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Speaker 2: Oh hey, it's your neighbor's cat who hangs out by
Speaker 2: the mailboxes and who should definitely be inside. But it's
Speaker 2: also very convincing when she asked for belly rubs. Ali
Speaker 2: ward back with the most exciting episode of Ologi's ever made.
Speaker 2: If you ask my subconscious brain and my thirsty heart,
Speaker 2: which you didn't, and I don't care, but this episode
Speaker 2: is about procrastination. It's not possible for me to be
Speaker 2: more ready for it. But before we dive in, I'm
Speaker 2: going to take a minute to let you know there
Speaker 2: are some live things happening soon. Thursday March I'll be
Speaker 2: at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. I'll
Speaker 2: be leading their Women in Science panel, and then the
Speaker 2: next night, March six, I'll be back in LA for
Speaker 2: the Natural History Museum's first Friday Series. I'll be leading
Speaker 2: two chats called Secrets from the Vaults. And then I'll
Speaker 2: be at south By Southwest EEDU in Austin giving a
Speaker 2: talk on March eleventh. So if you want tickets for
Speaker 2: those links are in the show notes, come say hi. Also,
Speaker 2: thank you to everyone on Patreon who supports the show
Speaker 2: and sends in their questions. Thanks to everyone wearing gear
Speaker 2: from Ologiesmarch dot com their T shirts and sweatshirts and
Speaker 2: hats and socks. And thank you to everyone who has
Speaker 2: ever hit the five stars in iTunes or subscribed on
Speaker 2: all the platforms, and of course who leaves reviews for
Speaker 2: me to just cradle in my palmps like baby bird,
Speaker 2: and each week I read you a newly hatched one,
Speaker 2: such as Casey Mullens thirteen says, absolutely love it. The
Speaker 2: journalist to me loves the little asides where you explained
Speaker 2: slash fact check something and everything else in me loves
Speaker 2: everything else just lovely. Well, I thank your love, Casey mull,
Speaker 2: and so deal with that. Okay, forcrastnology to get into it. Okay,
Speaker 2: procrastnology not a real word in the academic sense, bummer,
Speaker 2: But procrastination has such a beautiful backstory. So pro means
Speaker 2: forward and crastiness means till next day. So to procrastinate
Speaker 2: in Latin means to forward things until tomorrow. Ugh, it's
Speaker 2: like doing a chef's kiss while you're getting gut punched. Gorgeous.
Speaker 2: So volitional psychology comes from volition, which means intentional behavior,
Speaker 2: and that comes from the Latin meaning to wish. So
Speaker 2: this was a topic I could not explore soon enough.
Speaker 2: As a people pleasing human with a brain full of bees,
Speaker 2: I have the dirty secret of being a chronic procrastinator.
Speaker 2: Like the higher the stakes on something, the more terrified
Speaker 2: I am of starting it. If there are official government forms,
Speaker 2: I can't even look at them. I can't look at
Speaker 2: them until the day they're doing like big writing projects.
Speaker 2: I would rather clean a litter box belonging to an
Speaker 2: elderly tiger. Once while procrastinating. I googled procrastination, and then
Speaker 2: I found out about a conference in Chicago run by
Speaker 2: the topic's most prominent research psychologist and a professor of
Speaker 2: general and community psychology at Chicago's De Paul University. This
Speaker 2: ologist got his bachelor's in psychology, two masters in experimental
Speaker 2: and general psychology, a PhD in psychology. His list of
Speaker 2: published papers on the topic of procrastination is exhaustive. It
Speaker 2: is exhausting to fathom. This is the dude when it
Speaker 2: comes to the science of procrastination. So I reached out.
Speaker 2: He said, yes, he would be interviewed, but if I
Speaker 2: made light of the suffering felt by chronic procrastinators, he
Speaker 2: would pull an atom driver on fresh air and he
Speaker 2: would walk right at a studio. And I assured him
Speaker 2: I had the utmost com passion and also the ulterior
Speaker 2: motive of wanting to fix my own life. And he said, oh, okay,
Speaker 2: great then, and so we met up in a community
Speaker 2: radio station in a Chicago suburb. Shout out to Elise
Speaker 2: of ice Cream Media in Lyle. He was neatly dressed
Speaker 2: in a cashmere sweater and has a distinguished mustache, kind
Speaker 2: of like you would expect to find on a fire chief.
Speaker 3: Now time was ticking.
Speaker 2: We spoke as fast as we could and answered as
Speaker 2: many questions as we could possibly fit into this window.
Speaker 2: I had bought his book So Procrastinating, The No Regrets
Speaker 2: Guide to Getting It Done, which explains that everyone procrastinates,
Speaker 2: but not everyone is a procrastinator.
Speaker 3: So who does what?
Speaker 2: And I prepared a list of questions that was mostly
Speaker 2: just an airplane napkin scrawled with the words why and housetop?
Speaker 2: So we address both. So let's get this episode in
Speaker 2: your brains, because no matter what your relationship to procrastination,
Speaker 2: this episode will change the way you look at yourself
Speaker 2: and your to do list. So, without further ado, absorb
Speaker 2: the wit and the wisdom of author, scientist, psychologist, and
Speaker 2: procrastination research legend volitional psychologist, the doctor Joseph R. Ferrari.
Speaker 4: Ferrari is f E r r r I like the car.
Speaker 2: We must you must have said that so many times
Speaker 2: in your life.
Speaker 4: Many times. But you know what means smith? Does it
Speaker 4: really means to blacksmith? The iron maker? Pharaoh's is Latin
Speaker 4: from oh there you go, I'm sorry, So Ferrari Ferra,
Speaker 4: Ferra means smith. It's like Smith's might. It's nothing exotic.
