 400 professional articles, and 35 books and textbooks. He also shares the difference between regular and chronic procrastinations, which of your parents you probably got your propensity to procrastinate from, and how indecision can manifest in indecision.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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If you or someone you know has a problem with procrastination, you've probably chalked it up
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to deficiency in time management skills or self-control. But my guest says there are deeper
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reasons underlying procrastination and I'll unpack what they are today on the show. Joseph
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Ferrari is a Catholic deacon, a professor of psychology, and a foremost researcher and expert
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on procrastination who has authored or co-authored 400 professional articles and 35 books and
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textbooks. Today on the show, Dr. Ferrari explains the psychological dynamics behind procrastination
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and what you can do to counter them. He also shares the difference between regular and chronic
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procrastination, which of your parents you probably got your propensity to procrastinate from, and how
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procrastination can manifest in indecision. After the show's over, check out our show notes at
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All right. Reverend Dr. Joseph Ferrari, welcome to the show.
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Hi, I'm so glad you included me in your list of podcasts. Thank you.
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Well, you are a professor of psychology. You have done a lot of research and writing about
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procrastination. I'm curious, what led you down that research path in your career?
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I think I have close to 400 publications and one of the main lines of research that people know me as
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is the study of chronic procrastination. I don't do as much on that anymore. I do now join international
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colleagues. I have work in Iran, Israel, and I'm trying to remember, Turkey is the other country.
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So I work with people internationally. What brought me to this topic is, well, there's a concept in
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research called research is me search. Perhaps you've heard of that.
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Where people study topics that all about them. Well, I'm, that's not my case. People know me,
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no, I am not a procrastinator. I'm quite the opposite. I'm not a reformed procrastinator or whatever the
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people use that jargon terms for. I got into this quite honestly through graduate school.
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In late 1980s, I was studying my doctoral, doing my doctoral dissertation and research at Adelphi
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University in Garden City, Long Island in experimental social psychology. And I'm in a class
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being taught by a social psychologist who was transitioning into clinical psych. And she was
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teaching a course on self-defeating behaviors, masochism, choosing to suffer. As she was moving
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into clinical, she was studying these particular topics. And self-handicapping was one of the
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concepts. And I remember, again, you got to realize this is middle to late 80s. I raised my hand and I
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say, I don't know where it came from. I said, is procrastination a self-handicapping strategy?
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And she says, oh, yes, yes, yes. Well, I'm not the one who just lets things die. I raised my,
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well, raised my hand again. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? I don't know. She
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goes, but I'm sure somebody has done that study. So in the back of my notebook, this is before
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laptops and stuff, I write down procrastination and I go to the library and I go and I look up the topic
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and I find nothing on the topic. All right. There was about 200 citations, but there were conference
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presentations and most of the research was on writer's block or on career indecision. But I
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wanted to understand what are the causes? What are the consequences? Why do people actively choose
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to avoid things that they need to do? You know, procrastination. And I find nothing. Now for your
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listeners in graduate school, there is a saying, at least we were always taught, when you go do your
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thesis or your dissertation, you can either do a line of research that everybody else is doing.
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So you can join the bandwagon, which is fine. You'll have references, but you'll be lost in that
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crowd. Or especially for dissertation, you can take us into a new direction and go into something that
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people haven't studied. And you will have lines of research, questions you can ask that'll last you
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for years. And exactly what happened for a number of years through the 1990s, I was the only one
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studying this topic. And every study I did was publishable because no one looked at the development
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of it, the relationships of it. How does it relate to regret? Tell me how it excuse making and
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procrastinating, everything, all these kinds of things. So it was very fruitful for me. Now, again,
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I've moved into other topics. I do other things, but it's still the topic that a lot of people
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associate with me. So I didn't do it to find out about myself. I did it because it was a novel area
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and that's what scientists should do. Now, my current area, the last few years, has been looking
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at clutter and how does clutter impact our lives. Again, nobody studied that. Hoarding, separate. So,
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yeah. I thought it was interesting that there wasn't a lot of research about procrastination because
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this seems like this is an age-old problem that humans have. I mean, there's stories in ancient
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Greece talking about procrastination, Aesop's fables, right? The grasshopper and the ant,
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and even in the Bible, like the parable of the 10 virgins is a story of procrastination.
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So a number of years ago, there's a very famous psychology teaching conference that I approached.
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This was back in 2010 when my popular book had just first come out called Still Procrastinating.
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And that's why the title is that, and I'll get to that in a minute. But I approached him and I said,
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you know, would you like me to come and talk on this? No, it's not a real problem, I was told.
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And I was like, what? No, no. Students don't have a problem with procrastination. I'm like, what?
