September 6, 2011 • 39 mins
Why do we procrastinate? Why do we put off dreaded tasks and long-held ambitions for short-term pleasures? In this episode, Robert and Julie break down procrastination. Listen in and learn more about what you can do to cut down on procrastination.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb. I'm Julie Douglas. Julie, do
you remember studying writing papers all that jazz back in
high school and college? Now I'm doing jazz hands, Yes,
(00:25):
I do remember. I recall frenzy um activity happening at
the eleventh hour. Yeah. I remember staying up like all
night to write things. In college. I remember getting up
early to do homework, then being late as I ran
off the class, and then finishing the homework in class,
(00:45):
or skipping lunch to do a homework assignment do that afternoon.
Everything was always a last minute, right, And this is
called the student syndrome, right, Yes, yeah, and it's really common.
I'm sure everyone at some point, particularly in in in
their student years, experienced this where you were just putting
everything off because you were making a deal with yourself saying, oh, yeah,
i'll do it in a couple of days, I'll do
(01:06):
it a couple of hours and then bam. Because there's
always something more entertaining or worthwhile to do in the
present than later on. And I'm sure that that would
have been something like other studies rather than beer consumption
or well, well I did not consume libations in college
for the most part. But what would you have occupied
(01:29):
have been? Stuff like, um, you know, team Fortress or
a quake or something I guess, you know, other at
leisure activities. I wasn't exactly living it out most of
my college career. I have to say, all right, well,
I don't have any comment on that for myself. Okay, well,
but procrastination, it is a huge deal. It is perhaps
an inseparable part of who we are. Everyone does it,
(01:52):
even the even the go getters out there. There's something
on that to do list. It's not getting um do attention,
and it all boils down to procrastination. We've been trying
to fight this for ages. We still don't have it
completely kicked or anywhere close to it. So what exactly
is it? We're going to discuss what procrastination is, why
(02:13):
we do it, some of the ideas out there about
how we might defeat it, and uh and and whether
that's really an achievable goal. Yeah, can you really vanquish it? Yeah?
Um and just saying no, you ever actually get around
to vanquishing it? Well, yeah, you can put a plan together,
you can clean the plan just at all. You can
have a board meeting about it. You can put together
(02:34):
committee to study procrastination and put together ten like ten
steps on best us standards and practices towards defeating it.
Then you can blog about those ten steps. Yes yeah, um,
but like, this is not a modern phenomenon, right, Sure,
there's been an uptick, and for reasons we'll talk about later.
But just in case you're wondering it, it actually came
(02:56):
into our vernacular and owned fifteen hundred and thirty two,
I believe the first instance of the use of the
word procrastinate. Yeah, the actual like English word procrastinate. Ye.
And there's a book from eighteen fifty two called Thoughtless
Little Fanny, The Unhappy Results of Procrastination. So this was
(03:17):
on people's minds thoughtless little fanny, thoughtless little fanny, Like,
don't have such a thoughtless little fanny? Like? Is that
never mind? No, we're not talking about fannies like fanny,
because it's like, get off your fannie and do something right. Well,
maybe that's where some of that came from. Who is well, uh,
even though the word is relatively new in terms of
(03:38):
human history. Uh. The idea is, of course has been
around for as long as we've had stuff to put
off doing. I mean it's uh, if you look back
in the Mahabarada, the ancient Indian epic, which we've discussed
a little in the past when we were talking about
ancient technology and weapons. Um, and I'm I've been really
into it because I just forced my wife to set
through several hours of the Peter Brook Channel four film
(04:02):
that up to he did. Peterborok did like a nine
hour version of the Mahaparata and then they cut it
down to like six hours or five hours for TV,
and then they cut that down to three hours for
the DVD. And it's really cool, but my wife had
suffered through it because it is a little slow. Yes,
but there's a part in it where the character of
Bishma is talking to King yudish Tura and he's taking
(04:24):
him about these fish right that they're they're three fish
in the water and there's a fisherman coming. Um. You know,
this is like the apocalypse for these fish. And one
of the fish in the water says, all right, I'm
a fish of action. Let's do this. This let's do this.
Let's uh, let's let's hop to it. Let's get to
some water where we're not going to be threatened by
this fisherman. And then there's another fish, and this fish
(04:45):
is more of a thoughtful planner, and the fish says, look,
I'm gonna think this over, I'm gonna i'm gonna do
a little research, I'm gonna crunch some numbers, and then
when the time for action comes, I will act and
I will be prepared to act. And uh, and that's good.
Both of these fish are great. But then there's a
third fish, and that third fish is just like, ma,
you know, I'm not I'm not gonna worry. Well, is
(05:05):
that fish just completely hamstrung by the idea and and
therefore becomes a slacker fish? Um, yeah, kind of a
slacker fish, just like doesn't that is it gonna put
the is it gonna act now? Isn't gonna put the putar?
Far with the effort to act now? Is instead going
to just be like, well, what the fisherman does tomorrow
is completely out of my mind, so Bishmuth says. Thus
(05:26):
everyone meets with destruction, like the procrastinating fish, who from
want of intelligence cannot divine the hour of danger. That
man again, who, regarding himself clever, does not seek his
own good improper time, incurs great danger, like the Sekula
who had presence of mind. So it's, uh, it's it's
really interesting ancient texts they're already talking about, you know,
(05:46):
the wisdom behind tackling procrastination. You don't have to act
right away, you know, you don't have to be the
person it's like, oh, here's a here's a challenge. I'm
on it. At least be the be the fish that
is that is planning things out and as well. Discussing this,
you tend to see like two types of procrastination with anybody.
We're either putting off something that we really do not
(06:07):
want to do, like taking out the garbage roundloading the dishwasher,
or doing our taxes something like that. Or we're putting
off something that we really want to do, or we
think we really want to do, or we feel like
we should want to do. The stakes are higher in
that instance, right, and the expectations and probably the fear
surrounding it. Right if you look in in the In Islam,
(06:29):
the Arabic world word for procrastination toss with primarily concerns
the postponement of good deeds. So there's more of an
emphasis in Arabic on procrastination as the putting off of say, uh,
you know, doing this great endeavor that you're planning, you know,
I know, writing that book you always wanted to ride,
or or finally donating to charity or you know, or
(06:50):
whatever you're particular. There's more of a lighting of the
fire under the duff to get things done. Yeah, and
then hitting on Buddhism, here's a quote from Surya Dass,
an American in a lama in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition,
and he says, we have to stop procrastinating, pretending that
we have forever to do what we want to do
and be what we long to be. So that's it.
(07:10):
He dies in this whole idea that a lot of
procrastination is sort of on some level feeling are like
we're gonna live forever and we have indefinite time to
achieve these various goals, obligations, dreams, uh, etcetera. C. S. Lewis,
of course, the Christian writer and sci fi fantasy fictioner,
says there is no other day all days are present.
(07:31):
Now this moment contains all moments. I really I enjoyed
sort of looking looking around and seeing what different people
have to say about it. So, so we've been thinking
about it for a long time. There's a lot of
philosophy and uh and religion tied up in actually stirring
people to action and stirring yourself to action. Yeah, and
let's talk about some statistics behind this too, like what's
(07:52):
going on here? There is a five year study that
actually this is the the irony here. It was meant
to be a five years study, but it took ten
years to complete. Not making this up. Oh yeah, journalists
love that stuff, by University of Calgary professor Pierce Steele.
It's a thirty page study and it's actually pretty exhaustive.
(08:13):
But it concluded, among other things, that only about five
percent of the American public thought of themselves as chronic procrastinators.
But now today it's about so the number has gone
up quite a bit significantly. Yeah, and the culpriate just
just guess what the culprit is. But the reason why
this may have gone up, Oh, let's see the last
(08:34):
twenty five years, I'm guessing the Internet. Yeah, it's lovely distractions,
That is exactly it. Pierce Steel also attributes to the
mind uh mind sweeper game. I really I never figured
out how to play mine. I know, I thought, well,
he had kept like and all the things that I
read there were all these quotes of that mind sweeper
game just taken over the nation. Yeah, I think perhaps
(08:58):
for him, I'm going to guess that. I don't know,
but it's really interesting because it's a hard thing to measure.
And in fact, Slate dot com had a great article
called Procrastinators Without Borders, and what they were saying essentially is, okay,
here is a study that is right for research. You know,
how do people procrastinate in other cultures? Because you know,
(09:20):
you you can look at Americans and you can say, okay,
there's a high incidence of self reporting of procrastinating. But
perhaps that's because we're really into self disclosure, right Americans are.
And you can say there's a high incidence in Japan.