Speaker 2: Okay, So you know Ferrari's rearing horse logo. I always
Speaker 2: thought that meant look how fast our cars go, like
Speaker 2: a really fast horse. But the and I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: maybe it's like a farrier, like a blacksmith that does horseshoes.
Speaker 2: And I just looked it up and Enzo Ferrari just
Speaker 2: borrowed the image of the prancing horse from a World
Speaker 2: War Two fighter pilot's plane for good luck. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: let's get back to procrastination. I'm so sorry. So who procrastinates?
Speaker 2: What's the deal?
Speaker 4: So they will not listen to anything that I say
Speaker 4: as tool? How to treat it? Yes, because there's always
Speaker 4: your reason. These aren't stupid people, they're very smart.
Speaker 3: So Doc, you can move us away. Yeah you can
Speaker 3: be that.
Speaker 4: I mean know when we're ready the starter you've started already?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, we're already recording, Doctor Joseph Ferrari.
Speaker 2: Yes, you're a psychologist, I am. Is there a particular
Speaker 2: field of psychology that deals with procrastinations?
Speaker 4: I am trained as a social personality psychologist. That means
Speaker 4: a research psychologist. There are also clinical psychologists and counseling
Speaker 4: psychologists that have dealt with this topic of procrastination. But
Speaker 4: we're getting a little ahead if I may. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 4: because everybody procrastinates, but not everyone's a procrastinator.
Speaker 3: I was going to ask if you have that tattooed
Speaker 3: anywhere on your line.
Speaker 4: No, that's my quote, and people have stolen and is
Speaker 4: that right? What does that mean? How can you be
Speaker 4: because what the data shows is that twenty percent of
Speaker 4: adult men and women are chronic procrastinators. What does that mean?
Speaker 4: They do it at home, they do it at schools,
Speaker 4: they do it work relationships. You know, they're going to
Speaker 4: show up late for events. They're not going to RSVP
Speaker 4: on time. They're never going to get that concert ticket
Speaker 4: because they never went were sporting tickets because they never
Speaker 4: went around to get the purchase the ticket. They missed
Speaker 4: doctor's appointments, They wait till the gauge goes on E
Speaker 4: before they get more gas, They wait for the third bill.
Speaker 4: Twenty percent. Now you might say that's all I know
Speaker 4: people that are higher. But that's higher than depression, higher
Speaker 4: than phobia, higher than alcoholism, higher than panic attacks, than
Speaker 4: substance abuse. And yet this is considered a funny topic.
Speaker 4: Yet this is considered procrastination is considered a non serious disorder.
Speaker 4: Have had people get angry at me when they say, oh,
Speaker 4: you know during I think May is mental health month,
Speaker 4: and I say yes, and make sure we've put in procrastination. Now,
Speaker 4: you're trivializing our other illnesses. No, this is more common
Speaker 4: than many of those other issues, and yet people consider
Speaker 4: this a frivolous topic. Twenty percent of adult.
Speaker 2: Okay, now we're getting right into it. So doctor Ferrari says,
Speaker 2: according to his studies, and there are many that figured
Speaker 2: tracks across all genders and nations, twenty percent of folks
Speaker 2: are chronic procrastinators. And if you're listening to this, you
Speaker 2: either are one you know one. Maybe someone sent you
Speaker 2: a link to this episode because working up to the
Speaker 2: last minute isn't cute anymore. Now, college students, seventy to
Speaker 2: seventy five percent of you procrastinate on assignments, but you
Speaker 2: do it less as you get older, which brings us
Speaker 2: back to doctor Ferrari's motto.
Speaker 4: Everybody procrastinates, but not everyone's a procrastinator. So everybody might
Speaker 4: put off for a task. The college student might delay reading, studying,
Speaker 4: registering for a class seeing the mentor. But if Izzo
Speaker 4: is that Lizzo Liz, If Lizzo gives a free concert
Speaker 4: to the first fifty people, they're there. If there's a
Speaker 4: kega beer for free in the dorm they're there, well,
Speaker 4: then then not procrastinators. They procrastinate, but they're not procrastinators.
Speaker 4: So it's very important to the listeners, to people that
Speaker 4: do the research that know that there's a difference between
Speaker 4: academic procrastination and global everyday procrastination or what I call
Speaker 4: chronic procrastination. There are two different animals. Every two years
Speaker 4: as an International meeting on the Study of procrastination. It
Speaker 4: was just held this past summer in Sheffield, England. In
Speaker 4: twenty twenty seventeen, I hosted it here in Chicago. That
Speaker 4: was the tenth biennial, So for twenty years, over twenty years,
Speaker 4: scholars have been getting together. What's interesting is that I'm
Speaker 4: pretty much the only US person. A lot in Canada,
Speaker 4: a lot in Europe. Now, it's growing in Asia in
Speaker 4: other areas, but in the US this topic is not
Speaker 4: considered a serious scientific topic. Why, I don't know. And
Speaker 4: every time we do these meetings we seem to go
Speaker 4: back because there's always new people coming to these meetings.
Speaker 4: To the notion of what's the difference between pondering and
Speaker 4: waiting and delay and dwelling and postponing and procrastination, pausing
Speaker 4: waiting being dontal I can't say the way doddling, that's
Speaker 4: the word pausing waiting. I want you to cut that out.
Speaker 2: He was kidding. I would not do him dirty like
Speaker 2: that anyway.
Speaker 4: Pausing waiting are all forms of delaying, but they're not
Speaker 4: the same as procrastinating. The continuum goes worse. The question
Speaker 4: is what's the tipping point. We don't know, but we
Speaker 4: should not consider delaying itself is the same. It's not
Speaker 4: that these people are lazy. Chronic procrastinators are very hard working.