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What are you talking about? Of course it is. And then they wanted me to jump through hoops to show
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that it was really a legitimate thing and have, you know, focused table at one of their meetings.
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And I did, and everybody came and still wasn't good enough. So I never got to present there.
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I don't go there anymore. The title of my popular one was called Still Procrastinating,
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The No Regrets Guide to Getting It Done. It came out in 2010. So some might say it's a little old,
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but I don't think so. How did it get that title? Well, here's the history on that, if I may. I told
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you, Brett, I have lots to say. News reporters would call me and say to me, you know, in the 90s,
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in the 20s, the 2000s, and say, you know, Dr. Ferrari, this new book came out and this person is taking
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this angle or that angle on procrastination. And I would say, tell me more. I don't know the book.
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And I would say, no, because it's not a time management issue. To tell the chronic procrastinator,
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just do it, would be like saying to a clinically depressed person, cheer up. That's not going to
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work. That's not what it is. It's an active avoidance strategy. It's not that they're lazy.
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Oh, they work very hard on doing other things, things they're not supposed to be doing than
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what's important. So I called it still procrastinating because I was trying to tell
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the readers and anyone listening now, yeah, you've tried these time management books and I bet you
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they haven't worked and they're not going to work. All right. What you need to understand is that this
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is something much deeper, something much more active. Now you mentioned a few minutes ago, you know,
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why hasn't people studied this? It's so common. Yes. One of the things I've shown 96,
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was the first publication where I showed that 20% of adult men and women are chronic procrastinators.
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Now, what does that mean? That means they do it at home. They do it at school. They do it at work.
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They do it in relationships. You know, they're going to RSVP late. They're going to wait till the
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gauge goes on empty before they get more gas. They'll get the third message bill to have to pay it.
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All right. They're actively, you know, they're not going to get you their Christmas gift or their
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birthday gift or their birthday card on time. It will always come with, Oh, I'm sorry. I missed it.
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You know, because that's who they are. All right. 20%. Well, that's all you might think. No,
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that's higher than depression, phobias, panic attack, alcoholism, substance abuse. And yet
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our cultures see this as a funny topic. Oh, they're just procrastinating. Oh, I'm going to listen to that
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podcast tomorrow. No, this is, I don't take the joke serious because I've seen too much damage
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along the way. Too many lives broken. Too many people have missed things in life that they regret
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later on. So I finally wrote that book saying, still procrastinating. Try this.
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So that's interesting. You talk about how 20% and this cuts across demographics. So men and women,
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men and women, young and old. In fact, not only the U S one common concept I get from people is,
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well, this may be a U S thing. No. In fact, we find 20% in Britain, Australia, Canada, Germany,
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Polish, Austrian, Czechoslovakian, Spanish, Irish, Italian, Peruvian, Venezuelan, Turkey, Israeli,
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Saudi Arabia, Japanese, Korean. Now I've done work in Iran, finding this men and women, young and old
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urban and rural communities, all races. Now, does that mean it's genetic Ferrari? You're mentioning
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all these people. It's just human nature, whatever that means. We're born through evolution. No,
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it's because our culture cultures, Western. And as we see even Eastern and middle Eastern,
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because our cultures don't give the early bird, the worm anymore. You know, there was a time you did
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things ahead of time. You got rewarded for that. We punish for being late. Oh, you're going to pay
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a fine for that. Bill's not paid on time. You're going to pay higher prices for this or that last
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minute. We punish you, but we don't reward you for being early. Right. Well, I want to go back to this
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idea. So this 20%, these are chronic procrastinators. Yeah. This doesn't everyone. And you have this
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phrase you say in your book, everyone procrastinates, but not everyone is a procrastinator. And that's
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what you mean. Like the people who are procrastinators is this 20%, but everyone
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procrastinates from time to time. Yeah. I don't know if I would say everyone, but yes, I would say
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the vast majority. Hey, you might, everybody might put off a task. All right. And that doesn't mean
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you're a procrastinator. For example, I'm not a fan of cutting my grass. It's something I have to do
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only to water, to fertilize, to cut it again and again. So I delay as much as I can. Maybe not once a
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week, I do it every 10 days or every two weeks. All right. So does that make me a procrastinator?
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No. Anybody who knows me knows you don't have 115 page resume by being a procrastinator. You know,
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you don't publish 15, 20 articles a year being a procrastinator. No, I'm not a procrastinator. I do
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things, you know, on time because I value other people's time. If I may, let me go down, talk about
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that. Okay. You see the chronic procrastinator doesn't understand that the world is not about
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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.