But you could say, well, that's also because uh, if
someone were to say they were procrastinating, that's sort of
a cultural norm of self criticizing oneself, and so it
(09:46):
would make sense that they would say, oh, yes, I'm
a procrastinator and this is part of my problem. Um,
So there's there's sort of hard to measure in other cultures,
and also how how is it perceived there? Right, because
we know that a color is a color in one
culture and the color in a different culture. Right, It's
all how we sort of uh construct this reality, right
(10:08):
of how we perceive things. And of course there's also
something to be said about how different different cultures perceived
time slightly differently, right, Um. And then this comes down
to basically clock time versus event time. Yes, and there's
nature time to write, right, yeah, nature time as well, which,
of course it's just it's it's light out, it's start out,
(10:29):
the sun's going coming up, the sun is going down.
Looks like when when are you planning to eat dinner?
Are you planning to eat dinner at seven o'clock sharp?
Are you planning to eat dinner when everyone returns to
the house, or are you planning to eat dinner when
the sun comes down? There's not all necessarily the same time, right,
and in in different cultures that could be wildly different
(10:49):
times that they actually occur. Robert Levine is a social
psychologist and the author of a geography time, and he
maps the different perceptions of time between urban and rural settings,
corporate culture, as ethnic groups, and academic disciplines, and he
puts forth the idea of a multi temporality. So he
it's sort of this idealistic like, you know, possibly we
(11:10):
could start to move between nature time, event time, and
clock time, depending on the situation. But what you'll see
is that in most Western cultures we work on clock
time monochronic time, right, monocron nicktime rather, and that's a
linear timeline. It moves us from one task to another,
where if you're in um event time in another culture,
(11:32):
then let's say that you make a date to study
with someone, and you make the date for seven o'clock.
In an event time, you wouldn't actually be expected to
show up at seven o'clock because what might happen between
you showing up for that time and when you actually
do is that a friend could come over and want
to listen to music. And so it's much more like, Okay, well,
(11:54):
I'm just going to go with it now, and it's
less of a concern about the future. It's more like
what's going on right now. So it's like Davies yes,
it's very much so like this Um and Levine found
that the quicker we speak, walk, eat, and drive UM,
the more of an economic um boom we get. Right there,
(12:16):
So the communities that are much more structured around clock
time tend to be ones that and this is no surprise,
have bigger economies, um, more luxuries, higher incomes, and so
on and so forth. And I thought this was interesting.
This was interesting that the top five countries using the
index of pace of life as he calls it, or
time consciousness from fastest to slowest are Switzerland, Ireland, Germany, Japan,
(12:41):
and Italy. And the five slowest or at least time
conscious countries are Syria, El Salvador, Brazil, Indonesia, and the Mexico. Yeah,
so I mean, here you go. Here's a good example
of how time and this perception of whether or not
you're procrastinating could be wildly different from one culture to another. Well,
having been too in Mexico and having been to Germany,
(13:01):
I can say that there does a drastic difference in
how time is perceived and how time passes in those
two countries. Well, as I know that Germany is is
famous for its transportation, right and for for always being
on time, um and adhering to the clock time. Well,
I have, I have. I mean, I'm I'm not the
most you know, buckled down of individuals, but but I
(13:23):
do have some German blood in me. So there there
are times where I'm like, where is someone to enforce
the rules and to put straight limits and beginnings on
this thing? You know? And then you reach for a
strudal Yeah, and then I reach for a strudle. You know.
It's like why why are people coming in late and
leaving early for yoga class? This should not be permitted.
I've got Dutch on my side, So I just wear
wooden shoes. Okay, that's That's gotta make down dog different
(13:45):
really difficult though it does, it does. It's a challenge. Um.
But so the question then sort of becomes like, how
how do we become motivated in these different atmospheres, um,
of different environments. And it's interesting to note that Lady
Gaga actually enters this equation, yes, and doesn't she always
I guess she does. She's always interjecting herself in these
(14:07):
philosophical discussions, right, um, And we're there was we're of
course referring to m psychology today blog post or or
article I think blog post slash article um that was
talking about basically pitting Lady Gaga against the Secret because
the lady guy got had this thing about where she
could see the awards, and she doesn't put them on
the wall. She like throws them in the closet or something. Right,
(14:28):
she sort of bragged, well, I don't know if you
say bragg but her advice to an up and comer was, Hey,
don't don't get all excited about whatever awards you've been given.
I just pretend like they don't exist anymore. Taken down
and I take it down to the studs, and then
I have to get those awards again. Yes, and uh yeah,
And the name of this article was the motivatical wisdom
(14:48):
of Lady Gaga versus the Secret. And we'll have to
throw a link in the blog post we do with this,
but it concerns Sigmund Freud's idea of the irrational lobido,
the part of our psyche that lives for immediate pleasure,
all right, which actually ties into a lot of a
lot of our discussions here about procrastination, because it's about,
you know, it's all about like this present us and
(15:09):
then dealing with a future us that yeah, feed it
and give its its instant gratification. Right, so um two.
In order to accomplish this immediate pleasure, the libido uses
what Freud termed a primary process, where it produces a
memory image of an object needed for gratification in order
(15:30):
to reduce the frustration of not having been gratified yet.
So basically this would be like an example of this
would be like if someone was like, man, I sure,
I sure, wish I was a rock star. That looks great,
and then you imagine yourself as a rock star and
you just sort of set there and you're you know,
your high school class or your or behind the wheel,
and you sort of stay up, you're off into the
(15:51):
distance and see yourself as a rock star, and in
doing that, scratch that itch and then the itches scratched
and you're like, okay, I'm good. I'm good. Now back
to what I is doing. Okay, So this is the
fantasy part of it, right, And this is this is
how it relates to the secret. Yeah, we imagine everything
from revenge to accomplishment, you know, whatever it may be,
without doing anything, and we received the pleasure from the
(16:12):
image alone, and then of course the secret. On the
other hand, can we say what the secret is? Can
we be sued for revealing the secret? I don't think
it's a secret anymore. Yeah, I mean, has that red
stamp on the it's been on Oprah and and all
sorts of stuff. I'm sure a lot of people are
are familiar with the concept at least right sort of
this law of attraction. It's like you imagine it and
(16:33):
make it real. You put out your your wish for
this thing, and then you put that out into the
universe and that that I know I'm probably massacring this,
but I will admit that I have not read this book.
So this is my piecemeal understanding of it. Is that
once you put out that wish, that energy, then that
is going to attract uh, your wish fulfillment so that
(16:56):
it comes to you whatever it is. I have. I
have read other things that to make similar arguments for
this idea of manifesting what you want in your life.
And some of these even take a sort of quasi
quantum physics approach by you know, sort of like looking
at the idea that all possible realities exist somewhere. So
if you were to focus, you could force yourself into
the physicals, into into the alternate realities where the desired
(17:19):
events have transpired. So there's a reality where I'm a
rock star. There's a reality where I clean up after
rock stars, and all I need to do is focus
hard enough, and I can move my current self toward
more towards the rock star persona than the rock star
cleaner upper. Okay, So there's a problem with this though,
(17:41):
if you're actually motivated to fulfill it for yourself, right,
And that's where Lady Gaga comes in, because she's relying
on an expectation that she has that's a framework based
on her past experiences. So she already knows what it
takes to get to this goal and fulfill it, right,
and only that she's created a lack right because mentally
(18:05):
she has removed those awards, those accolades from from her um,
from from becoming a symbol that is already fulfilling. So
she's her desire. I think it's like like, man, I
wish I was famous and successful, and then she looks
up at the awards and she goes, there, I am,
and then like then they accomplished, and so she takes
(18:26):
them off, and she's like, oh, that was accomplished and
famous and all that. And then she looks up in
the walls empty and she makes a little frowny face. Nothingness, right,
and then she starts to levitate like a zen Buddhist. Um.
I made that part of so over the last decade
is this article lays out there was a study at
a New York university and they took they used three
(18:48):
different groups to study which of these approaches is more successful.
Here's a fantasy group that essentially falls the path of
the secret here and they imagine what they have already
desired having come true, all right. And then there's a
control group that's the baseline people just do, left to
their own devices. And then there is a mental contrasting group,
and this is uh, this is like the Lady Gaga
(19:08):
model where they mentally contrast by fantasizing about what they
want and then immediately afterwards they compare where they are
now with where they want to be. So this would
be the whole like, you know, fantasizing about being a
rock star and be like, oh, that's that's kind of
cool in my head, and then you you, you know,
you suddenly you're back in reality and you're like, whoa,
I'm not a rock star at all, and then perhaps
(19:29):
imagining the steps that would take you to that desired reality.
So anyway, the results show that the Lady Gaga styled
mental contrasting always does a better job than than pure fantasy.