Speaker 4: That's something else. That's something they shouldn't be doing, all right.
Speaker 4: They're postponing what they're doing supposed to do for something else,
Speaker 4: and they've got good reasons. They'll tell you this and that. No, no, no,
Speaker 4: they're very smart to keep coming up with plausible, believable reasons,
Speaker 4: and so you listen to them and you go, oh, oh, okay,
Speaker 4: that's why you can't do it now, And then next time, oh,
Speaker 4: that's why oh, it's never taking ownership.
Speaker 2: And as someone who struggles with this, I can say
Speaker 2: each of these excuses feels very real to the procrastinator.
Speaker 2: So it's not that we're lying to you, it's just
Speaker 2: that we're lying to ourselves.
Speaker 4: Perhaps.
Speaker 2: And doctor Ferre says that there's a tipping point between
Speaker 2: pondering and delaying and true chronic procrastination. That tipping point
Speaker 2: I find is usually my face tipping into a keyboard
Speaker 2: at four am the night before something is due.
Speaker 4: Pondering is a more cognitive variable or something about thinking.
Speaker 4: And so indecision, being indecisive is what we call in
Speaker 4: the field decisional procrastination. So I break them out of
Speaker 4: sort of. And again there's a difference. What do you
Speaker 4: do if you have a person who's indecisive, Well, first
Speaker 4: thing they do, and I know you want to talk
Speaker 4: about treatment leader is you don't take them a place
Speaker 4: to a place where they have lots of options.
Speaker 3: He has a nightmare.
Speaker 4: Yes, out here in the western suburbs of Chicago, there's
Speaker 4: a movie theater in Aurora that has thirty one movies.
Speaker 4: You don't take the indecisive to thirty one movies? Why?
Speaker 4: Because you stand there and you say, so what do
Speaker 4: you want to see? And what will they say?
Speaker 3: I don't know, what do you want to say?
Speaker 4: Well? I know, but what do you want to What
Speaker 4: do they say?
Speaker 2: Whatever?
Speaker 4: Okay, and you look at your watch at seven o'clock
Speaker 4: and they're all starting at seven fifteen. We really got
Speaker 4: to decide what do you want to see? What do
Speaker 4: they say? They have you pick and then they don't
Speaker 4: want brilliant Yeah, people, So they make you choose, you see,
Speaker 4: And so it's never their fault.
Speaker 2: Am I going to no, no, no, I'm just making
Speaker 2: sure we're recording this because it's my favorite episodever.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, it's absolutely So if I never choose, it's
Speaker 4: never my fault. You don't want to make a decision,
Speaker 4: that's okay, your choice, you have that right. But then,
Speaker 4: as we say in New York, shut up. Okay, if
Speaker 4: you let me make the choice, you got to live
Speaker 4: with that. You see. So again, going back to the
Speaker 4: movie metaphor, so they see the movie. If the movie
Speaker 4: is good, we leave, We say that was great, I
Speaker 4: was wonderful. I suppose it's a dud, a stinker, a
Speaker 4: horrible movie. What do they say at the end, you
Speaker 4: want to know how to treat it. You don't bring
Speaker 4: the indecisive a place where they have so many options
Speaker 4: because they can't handle it all right. And again they're
Speaker 4: not bad people. It's just that it's difficult.
Speaker 3: It is so hard. What if you do it wrong?
Speaker 4: So life is full of Look when God made us,
Speaker 4: she gave us.
Speaker 3: Knees, she.
Speaker 4: Gave us knees to bend. We're gonna fall. The question
Speaker 4: in life isn't why are you going to fail? The
Speaker 4: question is when will you fail? You see people think
Speaker 4: I don't want to fail. I can't make mistakes. No no, no, no,
Speaker 4: no no, you will make mistakes in life. Life is
Speaker 4: full of failure. The question is those knees get you down,
Speaker 4: but those knees get you up. That's the question. How
Speaker 4: do you get back up like the phoenix? How do
Speaker 4: you rise out of the ashes of the failure? So
Speaker 4: you're going to fail in life? Yes, life is full
Speaker 4: of failure. The questions did you learn? Did you grow?
Speaker 4: Did you move on beyond the failure? And that's what
Speaker 4: people need to understand. Clinical psychologists say eighty percent is great,
Speaker 4: not one hundred percent. People want to be perfect and
Speaker 4: if I'm not perfect. I'm garbage.
Speaker 3: Yet, No, you're.
Speaker 4: Human and no one's there. You're human, and that means
Speaker 4: you're going to make mistakes, all right. So the clinician says,
Speaker 4: if you can reach eighty percent of your goal, eighty
Speaker 4: percent of what is out there, you're a success. Now.
Speaker 4: A recent study found actually supported this that happiness. You're
Speaker 4: most content, you're most healthy with eighty five percent success
Speaker 4: and fifteen percent failure. Really, yes, not this one hundred percent.
Speaker 4: We need failure in life now, but some failure makes
Speaker 4: us most adjusted.
Speaker 2: Don't let beance for you. When it comes to being flawless,
Speaker 2: it's never gonna happen. That's a good thing. Salvador Dali
Speaker 2: once famously said, have no fear of perfection. You'll never
Speaker 2: reach it. So lowering the expectations for yourself is just
Speaker 2: like undoing the top button of your pants at Thanksgiving,
Speaker 2: But for your soul it feels so good and probably
Speaker 2: no one will notice the difference. You're talking about chronic procrastinators, yes,
Speaker 2: which is enough about me.