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And the next person can't do their thing. Oh, but I find it hard. Oh, I don't like it. It's
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uncomfortable. Yeah, but it's not about you. You know, there's an old expression. If you want
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something done, give it to a busy person. Why? Because they're busy. Ah, because that person
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values your time and their time. They realize that you have things and I'm going to help you. It's
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not about me. It's about all of us. And so, yeah. So everybody puts a task off, but not everyone's a
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chronic procrastinator. So when does putting something off become procrastination, like clinically?
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Great question. All right. What's the tipping point that some people might say, when does it become
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delaying and all of that? We don't have an answer to that. When it interferes, like so many things in
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life, when it interferes with your life, when it prevents you from living an effective life, when
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other people's abilities are imposed on it, then yeah. But you know, just, and let me say that
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procrastination is not the same as delaying. If I'm stuck on the air tarmac for my plane not to take
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off and is delayed four hours for getting somebody, I didn't procrastinate. I was delayed. Pondering.
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If I ponder something, I'm not procrastinating because I am gathering information. I am active. Some
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people call it active stillness. You know, you're still actively collecting information and doing
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things. So don't think delaying or pondering or just waiting is procrastination. Procrastination
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becomes a problem when it's your maladaptive lifestyle, when you do it in all different
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settings. I like to define it in my 2010 book as intentionally delaying a task and it's irrational
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and it prevents you from reaching your goal. So you're intentionally delaying and it doesn't make
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sense to do that and you're not going to achieve things and you feel uncomfortable about it.
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So procrastination is the intentional putting off of things you don't want to do in all situations,
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but it's maladaptive. It's irrational. So why would someone do something that's maladaptive or
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irrational? Like why do people procrastinate? Do people procrastinate for the same reason or for
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different reasons? Oh, a variety of reasons. Now, some people have said that there are types of
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procrastinators and we really haven't found that. When I began the literature, I did talk about
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arousal and avoidance procrastinators. Some people wait till the last minute for a thrill-seeking
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experience, arousal. Well, a couple of studies came out years later that found, well, it's not arousal.
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They're not doing it for that. It's not the thrill-seeking. You know, you'll hear people say,
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I need to wait till the last minute because it gets me going. You know, it gets me excited to do this.
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And I found that in a self-report study, but they did follow-up studies and didn't replicate that.
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Interestingly enough, they did self-reports too. I would love any listener out there to come up with
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some good physio measures to find out if these people who claim to wait till the last minute
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really do have arousal, a change physiologically. No one's ever looked at those measures. I only found
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that. So some people claim they wait because they want to thrill. But look, it's really fears.
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Fear of failure is the most obvious. If I never finish something, I can never be judged. You see?
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And I can come back and tell you that I'm really good at it because, as social psychologists, we say,
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I'd rather people think I lacked effort than ability. Let me try to pick that apart for you,
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break that open for you. Okay. In social psych, we try to ask the question of where do people attribute
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their cause of their behavior to be, internally or externally? What are some of the factors?
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And in helping us explore that, social psychologists have talked about two aspects.
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Does the person think they have the ability or, and do they apply effort? Ability is a much more
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stable concept. Either I have it or I don't. Now, I could develop it, sure, but that takes time.
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Either you have the ability or you don't. Effort is much more fluid. Effort can change. I can try
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harder. So if I have to give a image to other people, and what I have found over all these 30
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years of research is that procrastinators are very concerned about what others think about them.
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If I, you know, I don't want you to think bad of me. So if I have to give a negative image,
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I'd rather you think I lacked effort than lackability. Because if I finish something and
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it doesn't meet the standards, it doesn't meet your standards, my standards, if it isn't good
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enough, then you're going to think less of me. He can't cut it. He just can't do it. You see?
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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
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time, I'd show you, oh, I'd really get this one much better. You know, if only you can get me more
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time, this is the best I can do on this. Well, you see, then I'm blaming it. It's not me. It's
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something else. So they'd rather have to protect that fear of failure. They're protecting their
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social, we call it social esteem. I'm sure you're familiar listeners and Brett, to self-esteem.
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That's how I feel about myself, self-esteem. But social psychologists, we like to look at
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social esteem. How do others think about you? How do others feel about you? And you see,
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by procrastinating, I can kind of protect my social esteem. Sure, you may not think I'm,
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you know, dependable, but you're not going to think I'm bad. Because our culture doesn't
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encourage people, as I said earlier, to get things done on time. Fear of failure. Even fear of success
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can cause people to procrastinate. Now, you might be listening and thinking, what? Why fear of success?