And so the suggestion here is that the secret mode
is uh is kind of flawed. I just love the
fact that that someone took Lady Gaga's quote about taking
(19:50):
our platinum records down and and it's something like she
said something like a pretenda, haven't sold a damn one
and I've got to do it all again. Like they
took that quote and then they app aied it to
a study along with the Secret this book the Secret,
and bore this out. I think that's pretty great. Yeah, well,
I mean that's how you do it. You get this,
You take the science, you throw Lady Gaga or a
(20:12):
really strong verb in the headline, and you've got yourself
the science news story. He's got legs. Yeah. Um. In
a minute right here after the break, we're going to
talk about whether or not there's a unifying theory of
procrastination of why we do it, and we're going to
talk about how you can overcome your procrastinate and ways.
This podcast is brought to you by Intel, the sponsors
(20:33):
of Tomorrow and the Discovery Channel. At Intel, we believe
curiosity is the spark which drives innovation. Join us at
curiosity dot com and explore the answers to life's questions.
All right, and we're back. Are you ready to listen
to the rest of this podcast or have you been
putting it off? No? No, you have to finish this podcast.
(20:57):
We're halfway through. It's like that I'm gonna go grab
some water. It's like that quote from a beeth where
he's wading through the blood and he's like to to
turn back. Now, I'd have to wage just through just
as much blood to see it all the way through.
So that's where we are. We've got to wait through
the rest of the blood. Wow, you're dark man. Yeah, uh,
I like it. So So yeah, we're talking about procrastination
and is there a unified theory because we we we
(21:21):
discussed that. We discussed humor in a recent podcast, and
we talked about a unified theory of humor where they say,
what is humor? Well, here you go, cultivate it out
in like a few different steps complete explanation. Can we
do that with procrastination in theory? We can? Right, okay?
And so the temporal motivation theory posits that motivation can
(21:42):
be understood by the effects of expectancy and value, which
could be weakened by delay, with differences for rewards and losses.
So what we're talking about here is motivation equals expectation
times value over impulsiveness times delay. So if you plug
in the conditions of a scenario and the denominator that
that impulse in the face of gratification, right, the what
(22:04):
would be the underneath expectation of value? If that is
weaker than the proposition of a good chance of a
successful outcome, then you are less likely to procrastinate, which
sort of feels like a dumb moment, you know, like,
oh yeah, okay, of course, because you would think, right
that if it was a good chance that you were
going to do great at this task, um, and you
(22:28):
know you you didn't have really a good reason to
put it off, that you would get it done. So
that's where I kind of that's the point where I say, well,
that makes sense, But we're crazy humans and we're sort
of flawed in our logic, and sometimes we do things
to to really mess ourselves up, you know, we self
deceive or we make something bigger than it is, and
(22:48):
so we don't accomplish something because we even though we're
excited about it. Right, That's that's the problem I have
with T M. T Okay. But but to break it
down again, it's basically we're more likely to do the
things that we expect succeed at, and we typically discount
future rewards in favor of the media rewards, which comes
down again too. I can have fun now versus acing
(23:10):
that test tomorrow, or I can not have fun now,
and as the test tomorrow, which is more real, I'm
not having fun now and I want the fun, right Yeah.
And this instantly brings to mind something called Ulysses packed,
which is a great to refresh. Of course, it's the
myth of Ulysses. You know, um who's uh uh you know,
(23:34):
he's he's he's on the ship. He's sailing right, and
he knows the sirens are coming up, the beautiful naked
ladies that crawl out of the singing to him, and
they will lure everyone to their deaths. They will sing
so beautifully and they will be so absolutely naked that
all the men on the ship will climb into the
water and drown. So Ulysses is a he's a pretty
(23:54):
smart cat. So he's like, this is what you're gonna do.
You're going to tie me to this mass and time
me so tight that when the naked sirens starts singing um,
future me won't be able to do anything about it
because past me is brilliant. So it's like it's past
Ulysses versus future Ulyssenes, and he binds future Ulysses, and
(24:14):
then when future Ulysses rolls around, he's like, oh my goodness,
somebody in timey I want to go drown with these
naked ladies, and and past Ulysses like ha ha, I
got you. Yeah, well, And I think what's interesting about
this is that he's got the long term goal in mind, right.
So that's really when we were talking about this a
little bit more about how you do vanquished procrastinating, but
(24:35):
that's a really big important part of that. He's got
the past experience. You're drawn and he says, naked ladies,
you have seen him before. My big goals to get
past you guys and live It reminds me, did you
ever watch Strangers with Candy? Oh? Yes, do you remember Jazz? Oh?
Who's jazz Jazzy was the like the old jazz singer
band teacher that was in one episode, But he would um.
He was really attracted to the ladies, so he had
(24:57):
to put a post it note on his hand that
says touch the girls, Jazzy. And so there's the same
way he's like reaching after a girl's hinder and uh,
and then he yeah, and then he sees the post
it note and he goes, ah, you're too fast for me,
and uh. It's hilarious. But but it's a sound like
the opposite of the Ulysses. No, No, it's the it's
exactly the same. It's past Jazzy um influencing future Jazzy
(25:20):
and saying, hey, future Jazzy, don't do anything I see
I see the person always Yeah. But so Ulysses packed
is Uh, it's sort of the same thing, and it's
the eye. It comes back around to that idea that
we're always going to go for the the immediate pleasure
is is gonna appeal to us more than the distant pleasure,
even if the immediate pleasure is something as fleeting as
(25:42):
candy is good versus the distant pleasure is is living
longer or being healthier. You know, you can tie this
into any number of addiction scenarios. Well, and you were
telling me about I think the ultimate example of this
that you heard on radio Lab. Yeah, this is it
was the it was where all right? So what can
go up against this can out? What can defeat the
immediate desire for pleasure? If immediate, if future greater pleasure
(26:05):
won't do it. And the thing is, you need something
that you have in the present really strong. So is
a really strong emotional an outcome that's so repulsive that
you would be completely shamed with yourself. This Yeah, this
lady is trying to quit smoking. So she decided she
made a pack with herself ironclad pat If I smoke,
I will donate a whole bunch of money to the
K five thousand dollars. And she was a you know,
(26:26):
she was a big civil rights supporter. So this was
just against every The idea of doing this stood against
everything she'd believe. It would be like the the the
ultimate like not only just humiliating, but she would be
supporting um a you know, a racist group that that
she has despises. So her current her her current shame,
(26:47):
her current displeasure. Uh, you know, however you want to
frame it, her her current um adversarial position to the
to the KKK way outpowered the present urged smoke because
she would say, like she'd wake up in the morning
and she'd reach for a cigarette and she'd think, oh, no,
I can't, but I cannot do this. Yeah, it's kind
of like future It's like a future Jazz was calling
(27:09):
up President Jazz, and President Jazz's like, I don't know,
Future Jazz, if you were here, maybe you could talk
me out of this, but you're not who And then
in the future Jazz is like, well, who's there who
can actually talk to talk to him? And he's like, oh,
I'll call up his revulsion to this, you know, right right, Yeah,
that's all Jazzy needed. So it's pretty cool. Yeah. Um.
And I think what's interesting about that again is just
(27:31):
going to this idea of like, how do you really
overcome procrastinating because we're so good at self deception again,
and this is from a sideblog, how to avoid procrastinating?
I think concretely, and there's there's a clue right there.
You have to be uh less abstract and more concrete
about the decisions that you make and also about how
(27:53):
much time it's going to take to do anything. Oh yeah,
Hofstatter's law rights law that says that anything we think
about doing is basically gonna take longer than we think
it will. Even if you take into account Offsetter saw,
it's still going to take longer, like there's no recursive
quality to it. Yeah, so we end up with it's
called it, you know, we end up with the planning fallacy.
But we plan to do something and we're never gonna
(28:15):
kind it just right. You can. You can pencil in
eight different things to do on your vacation day or
in your work day, and you're not going to get
to all of them because everything takes longer than it
should or you're not factoring in travel between the things,
you know. Yeah, yeah, alright, So what are your tips here?
My tipsy not that we normally give tips, but you know,
we were researching this we thought we'd share it with
(28:35):
you guys. Okay, So I ran across a number of
different suggested ideas. One is um the idea of setting
up dummy goals like don't set up big goals, but
set up dummy goals. Yeah, So it's like and and
part of this, uh, the source of treating this on compared, uh,
tied it into the paradox of hedonism, which is, if
you seek happiness or pleasure, you won't find it. But
(28:57):
if you set a goal of, say winning a karaoke challenge,
you might just have fun trying to achieve that. So
in a way, it's kind of like shoot for a
lower star and you just you know, And it's kind
of like setting more realistic goals, but also setting dummy
goals along your your towards your ultimate goal. All right,
so there's there's this idea of structured procrastination. You can't
(29:20):
defeat procrastination, be constructured. You can turn one negative quality
against the other. And this comes from John John Perry,
a professor of philosophy at Stanford University, and it basically
comes down, all right, procrastinators have excellent self deceptive skills.