Speaker 3: Let's talk a little bit about you.
Speaker 2: So now, chronic progression, No, I know, how so how
Speaker 2: did you get into this field?
Speaker 4: I can only really get it's Valentine's Day. So I'll
Speaker 4: give you the reason, not the private reason. Oh okay,
Speaker 4: I know everybody wants to privatey is Ventisia. My wife
Speaker 4: will be angry.
Speaker 2: Oh I think I just understood exactly what the problem is.
Speaker 3: Okay, but I.
Speaker 4: Didn't outer Okay, Well, sure, I'll give you the history.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 4: I think it's nineteen eighty seven, eighty eight. I'm in
Speaker 4: my doctoral program at Adelphi University in Garden City, Long Island,
Speaker 4: because I know you go national. So yeah, I'm int
Speaker 4: my doctoral program and I'm taking a class and this
Speaker 4: is the eighties before computers, taking a class on self
Speaker 4: defeating behavior. The instructor was a social psychologist retooling to
Speaker 4: become a clinician. So she was very interested in understanding
Speaker 4: choosing to suffer people. There's a religious show that people
Speaker 4: will shock themselves. They think I deserve to be this masochism,
Speaker 4: sado massacim. She wasn't all that stuff. And one of
Speaker 4: the topics was self handicapping. When will people sabot their behavior?
Speaker 4: So we're in this class she's covering small seminar. I
Speaker 4: raise my hand and I say, excuse me, but this
Speaker 4: sounds like it could be procrastination, and she says, well, yeah, sure,
Speaker 4: I said, okay, I raised my hand again. Okay, Well
Speaker 4: what is the research show? She says. I don't know,
Speaker 4: but I'm sure someone's done the study. Again, this is
Speaker 4: the eighties. So what do I do. I open my
Speaker 4: notebook and I write the word procrastination, and after class
Speaker 4: I go to the library because this is what people
Speaker 4: used to do, all right, And I go look it
Speaker 4: up and I find practically nothing on the topic of procrastination.
Speaker 4: Now nothing about two hundred conferences and papers, but a
Speaker 4: lot of us on writer's block, career in decision. But
Speaker 4: from a social personality psychology point of view, I try
Speaker 4: and understand what are the causes, what are the consequences? Nothing.
Speaker 4: So in graduate school we heard a scratchuate students. You
Speaker 4: could either do research, and this is good for your
Speaker 4: listeners to hear, particularly those who may be studying something.
Speaker 4: You could do something that everybody else does, and you'll
Speaker 4: be a body of literature and you follow along the way.
Speaker 4: You can go off into something that no one else
Speaker 4: has done, and then you carve the path and your
Speaker 4: name becomes synonymous.
Speaker 2: Now I'm a little and here, doctor Ferrari mouth's the
Speaker 2: word public.
Speaker 4: And I like that idea. So in the beginning, everything
Speaker 4: I published I wrote on procrastination was publishable, so much
Speaker 4: so that I remember one journal they came back and
Speaker 4: said that, well accepted, but you have to change the
Speaker 4: introduction where you talk about the literature because you just
Speaker 4: keep citing Ferrari A. Well, that's because I'm the only person.
Speaker 2: So yes. Doctor Ferrari is one of the leading experts
Speaker 2: in this, having been an author of the Seminole nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety five textbook Procrastination and Task Avoidance Theory, Research and Treatment,
Speaker 2: and his less academic and more Hey I'm screwing up
Speaker 2: my life with this and want to understand it, fix
Speaker 2: it book Still Procrastinating, the No Regrets Guide to Getting
Speaker 2: it Done Now. The threateningly inquisitive still Procrastinating came about
Speaker 2: because of the horsepucky he often sees on the topic.
Speaker 4: So the title is called still Procrastity because I got
Speaker 4: tired of so many people following this time management myth.
Speaker 4: Yeah that it was, and these techniques that just warned
Speaker 4: science based. So it really wasn't hard for me to
Speaker 4: write because I knew the literature. You know, some people
Speaker 4: say it takes a long time to write. Now, I
Speaker 4: sat there in a couple of months. But room, I
Speaker 4: mean we edited it, tweaked at the and all that.
Speaker 4: But to typing it up was was I just knew
Speaker 4: what to say. Yeah, and then I looked for interventions
Speaker 4: because I really am more interested in the causes and
Speaker 4: the consequences. But everybody wants the cures fixed me. So
Speaker 4: you decided to write this book. So I wrote this
Speaker 4: book and came out in twenty ten because I got
Speaker 4: tired of all the other stuff that was out there
Speaker 4: that really was not based on the sidelients, based on
Speaker 4: what people were saying.
Speaker 2: He mentioned some well worn advice about eating raw frogs
Speaker 2: first thing in the morning, and this is metaphorical, it's
Speaker 2: not a Silicon Valley biohack. But I've had some luck
Speaker 2: with time blocking, which is giving myself specific times to
Speaker 2: do certain tasks. But Ferrari says these tactics don't always
Speaker 2: get to the heart of the problem.
Speaker 4: If you have a list of things to do, put
Speaker 4: them in order, and you know I grew up, that's
Speaker 4: called prioritizing. That ain't procrastination. Clearly, if I have a
Speaker 4: dozen things to do ten eleven, and twelve. Gotta wait,
Speaker 4: want I do that? All right? So I'm working on that.
Speaker 4: But that's not procrastinating. The true procrastinator has that list
Speaker 4: of twelve and then maybe does one, maybe does two,
Speaker 4: then rewrites the list, makes a copy of the list,
Speaker 4: shuffle things around. Oh no, am I right?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Why are you seeing in my soul?