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Why should I put something off if I'm going to do well? Because I might not be able to live up to
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that the next time. I don't know if I can keep that standard. So if I delay, if I don't finish
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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
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again or give me another law brief that's even more impressive, you know? So it's a very protective
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strategy that culturally, 20% internationally, we say, okay, we won't hold you to the deadline.
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So this self-protection aspect of procrastination, this is the self-handicapping. This is kind of-
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It's part of self-handicapping. Yeah. Let me talk about that if I may,
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No, let's talk about self-handicapping because I think this is really interesting.
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So a lot of people these days, I don't know who else you've been talking to,
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but if readers too, listening, they say procrastination is what they call a self-regulation
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failure problem. In other words, the person is unable to regulate their time, regulate the tasks
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that they have to do. We used to call this years ago, delay of gratification. They can't regulate the,
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they're thrilled, the excitement, the pleasure they might get out of doing projects. So they want to
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do the good ones now and they don't want to delay and wait for the past ones. Well, I agree with that,
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but here's the problem with those authors and those people is that they say that's the only reason
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people procrastinate. And I say, no, this is a complex phenomenon. It's more than that. Yes,
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for some self-regulation is the issue, but for others, Brett, as you just said, it's self-handicapping.
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It gives me a nice ready excuse for why I don't have something done on time. You know, human beings are
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great excuse makers. In my book, in the 2010 book, still procrastinating, there's a chapter called The But
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However. It's all about excuse making. Human beings are great excuse making. There's always a reason.
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And we listen to them and we go, oh yeah, that makes sense. You know, it's never my fault.
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There's always something else that is the reason. The problem is with these people is you listen,
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you go, oh, okay, that makes sense. And they go, oh, that one makes sense. They never take ownership.
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So there's always a reason. Yeah. So if I can blame something else, it's not my fault. It's this
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thing in our culture. We do a lot of that. All right. So I'll put something in my way. I'll put an
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obstacle in my way or I'll claim I have some handicap. It's called choosing handicaps or
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claiming a handicap. Those are the two lines of research in this field. I can, I have something
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else. It's not my fault. And I come across looking good because here's the cool thing,
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Brett. I put the obstacle in my path. Let's say, let's say, I don't know. I have a basketball game
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coming up. Okay. And I love pizza. And so right before the game, I eat half a pie. Okay. And I don't do
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well on the game. I is, I could say, yeah, you know, I missed the shots and I didn't dribble well
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enough. And I, I didn't, you know, do good, good shots at the foul line. Uh, because if I hadn't
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had, it's not my fault, I'm really good. See, I'm a really good basketball player, but it's that pizza,
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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
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disclaim me, but you know, here's the other side. Life is interesting. Doesn't mean you're going to
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fail. What if you led the team to win the game and you ate that pizza, then you, well, we would say
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in psychology, you enhance your self-esteem, your social scene. Cause now I look even better. Cause
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you can say to people, yeah, yeah, we won. And I did, I sunk those shots and I even had a pizza on
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top of that. And look how good I am. See? So either way you come across looking good,
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either blame it on something else. You discount yourself or you enhance yourself. Does that make
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sense? No, that makes perfect sense. So bringing this back to procrastination, someone can put on,
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like a student puts off a report that they had to turn in. They put it off and they do at the last
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minute. If they don't do well, they can say, well, I didn't have enough time. I had so much else going
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on in my life this semester. I just didn't have the time. So they have an excuse, but if they do
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do well, they can say, man, I'm just really smart. Cause despite all this stuff I had going on in my
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life, I was able to knock this out of the park. Look at that, man. I work. And then that leads to
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that. And I work best on the pressure. You see what happens when exactly, exactly. I have a nice
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ready phenomena that I can blame. If the problem is, I just was telling my students this about the
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whole notion of cramming, you know, people wait till the last minute and sometimes it does pay
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off, but most of the time it doesn't. And what did they remember that time it paid off. So, you
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know, I'll tell my students, yeah, you remember that time in fourth grade, you crammed at the last
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minute and you got that great job on that exam. But look at all the exams since when cramming really
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screwed you up. If you had only been calm and relaxed, you know, yeah, you lost one question,
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but you gained 12 more, you know, but no, no, I remember man, cramming at the last minute,
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it paid off. You see, cause we remember that. So yeah, the person will hold onto that one time
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when the other pizza didn't affect me, man, I can do this. And not all the other time.
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We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
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And now back to the show. Okay. So sometimes people procrastinate as a way to self-handicap.
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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,
00:23:33.720
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
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
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
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,
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.
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.
00:29:50.400
Something you talk about in your book is that procrastination is learned. How do we learn
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,
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
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?
00:35:15.920
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
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.
00:44:57.240
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.
00:45:04.740
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.