So so you have this to do list, and like
we're saying, one of the big things about procrastination, we
all have a to do list and we never end
up finishing it. So we're always unhappy because we have
(29:41):
an incomplete to do list. So he's saying, all right,
you have your on this to do list, move an
item that you need to accomplish further down the list, Like,
so your number one goal for the day is to
actually set down and do your taxes, and then you
have things like, um, clean out the dishwasher, and um,
(30:02):
you know, feed the cat, not the floor. All right,
so we've all been in this position. You really don't
want to do your taxes, so you find yourself achieving
these going after these other achievable goals like who like,
doing my taxes gonna take forever. I'm not really certain
about my ability to do it right. But I can
wash that floor, I can feed that cat, I can
I can unload that dishwasher. Um at a at a
(30:24):
perfect level of of success. So you end up doing
those things you can you feel you can succeed at better.
But anyway, the structured procrastination idea is to not put
the taxes at the top of the list. Put it
a little further down, and then you will end up
skipping the other things. She'll be thinking like, I don't
want to just unload the dishwasher. I hate unloading the dishwasher.
(30:45):
What's up? What's the else is on my list? Oh, taxes.
I'll go to my taxes so I don't have to
do the unload the dishwasher. And I cannot say I
really buy this side. Just about to say that seems like,
you know, you're trying to fool yourself into in your
taxes and you're a little bit more wildly than that.
You know, Yeah, I feel like I'm too smart for
for that particular well, even if I'm the one pulling
(31:06):
it off. Also say that doing those the little tasks
always makes me feel like I'm reading my brain for
accomplishing the bigger and wheeldy tasks like clearing the slate.
It's kind of printing, printing the field of my mind,
and you know, so to speak, so that when I
sit down and and you know, I have actually like
(31:26):
no other recourse now because I've exhausted my list and
I sit down and I have to do it. It's
like in a video game, so you're fighting three lesser
opponents in one like stronger opponent. It's the idea of
picking off the three smaller ones so they're not nipping
at your heels when you're trying to tackle the really
dangerous exactly. And I don't know if that works for
other people, but you know, it's certainly I mean, it
(31:47):
is procrastinating, but it's helpful procrastinating if you actually follow
through with the final thing that you're wanting to do, right.
I do like the feeling, like if if I'm working
on stuff for there are a lot of different tasks
that fill our days. Here it how stuff works. I mean,
it ranges from really cool stuff like podcast or writing
an article to more mount mundane things like picking out
which blocks to put on the homepage or you know,
(32:09):
the things of this nature. And I feel like, even
though those smaller tasks are not necessarily very skill intensive,
I like the feeling of having the the day cleared
to tackle one one challenging and or fulfilling task. And
I think you'll see to your pattern there, because a
lot of people will wait until that task, or rather
(32:30):
wait until later in the week to fulfill that big task.
So I've gotten all the other stuff done. Um, okay,
let's talk about animals. Is it is there a possibility
that animals procrastinate? I don't think so. I mean, um,
anybody who has pets tell me when you have ever
seen your cat or dog procrastinate, because generally they have
certain needs and when those needs arise, they will take
(32:52):
care of them. If the catter dog is hungry, it
will eat or beg for food. If if it needs
to use the restroom, uh, it will at least try
to go outside or go to its required place of toiletry.
So yeah, yeah, you don't see a lot of procrastinating,
but how would you Any behavior? Is is hard to report,
right right, because the other big thing is they don't
(33:12):
have a lot else to do. I mean, it's not
like they have a lot of long term goals. Dogs
and cats or any animal really. Even the really curriculan
task that the various animals engage in, such as like
long distance travel or some sort of like complex or taxing,
um mating ritual, they're just gonna do them. There's no
putting it off. It's just that's what you do that.
(33:33):
And they don't have any any additional tasks, Like they're
not wanting to become rock stars or write books, or
or do their taxes or anything of this nature. Well,
we don't know their hearts. Maybe they do want to
become rock stars. But I will say this, uh Slate
dot com again, the article Procrastinators Without Borders talks about
lab induced procrastination in animals, so it's really important to
(33:55):
talk about that lab induced. James emaz your he's a
psychology professor, Sir. He was studying the percussion procrastination habits
of pigeons, and he trained them to peck illuminated keys
at regular intervals in exchange for a tiny worriage and
bird feed at the end of their work day. And
now all of this is crazy. The wage was higher
(34:16):
for the birds that worked most consistently and didn't take
any breaks, and the end pigeons turned out to be
such a layabouts that even a fourfold increase in food
could not incite them to peck in a timely fashion.
This may be the most ridiculous thing I've I've ever heard.
I mean, it's it's it's insightful. Don't get me wrong.
I'm not saying this is like wasted science or you know,
shrimp on a treadmill or anything like that. Did you
(34:37):
say shrimp on a treadmill? Oh? Yeah, it's the latest
thing making the news is that, you know, it's like
certain groups politically love to rail against scientific studies that
they that they judge as ridiculous and reformless. So they'll
pick out one little aspect of a study, such as
shrimp on a treadmill, and then they'll go nuts over
money university or oh, tax money is paying for shrimp
(35:00):
on a treadmill, Whether tax money is actually involved, or
if the study involves a whole lot more besides shrimp
on a treadmill, but at any rate, um the idea
of teaching teaching pigeons to progress, and I mean, it's
it's such an artificial scenario here, because you're taking an
animal and then you're imposing this very human giving them
(35:20):
a wage and a task, and then then you're judging
them on their ability to on how steadfast they are
with this, with this stupid job you just gave them. Well, see,
if anything, I think that it just can like it
points to the fact that procrastination is inherently a human
invention and it's probably just a clause that we have
in the invention of time, right. Yeah, Well, it's kind
(35:41):
of like we've we've given these pigeons some stupid things
to do and then they're not that really into doing them.
We give ourselves so many stupid or unachievable things to do,
and then we have a hard time rallying to go
do them. So it's it's it's actually a very telling study,
I think. Yeah, that's what I think. It's just it
just keep pointing back to the humans, not the animals. Yeah,
(36:03):
like why like why did you invent taxes? Why why
do you have these taxes to do every year? Because
you're you know, it's like like that's the same system.
We have invented it, and we're not that into it.
So we by inventing complex tasks and long term goals,
we invented procrastination because it's just doesn't really gell naturally
with the brain that we've evolved. Well, you know, if
(36:24):
you're following the matrix uh theory, then it's just one
of the ways to occupy ourselves, right, so that we
just don't all die in the vine. We need something
to get our tackles raised up. About speaking of tackles,
I got a couple of emails from folks who commented
on our parasomnia podcast. This is one about the crazy
(36:47):
sleep and extremes. Yeah, extreme sleep, And I think at
one point you had mentioned that, you know, people should
you know, contact their doctor and get this sort of
medication that might need. And I made the remark which
was sort of out of context. Um that I think
I said something like I'm not want to seek sleep aids.
(37:08):
And so this raised the hackles of a couple of
people because they interpreted that is is me saying like,
I don't condone sleep aids or medications. So I just
want to make a clarification that I do condone medication
in sleep aids. Okay. Um, I think that I had
said that I was trying to remember this because we
had had a previous conversation and I had said something
like I don't usually use sleep aid but I probably should. Right,
(37:31):
So that's the out of context part well. And then
of course the added layer that like some sleep there
are certainly sleep problems, and then there are sleep problems,
and right, I don't think either of us um have
had to really deal with actually like real hardcore sleep
problems like oh no, I mean some people, yeah, they
are completely you know, dogged by insomnia for four or
(37:52):
five nights in a row. So and obviously there's you know,
at any point, whatever someone's personal choices to make with
a step medication is you know that throwing choice, and
they should pursue that um. And I should also mention,
on a lighter note, there have been times where we
have said Richard Attenborough when we, of course meet David Attenburgh.
David Attenborough has the naturalist who has given us so
(38:13):
many great um um you know it shows up on
BBC and Discovery, so much great narration, so much messing
around with animals. His brother Richard basically, Sir Richard, sir well,
all right, sir Richard. But basically, I mean, for all
my money, all he's done is he got eaten by
a dinosaur once, so there you go. Or maybe he didn't.
He didn't get eaten by a dinosaur in the movie
(38:34):
just in the book. M okay. Anyway, David Attenburgh, he's
the one we like. Ye. So there you have it.
If you would like to keep up with us, find
out what we're blogging about, what we're podcasting about, what
we're thinking about podcasting about, you can find us on
Twitter and Facebook. We are blow the mind on both
of those. One word yeah, and I'm very curious to
know what your favorite procrastinating activity is. You know what
(38:57):
do you do to to put off the inevitable? So
listening to this podcast, keep it up? Yeah, that's right.
