BONUS: How to Stop Procrastinating

Is there hope for the eternal procrastinator? Jorge gets some tips for living with procrastination from three expert psychologists.

Learn more about our experts' work: 

• procrastinus.com (Dr. Piers Steel) 
• fuschiasirois.com (Dr. Fuschia Sirois)

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, welcome to sign Stuff, your production of iHeartRadio. I'm
hoor Hitcham, and in this bonus mini episode, we are
answering the question how do you stop procrastinating? Hopefully you
heard our main episode about the Signs of procrastination, in
which three experts weigh in on what procrastination is, why
we do it, and what consequences it has. Now we're

(00:23):
going to talk about what happens if you want to
stop procrastinating, and as it happens, each of our experts
suggest a different strategy. Fir Stop is doctor Pierce's Steel,
a professor of organizational psychology at the University of Calgary
who's written several books on procrastination and has even programmed
a chat GPT app to help you stop procrastinating. You

(00:46):
can find all his work at procrastinus dot com. Now,
if you recall, doctor Steele explained that when we procrastinate,
it's really our frontal cortex finding it out with your
more primitive limbic system.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Like a lot of people struggle with this because it's
really the mind is set against itself. You want to
do it, but you don't want to want to do it,
or you want to want to do it, but you
don't want to do it right, so people like struggle,
why can't I get myself going? And partly is the environment.
It's totally stacked up against you. If sometimes there's nothing
wrong with your goals or you, it's about your environment

(01:22):
and accessibility of distractions of temptations.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Tuctor Steele says one of the best things you can
do to stop procrastinating is to durun off your phone
or hide it in another room.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
Make sure you.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Have a distraction free space in which to work. And
according to doctor Steele, the number of ways for us
to get distracted has only gotten worse over the years.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
And it's just gone up and up and up, like
a five hundred percent increase in product procrastination last twenty years. Wow,
And I haven't even checked it recently.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
In his books and website, Tuctor Steel has lots of
techniques to help you stop procrastinating, but the main one
is to make it hard to get distracted.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
And there's like twenty five different techniques, right, but the
fundamental one, the easiest one, is distancing your temptations, make
them harder to get through. I would always start with
that before moving down to the other ones.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Next up is doctor Fuschia Sira, professor of psychology at
Durham University. If you remember doctor Curras, is that at
the heart when we procrastinate is an emotional reaction. There's
always something about the task we're avoiding that gives us
a negative emotion. Maybe the stakes of the thing you
have to do are high and that stresses you out,

(02:41):
or maybe you are secretly afraid of doing it because
then people might judge you and think you're not good enough,
or maybe you just find it unpleasant, and then the
negative emotions can pile up and you start to feel
shame or panic about the fact that you're procrastinating. So
doctor Ciro says to avoid all those emotions, which works

(03:03):
in the short term but not in the long term.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
So you get that immediate reinforcement. You've just engaged in
short term mood repair. But it's what we all go
through when we procrastinate, and I do prostate myself too. Occasionally.
For me, it's because I'm very future oriented with thinking.
I start imagining how difficult something's going to be, and
that's enough to make me go no, I don't want
to get into that right now, So I put it aside.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
You know, the trig doctors Ros says is that whenever
you feel yourself procrastinating, you sort of can't figure out
why you're doing it. Take a step back and try
to pinpoint the negative emotion that's making you procrastinate. You're
saying the correct response should be to basically cope with
our emotions or dig into our emotions.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
Yeah, you have to first of all, recognize that there's
an emotion driving this dysfunctional behavior and keeping you from
reaching your goals and you know, making your dreams a reality.
But what is that emotion? You have to name it
before you contame it. Is it boredom? Is it frustration?
Is it anxiety? Is it stress? Is some combination of
these things? What is the emotion I'm feeling? And then

(04:10):
what are the thoughts that are contributing or past experiences
that might be attributing.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
And once you identify the emotion that's making you procrastinate,
you can deal with it. You can think about whether
it makes sense for that emotion to be holding you back.
If you need extra help, Doctor Sirah has written a
book and a toolkit to help people deal with their
procrastinating emotions. The link is in the episode description. All right,

(04:37):
now we get to our last expert, doctor Lisa Boylka,
a researcher in psychology at Tubingin University. As you mentioned
in the main episode, we all tend to procrastinate less
over time, partly because we get better at dealing with
things and partly because the world puts more constraints on
you as you get older and have more responsibilities. So

(05:00):
if you're looking to do less procrastination in a way,
you don't have to worry about it that much because
the world will sort of do it for you. But
the other big tip about how to stop procrastination is
to realize what one of the big problems with procrastination
really is.

Speaker 4 (05:19):
There's another big component, which is that you actually have
like this guilty conscience that in the back of your head,
Like for instance, when you have a task which is
really difficult or it's just boring and you don't want
to do it, and then you procrastinate, you watch cat videos,
or if you do something that's more fun like on

(05:41):
short term, you feel much better about it, you feel
much better about yourself. But in the end, you have
in the back of your mind maybe I should have started,
Maybe I should do it now.

Speaker 1 (05:50):
Interesting, it seems like maybe the difference in is this
idea of guilt. Yes, guilt. The real problem with procrastination,
it seems, causes all the anxiety and stress is feeling
guilty about it. So one thing all our experts agree
on that could help you out is to cut yourself

(06:11):
some slack. Otherwise you just keep falling down that spiral
of negative emotions. I mean, I asked all three of
our experts if they still procrastinate, and they all said
they do. So, even procrastination experts procrastinate.

Speaker 3 (06:26):
I mean, it's a human tendency. Like we live in
a culture that is so focused on productivity, and if
you've got this as a backdrop, and you know you're
not doing what you're supposed to be doing, you're immediately
feeling like, I'm not doing what everybody else is doing.
I'm not contributing to society. I'm a bad person, right,
There's something wrong with me.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
And then that feeds back into their negative emotions, which
makes them want to avoid it even more.

Speaker 2 (06:50):
Exactly what I would want people to do is to
give themselves a little more self love, you know, forgive
themselves for being human, but also understand their human I see,
they're not robots or angels of perfection, and this is
really baked into our brain's architecture. If we wanted to
eliminate that, we'd have to be other than human. What's

(07:12):
your understand it? Life gets a lot easier and a
lot more fun to.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
All right, So to recap, the three biggest things you
can do assuming you want to stop procrastinating, are get
rid of potential distractions, dig into your emotions and try
to figure out why you're really putting something off. And
go easy on yourself. Approach your inner procrastinator with love.

(07:39):
You are, after all, only human. Thanks for procrastinating with us.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
See you next time.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
You've been listening to Science Stuff. The production of iHeartRadio
written and produced by me or Y Cham credited by
Rose Seguda, executive producer Jerry Rowland, and audio engineer and
mixer Jasey Pegram And you can follow me on social media.
Just search for PhD Comics and the name of your
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(08:08):
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