Speaker 4: No? And I'm just saying that so structured or another
Speaker 4: person talks about active procrastination. Now, listen to those words
Speaker 4: active procrastination. How can I actively not do something? Inertia
Speaker 4: is inertia?
Speaker 2: Doctor Ferra says he hates to see people taking advantage
Speaker 2: of the agony procrastinators feel and offering them non effective
Speaker 2: or non scientific solutions. I mean, can you blame him?
Speaker 2: This man has spent his adult life hunkered over data sets,
Speaker 2: doing serious science on the topic.
Speaker 4: But there are a lot of people out there that
Speaker 4: you know, are trying to cash in on a real problem. Seriously,
Speaker 4: that's a problem for people in their life.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's the worst problem in my life.
Speaker 3: Yes, And I am a.
Speaker 2: Super high achiever, great grades, super perfectionist. Everyone always commends
Speaker 2: how hard I work, And it's this shameful secret that
Speaker 2: I that I take the most important things, and I
Speaker 2: do them last, because failing at them it would be terrible.
Speaker 3: Is devastating.
Speaker 4: So fear of failure it's clearly a major motor. But
Speaker 4: even fear of success can cause people to procrastinate because
Speaker 4: if I succeed, what happened.
Speaker 3: Oh, then it's just more work.
Speaker 4: So I'm the lawyer who never finishes the brief on time,
Speaker 4: so they don't get the firm doesn't give me an
Speaker 4: additional stuff to do. I am not finishing the reports
Speaker 4: on hither because prox Now it is kidding.
Speaker 2: What did he call them?
Speaker 5: Us?
Speaker 4: And so okay, proc I call them PROCs short because
Speaker 4: again I'm from New York and everything's gotta be fast
Speaker 4: across the nation. Talks takes too long, so call them PROCs.
Speaker 4: PROCs think the world is about themselves. I don't like it.
Speaker 4: I can't do it. I don't want to fail, I
Speaker 4: don't look good.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 4: World is not about me. Life is about wi. If
Speaker 4: I don't do my task on time, then you can't
Speaker 4: do your task on time, which doesn't let the next
Speaker 4: person do. So life is not about me. Life is
Speaker 4: about we. We live in unity, common unity, community.
Speaker 2: And sometimes we're so afraid of letting the community down.
Speaker 2: That we let the community down.
Speaker 4: Sorry, I didn't mean to do it.
Speaker 2: What are the mechanisms underlying that? And I know that
Speaker 2: this is a whole book's worth. But if someone is
Speaker 2: social esteem protection, okay, what does that mean?
Speaker 4: You know what self esteem is. That's how I feel
Speaker 4: about myself. PROCs are very concerned about what other people
Speaker 4: think of them, hence social esteem. I want you to
Speaker 4: like me. I don't want to fail. I don't want
Speaker 4: to do poorly. I want you to really like me. See,
Speaker 4: but if I never finish, you will then say I
Speaker 4: lack effort, not lack ability.
Speaker 3: Yeah, wow, that hurts.
Speaker 4: Lacking ability is much more stable, much more. It doesn't
Speaker 4: matter how much effort. It's much more consistent. Lacking effort
Speaker 4: means maybe I could do it. I just didn't have
Speaker 4: enough time. This would be much better. If I had
Speaker 4: more time, I could really show you. Then, See, it's
Speaker 4: not my fault. It's time got away from me. I
Speaker 4: don't do nothing. Times are constant, which is why you
Speaker 4: can't manage time time manager? Can I go there?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: I know that time management is a myth, is a myth,
Speaker 2: and I have tried that so many times like what
Speaker 2: do you feel? How do you feel about Like the
Speaker 2: Pomodoro method, and the Pomadora method is the kitchen timer
Speaker 2: twenty five minutes on, fifty five minutes off, you know, not.
Speaker 4: The fruit that you eat, no pomegranate, don't get.
Speaker 2: It, no, no, but it comes from Italian for pomodoro
Speaker 2: because the guy who invented it had a had a
Speaker 2: kitchen timer to look like a tomato. Yeah, so you
Speaker 2: set an egg timer for twenty five minutes you work,
Speaker 2: and then five minutes off, like or bullet journaling.
Speaker 4: For the eighty percent where it's time management problem they procrastinating,
Speaker 4: these things will work. They talk about the five minute
Speaker 4: plan that you can break things down. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, the five minute planned by the bye I just
Speaker 2: look this up. Is where you take a dreaded task,
Speaker 2: a loathesome assignment, and you tell yourself you will do
Speaker 2: it for five minutes and then you're out of there.
Speaker 2: And usually in that five minutes you're like, oh, okay,
Speaker 2: this isn't like hell on Earth, because we tend to
Speaker 2: anticipate a task being so much worse than it actually is.
Speaker 2: So no harm trying that tactic.
Speaker 4: But if you're the twenty percent if you're listening to
Speaker 4: this and you say yeah, but for me, okay, this
Speaker 4: is entertaining. However, in my case, this is not going
Speaker 4: to work. You need cognitive behavior therapy AKA also known
Speaker 4: as CBT, because we need to change the way you
Speaker 4: think and the way you act, because again it's this
Speaker 4: lack of I don't want to show my lackability because
Speaker 4: they were so concerned with that. And yet life is
Speaker 4: full of failure. Life is full of you're going to
Speaker 4: make mistakes, and actually you're going to be healthier. If
Speaker 4: you're going to make mistakes, is happier and happier they'd
Speaker 4: rather have them look as lacking of effort. Now there
Speaker 4: are three myths. Should I go there first?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: The debunking flint Flam is one of my favorite segments.