So feel free to share with us at blow the
Mind at how stuff works dot com. Be sure to
check out our new video podcasts, Stuff from the Future.
Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
(39:18):
promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb. I'm Julie Douglas. Julie, do
you remember studying writing papers all that jazz back in
high school and college? Now I'm doing jazz hands, Yes,
(00:25):
I do remember. I recall frenzy um activity happening at
the eleventh hour. Yeah. I remember staying up like all
night to write things. In college. I remember getting up
early to do homework, then being late as I ran
off the class, and then finishing the homework in class,
(00:45):
or skipping lunch to do a homework assignment do that afternoon.
Everything was always a last minute, right, And this is
called the student syndrome, right, Yes, yeah, and it's really common.
I'm sure everyone at some point, particularly in in in
their student years, experienced this where you were just putting
everything off because you were making a deal with yourself saying, oh, yeah,
i'll do it in a couple of days, I'll do
(01:06):
it a couple of hours and then bam. Because there's
always something more entertaining or worthwhile to do in the
present than later on. And I'm sure that that would
have been something like other studies rather than beer consumption
or well, well I did not consume libations in college
for the most part. But what would you have occupied
(01:29):
have been? Stuff like, um, you know, team Fortress or
a quake or something I guess, you know, other at
leisure activities. I wasn't exactly living it out most of
my college career. I have to say, all right, well,
I don't have any comment on that for myself. Okay, well,
but procrastination, it is a huge deal. It is perhaps
an inseparable part of who we are. Everyone does it,
(01:52):
even the even the go getters out there. There's something
on that to do list. It's not getting um do attention,
and it all boils down to procrastination. We've been trying
to fight this for ages. We still don't have it
completely kicked or anywhere close to it. So what exactly
is it? We're going to discuss what procrastination is, why
(02:13):
we do it, some of the ideas out there about
how we might defeat it, and uh and and whether
that's really an achievable goal. Yeah, can you really vanquish it? Yeah?
Um and just saying no, you ever actually get around
to vanquishing it? Well, yeah, you can put a plan together,
you can clean the plan just at all. You can
have a board meeting about it. You can put together
(02:34):
committee to study procrastination and put together ten like ten
steps on best us standards and practices towards defeating it.
Then you can blog about those ten steps. Yes yeah, um,
but like, this is not a modern phenomenon, right, Sure,
there's been an uptick, and for reasons we'll talk about later.
But just in case you're wondering it, it actually came
(02:56):
into our vernacular and owned fifteen hundred and thirty two,
I believe the first instance of the use of the
word procrastinate. Yeah, the actual like English word procrastinate. Ye.
And there's a book from eighteen fifty two called Thoughtless
Little Fanny, The Unhappy Results of Procrastination. So this was
(03:17):
on people's minds thoughtless little fanny, thoughtless little fanny, Like,
don't have such a thoughtless little fanny? Like? Is that
never mind? No, we're not talking about fannies like fanny,
because it's like, get off your fannie and do something right. Well,
maybe that's where some of that came from. Who is well, uh,
even though the word is relatively new in terms of
(03:38):
human history. Uh. The idea is, of course has been
around for as long as we've had stuff to put
off doing. I mean it's uh, if you look back
in the Mahabarada, the ancient Indian epic, which we've discussed
a little in the past when we were talking about
ancient technology and weapons. Um, and I'm I've been really
into it because I just forced my wife to set
through several hours of the Peter Brook Channel four film
(04:02):
that up to he did. Peterborok did like a nine
hour version of the Mahaparata and then they cut it
down to like six hours or five hours for TV,
and then they cut that down to three hours for
the DVD. And it's really cool, but my wife had
suffered through it because it is a little slow. Yes,
but there's a part in it where the character of
Bishma is talking to King yudish Tura and he's taking
(04:24):
him about these fish right that they're they're three fish
in the water and there's a fisherman coming. Um. You know,
this is like the apocalypse for these fish. And one
of the fish in the water says, all right, I'm
a fish of action. Let's do this. This let's do this.
Let's uh, let's let's hop to it. Let's get to
some water where we're not going to be threatened by
this fisherman. And then there's another fish, and this fish
(04:45):
is more of a thoughtful planner, and the fish says, look,
I'm gonna think this over, I'm gonna i'm gonna do
a little research, I'm gonna crunch some numbers, and then
when the time for action comes, I will act and
I will be prepared to act. And uh, and that's good.
Both of these fish are great. But then there's a
third fish, and that third fish is just like, ma,
you know, I'm not I'm not gonna worry. Well, is
(05:05):
that fish just completely hamstrung by the idea and and
therefore becomes a slacker fish? Um, yeah, kind of a
slacker fish, just like doesn't that is it gonna put
the is it gonna act now? Isn't gonna put the putar?
Far with the effort to act now? Is instead going
to just be like, well, what the fisherman does tomorrow
is completely out of my mind, so Bishmuth says. Thus
(05:26):
everyone meets with destruction, like the procrastinating fish, who from
want of intelligence cannot divine the hour of danger. That
man again, who, regarding himself clever, does not seek his
own good improper time, incurs great danger, like the Sekula
who had presence of mind. So it's, uh, it's it's
really interesting ancient texts they're already talking about, you know,
(05:46):
the wisdom behind tackling procrastination. You don't have to act
right away, you know, you don't have to be the
person it's like, oh, here's a here's a challenge. I'm
on it. At least be the be the fish that
is that is planning things out and as well. Discussing this,
you tend to see like two types of procrastination with anybody.
We're either putting off something that we really do not
(06:07):
want to do, like taking out the garbage roundloading the dishwasher,
or doing our taxes something like that. Or we're putting
off something that we really want to do, or we
think we really want to do, or we feel like
we should want to do. The stakes are higher in
that instance, right, and the expectations and probably the fear
surrounding it. Right if you look in in the In Islam,
(06:29):
the Arabic world word for procrastination toss with primarily concerns
the postponement of good deeds. So there's more of an
emphasis in Arabic on procrastination as the putting off of say, uh,
you know, doing this great endeavor that you're planning, you know,
I know, writing that book you always wanted to ride,
or or finally donating to charity or you know, or
(06:50):
whatever you're particular. There's more of a lighting of the
fire under the duff to get things done. Yeah, and
then hitting on Buddhism, here's a quote from Surya Dass,
an American in a lama in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition,
and he says, we have to stop procrastinating, pretending that
we have forever to do what we want to do
and be what we long to be. So that's it.
(07:10):
He dies in this whole idea that a lot of
procrastination is sort of on some level feeling are like
we're gonna live forever and we have indefinite time to
achieve these various goals, obligations, dreams, uh, etcetera. C. S. Lewis,
of course, the Christian writer and sci fi fantasy fictioner,
says there is no other day all days are present.
(07:31):
Now this moment contains all moments. I really I enjoyed
sort of looking looking around and seeing what different people
have to say about it. So, so we've been thinking
about it for a long time. There's a lot of
philosophy and uh and religion tied up in actually stirring
people to action and stirring yourself to action. Yeah, and
let's talk about some statistics behind this too, like what's
(07:52):
going on here? There is a five year study that
actually this is the the irony here. It was meant
to be a five years study, but it took ten
years to complete. Not making this up. Oh yeah, journalists
love that stuff, by University of Calgary professor Pierce Steele.
It's a thirty page study and it's actually pretty exhaustive.
(08:13):
But it concluded, among other things, that only about five
percent of the American public thought of themselves as chronic procrastinators.
But now today it's about so the number has gone
up quite a bit significantly. Yeah, and the culpriate just
just guess what the culprit is. But the reason why
this may have gone up, Oh, let's see the last
(08:34):
twenty five years, I'm guessing the Internet. Yeah, it's lovely distractions,
That is exactly it. Pierce Steel also attributes to the
mind uh mind sweeper game. I really I never figured
out how to play mine. I know, I thought, well,
he had kept like and all the things that I
read there were all these quotes of that mind sweeper
game just taken over the nation. Yeah, I think perhaps
(08:58):
for him, I'm going to guess that. I don't know,
but it's really interesting because it's a hard thing to measure.
And in fact, Slate dot com had a great article
called Procrastinators Without Borders, and what they were saying essentially is, okay,
here is a study that is right for research. You know,
how do people procrastinate in other cultures? Because you know,
(09:20):
you you can look at Americans and you can say, okay,
there's a high incidence of self reporting of procrastinating. But
perhaps that's because we're really into self disclosure, right Americans are.
And you can say there's a high incidence in Japan.
But you could say, well, that's also because uh, if
someone were to say they were procrastinating, that's sort of
a cultural norm of self criticizing oneself, and so it
(09:46):
would make sense that they would say, oh, yes, I'm
a procrastinator and this is part of my problem. Um,
So there's there's sort of hard to measure in other cultures,
and also how how is it perceived there? Right, because
we know that a color is a color in one
culture and the color in a different culture. Right, It's
all how we sort of uh construct this reality, right
(10:08):
of how we perceive things. And of course there's also
something to be said about how different different cultures perceived
time slightly differently, right, Um. And then this comes down
to basically clock time versus event time. Yes, and there's
nature time to write, right, yeah, nature time as well, which,
of course it's just it's it's light out, it's start out,
(10:29):
the sun's going coming up, the sun is going down.
Looks like when when are you planning to eat dinner?
Are you planning to eat dinner at seven o'clock sharp?
Are you planning to eat dinner when everyone returns to
the house, or are you planning to eat dinner when
the sun comes down? There's not all necessarily the same time, right,
and in in different cultures that could be wildly different
(10:49):
times that they actually occur. Robert Levine is a social
psychologist and the author of a geography time, and he
maps the different perceptions of time between urban and rural settings,
corporate culture, as ethnic groups, and academic disciplines, and he
puts forth the idea of a multi temporality. So he
it's sort of this idealistic like, you know, possibly we
(11:10):
could start to move between nature time, event time, and
clock time, depending on the situation. But what you'll see
is that in most Western cultures we work on clock
time monochronic time, right, monocron nicktime rather, and that's a
linear timeline. It moves us from one task to another,
where if you're in um event time in another culture,
(11:32):
then let's say that you make a date to study
with someone, and you make the date for seven o'clock.
In an event time, you wouldn't actually be expected to
show up at seven o'clock because what might happen between
you showing up for that time and when you actually
do is that a friend could come over and want
to listen to music. And so it's much more like, Okay, well,
(11:54):
I'm just going to go with it now, and it's
less of a concern about the future. It's more like
what's going on right now. So it's like Davies yes,
it's very much so like this Um and Levine found
that the quicker we speak, walk, eat, and drive UM,
the more of an economic um boom we get. Right there,
(12:16):
So the communities that are much more structured around clock
time tend to be ones that and this is no surprise,
have bigger economies, um, more luxuries, higher incomes, and so
on and so forth. And I thought this was interesting.
This was interesting that the top five countries using the
index of pace of life as he calls it, or
time consciousness from fastest to slowest are Switzerland, Ireland, Germany, Japan,
(12:41):
and Italy. And the five slowest or at least time
conscious countries are Syria, El Salvador, Brazil, Indonesia, and the Mexico. Yeah,
so I mean, here you go. Here's a good example
of how time and this perception of whether or not
you're procrastinating could be wildly different from one culture to another. Well,
having been too in Mexico and having been to Germany,
(13:01):
I can say that there does a drastic difference in
how time is perceived and how time passes in those
two countries. Well, as I know that Germany is is
famous for its transportation, right and for for always being
on time, um and adhering to the clock time. Well,
I have, I have. I mean, I'm I'm not the
most you know, buckled down of individuals, but but I
(13:23):
do have some German blood in me. So there there
are times where I'm like, where is someone to enforce
the rules and to put straight limits and beginnings on
this thing? You know? And then you reach for a
strudal Yeah, and then I reach for a strudle. You know.
It's like why why are people coming in late and
leaving early for yoga class? This should not be permitted.
I've got Dutch on my side, So I just wear
wooden shoes. Okay, that's That's gotta make down dog different
(13:45):
really difficult though it does, it does. It's a challenge. Um.
But so the question then sort of becomes like, how
how do we become motivated in these different atmospheres, um,
of different environments. And it's interesting to note that Lady
Gaga actually enters this equation, yes, and doesn't she always
I guess she does. She's always interjecting herself in these
(14:07):
philosophical discussions, right, um, And we're there was we're of
course referring to m psychology today blog post or or
article I think blog post slash article um that was
talking about basically pitting Lady Gaga against the Secret because
the lady guy got had this thing about where she
could see the awards, and she doesn't put them on
the wall. She like throws them in the closet or something. Right,
(14:28):
she sort of bragged, well, I don't know if you
say bragg but her advice to an up and comer was, Hey,
don't don't get all excited about whatever awards you've been given.
I just pretend like they don't exist anymore. Taken down
and I take it down to the studs, and then
I have to get those awards again. Yes, and uh yeah,
And the name of this article was the motivatical wisdom
(14:48):
of Lady Gaga versus the Secret. And we'll have to
throw a link in the blog post we do with this,
but it concerns Sigmund Freud's idea of the irrational lobido,
the part of our psyche that lives for immediate pleasure,
all right, which actually ties into a lot of a
lot of our discussions here about procrastination, because it's about,
you know, it's all about like this present us and
(15:09):
then dealing with a future us that yeah, feed it
and give its its instant gratification. Right, so um two.
In order to accomplish this immediate pleasure, the libido uses
what Freud termed a primary process, where it produces a
memory image of an object needed for gratification in order
(15:30):
to reduce the frustration of not having been gratified yet.
So basically this would be like an example of this
would be like if someone was like, man, I sure,
I sure, wish I was a rock star. That looks great,
and then you imagine yourself as a rock star and
you just sort of set there and you're you know,
your high school class or your or behind the wheel,
and you sort of stay up, you're off into the
(15:51):
distance and see yourself as a rock star, and in
doing that, scratch that itch and then the itches scratched
and you're like, okay, I'm good. I'm good. Now back
to what I is doing. Okay, So this is the
fantasy part of it, right, And this is this is
how it relates to the secret. Yeah, we imagine everything
from revenge to accomplishment, you know, whatever it may be,
without doing anything, and we received the pleasure from the
(16:12):
image alone, and then of course the secret. On the
other hand, can we say what the secret is? Can
we be sued for revealing the secret? I don't think
it's a secret anymore. Yeah, I mean, has that red
stamp on the it's been on Oprah and and all
sorts of stuff. I'm sure a lot of people are
are familiar with the concept at least right sort of
this law of attraction. It's like you imagine it and
(16:33):
make it real. You put out your your wish for
this thing, and then you put that out into the
universe and that that I know I'm probably massacring this,
but I will admit that I have not read this book.
So this is my piecemeal understanding of it. Is that
once you put out that wish, that energy, then that
is going to attract uh, your wish fulfillment so that
(16:56):
it comes to you whatever it is. I have. I
have read other things that to make similar arguments for
this idea of manifesting what you want in your life.
And some of these even take a sort of quasi
quantum physics approach by you know, sort of like looking
at the idea that all possible realities exist somewhere. So
if you were to focus, you could force yourself into
the physicals, into into the alternate realities where the desired
(17:19):
events have transpired. So there's a reality where I'm a
rock star. There's a reality where I clean up after
rock stars, and all I need to do is focus
hard enough, and I can move my current self toward
more towards the rock star persona than the rock star
cleaner upper. Okay, So there's a problem with this though,
(17:41):
if you're actually motivated to fulfill it for yourself, right,
And that's where Lady Gaga comes in, because she's relying
on an expectation that she has that's a framework based
on her past experiences. So she already knows what it
takes to get to this goal and fulfill it, right,
and only that she's created a lack right because mentally
(18:05):
she has removed those awards, those accolades from from her um,
from from becoming a symbol that is already fulfilling. So
she's her desire. I think it's like like, man, I
wish I was famous and successful, and then she looks
up at the awards and she goes, there, I am,
and then like then they accomplished, and so she takes
(18:26):
them off, and she's like, oh, that was accomplished and
famous and all that. And then she looks up in
the walls empty and she makes a little frowny face. Nothingness, right,
and then she starts to levitate like a zen Buddhist. Um.
I made that part of so over the last decade
is this article lays out there was a study at
a New York university and they took they used three
(18:48):
different groups to study which of these approaches is more successful.
Here's a fantasy group that essentially falls the path of
the secret here and they imagine what they have already
desired having come true, all right. And then there's a
control group that's the baseline people just do, left to
their own devices. And then there is a mental contrasting group,
and this is uh, this is like the Lady Gaga
(19:08):
model where they mentally contrast by fantasizing about what they
want and then immediately afterwards they compare where they are
now with where they want to be. So this would
be the whole like, you know, fantasizing about being a
rock star and be like, oh, that's that's kind of
cool in my head, and then you you, you know,
you suddenly you're back in reality and you're like, whoa,
I'm not a rock star at all, and then perhaps
(19:29):
imagining the steps that would take you to that desired reality.
So anyway, the results show that the Lady Gaga styled
mental contrasting always does a better job than than pure fantasy.