Speaker 3: It's where you flin flam is myth? Yes, it's debunks
Speaker 3: and flin flams a.
Speaker 4: Right, Okay, all right, I call them myths.
Speaker 3: Okay, right on tomorrow.
Speaker 4: One of the myths that people say is technology makes
Speaker 4: it so much easier. Yeah, with my phone and everything else.
Speaker 4: I got to answer that with the story. In two
Speaker 4: thousand and six, a reporter from Connecticut phones me and
Speaker 4: says doctor Ferry, what do you think about the snooze
Speaker 4: button on alarm clocks? I don't have a phone of us, goes, Oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's the first technology for procrastination, and it's fifty years old.
Speaker 4: It was first available in nineteen fifty six. Oh wow, yes,
Speaker 4: I didn't know that. Yeah, so we've had a lot
Speaker 4: of time. And he's right, you gained nine minutes. Now,
Speaker 4: there's nothing wrong with gaining him minus the problem is
Speaker 4: you keep pressing it. You keep pressing it. That's the problem.
Speaker 4: So then I started thinking about that. Okay, So the
Speaker 4: technology back in fifty six allowed us to do What
Speaker 4: about the telephone eighteen eighty five? Okay, there was a
Speaker 4: time you had to write your letter out, make sure
Speaker 4: it got to the person, give them five days, give
Speaker 4: them time to come back. Now I could wait, give
Speaker 4: me your okay, and you could do You could do
Speaker 4: this at the last minute. The automobile earlier than the phone.
Speaker 4: There was a time I had to get my horse
Speaker 4: and my buggy together and feed it and get it
Speaker 4: all together. Now I could just go in my car.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 4: So there's always been technology. Don't give me this poo poo,
Speaker 4: that it's technology makes it easier. Myth number two. Myth
Speaker 4: number two is oh but ferrari, you don't understand. Our
Speaker 4: lives are so much busier today. We have so much
Speaker 4: going on. I just can't manage it all. It's too much.
Speaker 4: What an insult to our ancestors to get up? Who
Speaker 4: are farmers? Get up in the morning and make sure
Speaker 4: the field was plowed, fix the roof, get the pump working.
Speaker 4: Can the goods feed the anto? They didn't have a
Speaker 4: lot to do. There's one hundred and sixty eight hours
Speaker 4: a week, twenty four times seven, no more, no less.
Speaker 4: Don't tell me we're busier. We're different. Oh absolutely, yes,
Speaker 4: not the same. It's not busier. Don't give me that excuse.
Speaker 4: Don't insult our ancestors. You cannot manage time. You only
Speaker 4: manage yourself. There is an expression we cannot control the wind,
Speaker 4: but we can adjust our sails. We can adjust how
Speaker 4: we deal with this. And the Japanese say, and if
Speaker 4: there's no wind, row, get yourself going.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And then what about myth three?
Speaker 4: Okay? And myth number Am I taking too long? No?
Speaker 4: I love them? I love this okay, So I tell you,
Speaker 4: I can talk forever myth number three. Oh oh oh, okay,
Speaker 4: all right, Ferrari. So technology has been there and time
Speaker 4: has always been the same. But you know, I just
Speaker 4: work best on the pressure. Yes, oh, I gotta wait
Speaker 4: till that last minute, Ferrari. It gets me going, It
Speaker 4: gets the juices moving, and I always seem to succeed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you've read my journal.
Speaker 2: Okay, but what juices are those? Exactly? Well, they're stress hormones.
Speaker 2: And if you need them to get a job done, congratulations.
Speaker 2: You are an arousal procrastinator, as opposed to the avoidance procrastinators,
Speaker 2: who just feel like their success or failure at any
Speaker 2: given task is a huge indicator of their worth on
Speaker 2: the planet. So a Tasmanian devil arousal versus an armadillo avoidance,
Speaker 2: if you will.
Speaker 3: I'm a little bit of both.
Speaker 2: And as you can imagine, by putting those animals together,
Speaker 2: it's not attractive.
Speaker 3: So what happens do we gets?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 4: So yes, so I brought them in the lab. Did experiments.
Speaker 4: A lot of people think the research on procrastination that
Speaker 4: I and others do are just surveys. Absolutely not. I
Speaker 4: have done a lot of experiments meaning you bring procrastinators
Speaker 4: in the lab and non procrastinators and you have them
Speaker 4: do tasks. So in a series of tasks, they made
Speaker 4: more errors at the last minute. They took longer, but
Speaker 4: they thought they did better at the last minute. So
Speaker 4: there's this perception I do better. And if you talk procrastinators,
Speaker 4: they will tell you all ferrari, I remember the time
Speaker 4: when I waited and this thing happened, And you go,
Speaker 4: I remember that too, that was like what eighteen years ago?
Speaker 4: You're told me that was like thirty to one years ago,
Speaker 4: And they oh, yeah, yeah, what about all the failure since?
Speaker 4: So they will harp on, they will remember the times
Speaker 4: when it works, because life is a very as we
Speaker 4: say in the trade, a variable schedule of reinforcement. You
Speaker 4: don't always fail, you don't always succeed, and so this
Speaker 4: is the time it's going to happen.
Speaker 2: Side note, a variable schedule of reinforcement was not a
Speaker 2: term that rolled off my tongue, so I had to
Speaker 2: look it up. And it means you never know when
Speaker 2: something will pay off, kind of like lotto scratchers or
Speaker 2: playing a slot machine, or swiping right on someone who
Speaker 2: might not like you. Back I myself not a Vegas gambler.