And so the suggestion here is that the secret mode
is uh is kind of flawed. I just love the
fact that that someone took Lady Gaga's quote about taking
(19:50):
our platinum records down and and it's something like she
said something like a pretenda, haven't sold a damn one
and I've got to do it all again. Like they
took that quote and then they app aied it to
a study along with the Secret this book the Secret,
and bore this out. I think that's pretty great. Yeah, well,
I mean that's how you do it. You get this,
You take the science, you throw Lady Gaga or a
(20:12):
really strong verb in the headline, and you've got yourself
the science news story. He's got legs. Yeah. Um. In
a minute right here after the break, we're going to
talk about whether or not there's a unifying theory of
procrastination of why we do it, and we're going to
talk about how you can overcome your procrastinate and ways.
This podcast is brought to you by Intel, the sponsors
(20:33):
of Tomorrow and the Discovery Channel. At Intel, we believe
curiosity is the spark which drives innovation. Join us at
curiosity dot com and explore the answers to life's questions.
All right, and we're back. Are you ready to listen
to the rest of this podcast or have you been
putting it off? No? No, you have to finish this podcast.
(20:57):
We're halfway through. It's like that I'm gonna go grab
some water. It's like that quote from a beeth where
he's wading through the blood and he's like to to
turn back. Now, I'd have to wage just through just
as much blood to see it all the way through.
So that's where we are. We've got to wait through
the rest of the blood. Wow, you're dark man. Yeah, uh,
I like it. So So yeah, we're talking about procrastination
and is there a unified theory because we we we
(21:21):
discussed that. We discussed humor in a recent podcast, and
we talked about a unified theory of humor where they say,
what is humor? Well, here you go, cultivate it out
in like a few different steps complete explanation. Can we
do that with procrastination in theory? We can? Right, okay?
And so the temporal motivation theory posits that motivation can
(21:42):
be understood by the effects of expectancy and value, which
could be weakened by delay, with differences for rewards and losses.
So what we're talking about here is motivation equals expectation
times value over impulsiveness times delay. So if you plug
in the conditions of a scenario and the denominator that
that impulse in the face of gratification, right, the what
(22:04):
would be the underneath expectation of value? If that is
weaker than the proposition of a good chance of a
successful outcome, then you are less likely to procrastinate, which
sort of feels like a dumb moment, you know, like,
oh yeah, okay, of course, because you would think, right
that if it was a good chance that you were
going to do great at this task, um, and you
(22:28):
know you you didn't have really a good reason to
put it off, that you would get it done. So
that's where I kind of that's the point where I say, well,
that makes sense, But we're crazy humans and we're sort
of flawed in our logic, and sometimes we do things
to to really mess ourselves up, you know, we self
deceive or we make something bigger than it is, and
(22:48):
so we don't accomplish something because we even though we're
excited about it. Right, That's that's the problem I have
with T M. T Okay. But but to break it
down again, it's basically we're more likely to do the
things that we expect succeed at, and we typically discount
future rewards in favor of the media rewards, which comes
down again too. I can have fun now versus acing
(23:10):
that test tomorrow, or I can not have fun now,
and as the test tomorrow, which is more real, I'm
not having fun now and I want the fun, right Yeah.
And this instantly brings to mind something called Ulysses packed,
which is a great to refresh. Of course, it's the
myth of Ulysses. You know, um who's uh uh you know,
(23:34):
he's he's he's on the ship. He's sailing right, and
he knows the sirens are coming up, the beautiful naked
ladies that crawl out of the singing to him, and
they will lure everyone to their deaths. They will sing
so beautifully and they will be so absolutely naked that
all the men on the ship will climb into the
water and drown. So Ulysses is a he's a pretty
(23:54):
smart cat. So he's like, this is what you're gonna do.
You're going to tie me to this mass and time
me so tight that when the naked sirens starts singing um,
future me won't be able to do anything about it
because past me is brilliant. So it's like it's past
Ulysses versus future Ulyssenes, and he binds future Ulysses, and
(24:14):
then when future Ulysses rolls around, he's like, oh my goodness,
somebody in timey I want to go drown with these
naked ladies, and and past Ulysses like ha ha, I
got you. Yeah, well, And I think what's interesting about
this is that he's got the long term goal in mind, right.
So that's really when we were talking about this a
little bit more about how you do vanquished procrastinating, but
(24:35):
that's a really big important part of that. He's got
the past experience. You're drawn and he says, naked ladies,
you have seen him before. My big goals to get
past you guys and live It reminds me, did you
ever watch Strangers with Candy? Oh? Yes, do you remember Jazz? Oh?
Who's jazz Jazzy was the like the old jazz singer
band teacher that was in one episode, But he would um.
He was really attracted to the ladies, so he had
(24:57):
to put a post it note on his hand that
says touch the girls, Jazzy. And so there's the same
way he's like reaching after a girl's hinder and uh,
and then he yeah, and then he sees the post
it note and he goes, ah, you're too fast for me,
and uh. It's hilarious. But but it's a sound like
the opposite of the Ulysses. No, No, it's the it's
exactly the same. It's past Jazzy um influencing future Jazzy
(25:20):
and saying, hey, future Jazzy, don't do anything I see
I see the person always Yeah. But so Ulysses packed
is Uh, it's sort of the same thing, and it's
the eye. It comes back around to that idea that
we're always going to go for the the immediate pleasure
is is gonna appeal to us more than the distant pleasure,
even if the immediate pleasure is something as fleeting as
(25:42):
candy is good versus the distant pleasure is is living
longer or being healthier. You know, you can tie this
into any number of addiction scenarios. Well, and you were
telling me about I think the ultimate example of this
that you heard on radio Lab. Yeah, this is it
was the it was where all right? So what can
go up against this can out? What can defeat the
immediate desire for pleasure? If immediate, if future greater pleasure
(26:05):
won't do it. And the thing is, you need something
that you have in the present really strong. So is
a really strong emotional an outcome that's so repulsive that
you would be completely shamed with yourself. This Yeah, this
lady is trying to quit smoking. So she decided she
made a pack with herself ironclad pat If I smoke,
I will donate a whole bunch of money to the
K five thousand dollars. And she was a you know,
(26:26):
she was a big civil rights supporter. So this was
just against every The idea of doing this stood against
everything she'd believe. It would be like the the the
ultimate like not only just humiliating, but she would be
supporting um a you know, a racist group that that
she has despises. So her current her her current shame,
(26:47):
her current displeasure. Uh, you know, however you want to
frame it, her her current um adversarial position to the
to the KKK way outpowered the present urged smoke because
she would say, like she'd wake up in the morning
and she'd reach for a cigarette and she'd think, oh, no,
I can't, but I cannot do this. Yeah, it's kind
of like future It's like a future Jazz was calling
(27:09):
up President Jazz, and President Jazz's like, I don't know,
Future Jazz, if you were here, maybe you could talk
me out of this, but you're not who And then
in the future Jazz is like, well, who's there who
can actually talk to talk to him? And he's like, oh,
I'll call up his revulsion to this, you know, right right, Yeah,
that's all Jazzy needed. So it's pretty cool. Yeah. Um.
And I think what's interesting about that again is just
(27:31):
going to this idea of like, how do you really
overcome procrastinating because we're so good at self deception again,
and this is from a sideblog, how to avoid procrastinating?
I think concretely, and there's there's a clue right there.
You have to be uh less abstract and more concrete
about the decisions that you make and also about how
(27:53):
much time it's going to take to do anything. Oh yeah,
Hofstatter's law rights law that says that anything we think
about doing is basically gonna take longer than we think
it will. Even if you take into account Offsetter saw,
it's still going to take longer, like there's no recursive
quality to it. Yeah, so we end up with it's
called it, you know, we end up with the planning fallacy.
But we plan to do something and we're never gonna
(28:15):
kind it just right. You can. You can pencil in
eight different things to do on your vacation day or
in your work day, and you're not going to get
to all of them because everything takes longer than it
should or you're not factoring in travel between the things,
you know. Yeah, yeah, alright, So what are your tips here?
My tipsy not that we normally give tips, but you know,
we were researching this we thought we'd share it with
(28:35):
you guys. Okay, So I ran across a number of
different suggested ideas. One is um the idea of setting
up dummy goals like don't set up big goals, but
set up dummy goals. Yeah, So it's like and and
part of this, uh, the source of treating this on compared, uh,
tied it into the paradox of hedonism, which is, if
you seek happiness or pleasure, you won't find it. But
(28:57):
if you set a goal of, say winning a karaoke challenge,
you might just have fun trying to achieve that. So
in a way, it's kind of like shoot for a
lower star and you just you know, And it's kind
of like setting more realistic goals, but also setting dummy
goals along your your towards your ultimate goal. All right,
so there's there's this idea of structured procrastination. You can't
(29:20):
defeat procrastination, be constructured. You can turn one negative quality
against the other. And this comes from John John Perry,
a professor of philosophy at Stanford University, and it basically
comes down, all right, procrastinators have excellent self deceptive skills.