Speaker 2: I get no thrills from feeding money into a video
Speaker 2: game owned by money pigs. So to put that in perspective,
Speaker 2: let's look at procrastination as a gamble. So the notion
Speaker 2: that the high stake danger of doing something last minute
Speaker 2: would lead to some jackpot of genius is of course foolish.
Speaker 2: And doctor Ferrari says that your odds of doing a
Speaker 2: good job on something are way higher and more predictably
Speaker 2: so by just doing things earlier, whether that's writing your
Speaker 2: book of short stories or buying plane tickets. So procrastination
Speaker 2: is a huge crapshoot, and remember the house always wins.
Speaker 2: I read in a book that people who procrastinate on
Speaker 2: in terms of personality psychology, and I have to run
Speaker 2: an episode on that tend to have lower conscientiousness and
Speaker 2: higher neuroticism.
Speaker 3: Yes, and they tend to worry about the future.
Speaker 4: Neuroticism is not as much as people thought. It's clearly conscientiousness.
Speaker 4: Now what are we talking about here? People don't understand that.
Speaker 4: Personality researchers have said that there's really five we call
Speaker 4: them the Big five personality variables that all comes down
Speaker 4: the five. And actually there's a six, and I can
Speaker 4: talk about that in a minute. But anyway, there's the
Speaker 4: big five. And the easiest way to remember think of
Speaker 4: the word oh, and that will give you the an
Speaker 4: acronym the.
Speaker 2: Oh your openness, openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
Speaker 4: Spell the word ocean. And that's how I teach students
Speaker 4: to remember. Okay, so the big one. Interestingly, lee enough,
Speaker 4: there's very little research on conscientiousness, but procrastination seems to
Speaker 4: be the strong opposite. So again when I get pushed
Speaker 4: back from colleagues as so this is not a real topic,
Speaker 4: I say, study the opposite of conscientiousness, study procrastination. It's
Speaker 4: correlated negatively. I have not done that research. I'm not
Speaker 4: a big fiver we call them. And in fact, I
Speaker 4: like there's a newer mode call the hexaco that adds
Speaker 4: in the H that would be on humility and honesty.
Speaker 4: What these researchers have found is the five works, but
Speaker 4: you're missing something. People are honest and humility. But I
Speaker 4: tell you it's hard to be humble when you're great.
Speaker 4: You know it.
Speaker 2: And so this is and well that also brings back
Speaker 2: to the social social esteem. I mean that seems like
Speaker 2: procrastination is not a problem that you struggle with, but
Speaker 2: you do have people in your life that you might
Speaker 2: be sure, lots of you sure, I'll just say that
Speaker 2: in a general sense, and not reading I work with
Speaker 2: people out of this.
Speaker 3: You may have dedicated the book to someone very close.
Speaker 4: You know, they have to buy the book and find
Speaker 4: out exactly Now that's the book. What book are we
Speaker 4: talking about. We're talking about still Procrastinate, The No Regrets
Speaker 4: Guide to Getting.
Speaker 3: It Done, of course, which there will be a link
Speaker 3: in the show notes.
Speaker 2: Okay, now, so when you're when you're studying this, do
Speaker 2: your relationships with people close to you who struggle with
Speaker 2: procrast do they inform your research?
Speaker 4: Yes? They informed, But I remember the good These procrastinators
Speaker 4: are good excuse maker, right, And so whenever they hear
Speaker 4: anything I'm talking about, or any podcast or any interview
Speaker 4: that I'll do on the phone afterwards, get very annoyed
Speaker 4: and they say, well that's old. They come over, excuse
Speaker 4: you have old research? You have you're only looking at
Speaker 4: one thing. Yeah, so an excuse making. But you don't
Speaker 4: understand in my situation, blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: Do you do you have a gushy, empathetic heart for
Speaker 2: the anxious struggles of the progression?
Speaker 4: Absolutely, don't think I'm being called Yes, but I'm not
Speaker 4: going to let them.
Speaker 3: Get away with it because it doesn't help.
Speaker 4: No, it doesn't help enable them. I'm not going to
Speaker 4: enable them because life is not about them. Life is
Speaker 4: about us. Life is about all of us and that
Speaker 4: and all I be doing is do I feel bad
Speaker 4: for them? Yes? And sympathetic? Yes? And I try to,
Speaker 4: you know, advise. I get calls all the time, emails
Speaker 4: all the time. I've struggled all my life that what
Speaker 4: can I do? And I empathetic and I say, yes,
Speaker 4: I understand. I'm not a clinical psychologist. However, I give
Speaker 4: them just a few tidbits and they go, oh, that's me,
Speaker 4: you know very much. They can relate to it. So
Speaker 4: I don't think I'm off the mark.
Speaker 3: No, No, right on the money. What's so painful and
Speaker 3: wonderful about it?
Speaker 2: So in one of doctor Ferrari's approximately one billion studies,
Speaker 2: he looked at different types of artists to see if
Speaker 2: procrastination is actually an important part of their process. Is
Speaker 2: it the secret sauce on their chicken burger.
Speaker 4: So I wondered, are these creative procrastinators savoring that's why
Speaker 4: they're trying, or are they ruminating about failure? Bottom line? What
Speaker 4: do you think ruminating about? Mt? About?
Speaker 3: What about perfectionism?
Speaker 4: Okay, perfectionism is also related to procrastination, but it's a
Speaker 4: separate concept. He's too overlap, but there's different. There's a
Speaker 4: body of literature on perfectionism, but there is a crossover
Speaker 4: with procrastination. Non procrastinators are perfectionistic, and so are procrastinators perfectionism.
Speaker 4: But what's the difference between them? Ah, long story short.