So so you have this to do list, and like
we're saying, one of the big things about procrastination, we
all have a to do list and we never end
up finishing it. So we're always unhappy because we have
(29:41):
an incomplete to do list. So he's saying, all right,
you have your on this to do list, move an
item that you need to accomplish further down the list, Like,
so your number one goal for the day is to
actually set down and do your taxes, and then you
have things like, um, clean out the dishwasher, and um,
(30:02):
you know, feed the cat, not the floor. All right,
so we've all been in this position. You really don't
want to do your taxes, so you find yourself achieving
these going after these other achievable goals like who like,
doing my taxes gonna take forever. I'm not really certain
about my ability to do it right. But I can
wash that floor, I can feed that cat, I can
I can unload that dishwasher. Um at a at a
(30:24):
perfect level of of success. So you end up doing
those things you can you feel you can succeed at better.
But anyway, the structured procrastination idea is to not put
the taxes at the top of the list. Put it
a little further down, and then you will end up
skipping the other things. She'll be thinking like, I don't
want to just unload the dishwasher. I hate unloading the dishwasher.
(30:45):
What's up? What's the else is on my list? Oh, taxes.
I'll go to my taxes so I don't have to
do the unload the dishwasher. And I cannot say I
really buy this side. Just about to say that seems like,
you know, you're trying to fool yourself into in your
taxes and you're a little bit more wildly than that.
You know, Yeah, I feel like I'm too smart for
for that particular well, even if I'm the one pulling
(31:06):
it off. Also say that doing those the little tasks
always makes me feel like I'm reading my brain for
accomplishing the bigger and wheeldy tasks like clearing the slate.
It's kind of printing, printing the field of my mind,
and you know, so to speak, so that when I
sit down and and you know, I have actually like
(31:26):
no other recourse now because I've exhausted my list and
I sit down and I have to do it. It's
like in a video game, so you're fighting three lesser
opponents in one like stronger opponent. It's the idea of
picking off the three smaller ones so they're not nipping
at your heels when you're trying to tackle the really
dangerous exactly. And I don't know if that works for
other people, but you know, it's certainly I mean, it
(31:47):
is procrastinating, but it's helpful procrastinating if you actually follow
through with the final thing that you're wanting to do, right.
I do like the feeling, like if if I'm working
on stuff for there are a lot of different tasks
that fill our days. Here it how stuff works. I mean,
it ranges from really cool stuff like podcast or writing
an article to more mount mundane things like picking out
which blocks to put on the homepage or you know,
(32:09):
the things of this nature. And I feel like, even
though those smaller tasks are not necessarily very skill intensive,
I like the feeling of having the the day cleared
to tackle one one challenging and or fulfilling task. And
I think you'll see to your pattern there, because a
lot of people will wait until that task, or rather
(32:30):
wait until later in the week to fulfill that big task.
So I've gotten all the other stuff done. Um, okay,
let's talk about animals. Is it is there a possibility
that animals procrastinate? I don't think so. I mean, um,
anybody who has pets tell me when you have ever
seen your cat or dog procrastinate, because generally they have
certain needs and when those needs arise, they will take
(32:52):
care of them. If the catter dog is hungry, it
will eat or beg for food. If if it needs
to use the restroom, uh, it will at least try
to go outside or go to its required place of toiletry.
So yeah, yeah, you don't see a lot of procrastinating,
but how would you Any behavior? Is is hard to report,
right right, because the other big thing is they don't
(33:12):
have a lot else to do. I mean, it's not
like they have a lot of long term goals. Dogs
and cats or any animal really. Even the really curriculan
task that the various animals engage in, such as like
long distance travel or some sort of like complex or taxing,
um mating ritual, they're just gonna do them. There's no
putting it off. It's just that's what you do that.
(33:33):
And they don't have any any additional tasks, Like they're
not wanting to become rock stars or write books, or
or do their taxes or anything of this nature. Well,
we don't know their hearts. Maybe they do want to
become rock stars. But I will say this, uh Slate
dot com again, the article Procrastinators Without Borders talks about
lab induced procrastination in animals, so it's really important to
(33:55):
talk about that lab induced. James emaz your he's a
psychology professor, Sir. He was studying the percussion procrastination habits
of pigeons, and he trained them to peck illuminated keys
at regular intervals in exchange for a tiny worriage and
bird feed at the end of their work day. And
now all of this is crazy. The wage was higher
(34:16):
for the birds that worked most consistently and didn't take
any breaks, and the end pigeons turned out to be
such a layabouts that even a fourfold increase in food
could not incite them to peck in a timely fashion.
This may be the most ridiculous thing I've I've ever heard.
I mean, it's it's it's insightful. Don't get me wrong.
I'm not saying this is like wasted science or you know,
shrimp on a treadmill or anything like that. Did you
(34:37):
say shrimp on a treadmill? Oh? Yeah, it's the latest
thing making the news is that, you know, it's like
certain groups politically love to rail against scientific studies that
they that they judge as ridiculous and reformless. So they'll
pick out one little aspect of a study, such as
shrimp on a treadmill, and then they'll go nuts over
money university or oh, tax money is paying for shrimp
(35:00):
on a treadmill, Whether tax money is actually involved, or
if the study involves a whole lot more besides shrimp
on a treadmill, but at any rate, um the idea
of teaching teaching pigeons to progress, and I mean, it's
it's such an artificial scenario here, because you're taking an
animal and then you're imposing this very human giving them
(35:20):
a wage and a task, and then then you're judging
them on their ability to on how steadfast they are
with this, with this stupid job you just gave them. Well, see,
if anything, I think that it just can like it
points to the fact that procrastination is inherently a human
invention and it's probably just a clause that we have
in the invention of time, right. Yeah, Well, it's kind
(35:41):
of like we've we've given these pigeons some stupid things
to do and then they're not that really into doing them.
We give ourselves so many stupid or unachievable things to do,
and then we have a hard time rallying to go
do them. So it's it's it's actually a very telling study,
I think. Yeah, that's what I think. It's just it
just keep pointing back to the humans, not the animals. Yeah,
(36:03):
like why like why did you invent taxes? Why why
do you have these taxes to do every year? Because
you're you know, it's like like that's the same system.
We have invented it, and we're not that into it.
So we by inventing complex tasks and long term goals,
we invented procrastination because it's just doesn't really gell naturally
with the brain that we've evolved. Well, you know, if
(36:24):
you're following the matrix uh theory, then it's just one
of the ways to occupy ourselves, right, so that we
just don't all die in the vine. We need something
to get our tackles raised up. About speaking of tackles,
I got a couple of emails from folks who commented
on our parasomnia podcast. This is one about the crazy
(36:47):
sleep and extremes. Yeah, extreme sleep, And I think at
one point you had mentioned that, you know, people should
you know, contact their doctor and get this sort of
medication that might need. And I made the remark which
was sort of out of context. Um that I think
I said something like I'm not want to seek sleep aids.
(37:08):
And so this raised the hackles of a couple of
people because they interpreted that is is me saying like,
I don't condone sleep aids or medications. So I just
want to make a clarification that I do condone medication
in sleep aids. Okay. Um, I think that I had
said that I was trying to remember this because we
had had a previous conversation and I had said something
like I don't usually use sleep aid but I probably should. Right,
(37:31):
So that's the out of context part well. And then
of course the added layer that like some sleep there
are certainly sleep problems, and then there are sleep problems,
and right, I don't think either of us um have
had to really deal with actually like real hardcore sleep
problems like oh no, I mean some people, yeah, they
are completely you know, dogged by insomnia for four or
(37:52):
five nights in a row. So and obviously there's you know,
at any point, whatever someone's personal choices to make with
a step medication is you know that throwing choice, and
they should pursue that um. And I should also mention,
on a lighter note, there have been times where we
have said Richard Attenborough when we, of course meet David Attenburgh.
David Attenborough has the naturalist who has given us so
(38:13):
many great um um you know it shows up on
BBC and Discovery, so much great narration, so much messing
around with animals. His brother Richard basically, Sir Richard, sir well,
all right, sir Richard. But basically, I mean, for all
my money, all he's done is he got eaten by
a dinosaur once, so there you go. Or maybe he didn't.
He didn't get eaten by a dinosaur in the movie
(38:34):
just in the book. M okay. Anyway, David Attenburgh, he's
the one we like. Ye. So there you have it.
If you would like to keep up with us, find
out what we're blogging about, what we're podcasting about, what
we're thinking about podcasting about, you can find us on
Twitter and Facebook. We are blow the mind on both
of those. One word yeah, and I'm very curious to
know what your favorite procrastinating activity is. You know what
(38:57):
do you do to to put off the inevitable? So
listening to this podcast, keep it up? Yeah, that's right.
So feel free to share with us at blow the
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