Speaker 4: The procrastinator is perfectionistic for a motive, a desire to
Speaker 4: get along. The non procrastinator is perfectionistic to get ahead.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, you understand the difference. One is I want
Speaker 4: to do the best job to get ahead. The other
Speaker 4: one is I want you to like me. Yeah you say,
Speaker 4: don't you say I work hard? Oh? Isn't it good?
Speaker 4: I really worked hard, didn't I? Okay?
Speaker 2: Yes, that was doctor Ferrari mimicking a desperate puppy. In
Speaker 2: case you're feeling scathingly understood right now, as am I?
Speaker 3: And where does that come from. Does that come from?
Speaker 4: Where's the origin of perfection? You've read some of the stuff,
Speaker 4: you already have your questions in your head. Okay, that's
Speaker 4: a great question. Okay, First of all, there's no gene
Speaker 4: for procrastinating. There's no genetic gene. Every two years is
Speaker 4: an international meeting on the study of procrastination. Didn't they
Speaker 4: say that it is?
Speaker 3: I did twenty seventeen.
Speaker 4: Yes, when I did it in twenty seventeen, there were
Speaker 4: researchers from Denver area who came in and followed up
Speaker 4: an earlier study of mine on genetics, and they found
Speaker 4: with identical twins, they found that procrastination was less than
Speaker 4: fifty percent explained by jeans. So it's not genetic. I
Speaker 4: had shown earlier in the nineties when I was pumping
Speaker 4: this stuff out, that it was parenting style. It's a
Speaker 4: learned tendency. You learn to become a procrastinator, and that
Speaker 4: means you can unlearn it. Yes, you can teach old
Speaker 4: dogs new tricks. I tell people, you just use a
Speaker 4: different bone and you take longer, all right, But can
Speaker 4: you teach them Absolutely, it's just going to be harder.
Speaker 4: So what I found was a certain parenting style that
Speaker 4: elicited that caused kids to become procrastinators. And what style
Speaker 4: is that? That's the call demanding parents? As long as
Speaker 4: you live under this roof, yoda, I don't want to
Speaker 4: hear any lip I said, you do this, well, that
Speaker 4: causes a child who can't revolt to what just take
Speaker 4: your time, which would make the parent what even more
Speaker 4: angry for the big one? And then you get on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's like a little bit of but it's
Speaker 3: a little control.
Speaker 4: They can exactly over this kind of thing. And we
Speaker 4: found particularly let me ask you the question, who do
Speaker 4: you think you find this more common? And who do
Speaker 4: you think causes kids who concrastinators? Moms or dads?
Speaker 2: Oh, you know, I just keep thinking about my perfectionist grandparents.
Speaker 2: And so I had grandparents who demanded perfection when they
Speaker 2: come over. Our rooms had to be spotless, you know,
Speaker 2: things like that.
Speaker 4: Wow, And they would look to see if there's any.
Speaker 2: Does literally, and they would give you a roll of
Speaker 2: coins and then they would take one away for every indiscretion.
Speaker 4: There are a lot of fun and so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like I got nichols.
Speaker 2: My older sister got quarters, which was so annoying because
Speaker 2: I was like, what so, but yes, yeah, so I
Speaker 2: still had my tiny hands had to make the bed.
Speaker 2: But but yeah so, but I would guess that would
Speaker 2: be like a demanding father figure.
Speaker 4: Probably it was the father's Usually we blame everything on mom, Mom,
Speaker 4: I'm sorry. In this case, we are finding it's dad,
Speaker 4: and they report procrasting is a shallower relationship with dad,
Speaker 4: more conflict with dad, less support finding from dad, so
Speaker 4: giving that profile and everything else. So it's a learn tendency.
Speaker 4: That's where it comes from. The answer your question, and
Speaker 4: it tends to begin in the home. And this is
Speaker 4: the way the person has learned to adjust. And our
Speaker 4: culture rewards us for procrastinating. Let me go there for
Speaker 4: a minute. Okay, taxes are coming up April fifteenth. Now,
Speaker 4: if you owe money, there's absolutely no reason why you
Speaker 4: should file earlier. I'm that stupid, all right. The government's
Speaker 4: got it wrong. I'm a fan of and this is
Speaker 4: another one of my lines is don't punish for being
Speaker 4: late procrastinating, reward for being early. Oh wow, And the
Speaker 4: government needs to do that. So you can't file in
Speaker 4: January because you're getting all your papers. The government should say,
Speaker 4: if you can send this stuff in by February fifteenth.
Speaker 4: We'll let you say five percent. Yeah, well, the government
Speaker 4: gets it too much earlier. You save some money. Is
Speaker 4: your reinforced March fifteenth, three percent? Yeah, April fifteenth, you
Speaker 4: pay it all. That will not work with the twenty
Speaker 4: percent chronic, Yeah, but it'll work with the eighty percent.
Speaker 4: Our culture is punitive. Our culture punishes you. We don't
Speaker 4: give the early bird the worm. Let's reward the person
Speaker 4: who does it earlier, incentivizing it.
Speaker 3: And this I have so many I have I know
Speaker 3: you have lots.
Speaker 2: So many questions, but I want to get to patroon questions.
Speaker 2: But of course before your questions. Each week we donate
Speaker 2: to a charity of the ologists choosing, and this week
Speaker 2: the cause of autoimmune vasculitis research is meaningful to doctor
Speaker 2: Ferrari and his family, so we donated to Vasculitis Foundation
Speaker 2: dot org in honor of him and his love Sharon Ferrari.
Speaker 2: And I looked for an additional charity to send some cash,
Speaker 2: one that helps people afflicted with procrastination. And I spent
Speaker 2: honestly like an hour googling, googling, googling nothing until the
Speaker 2: line between doing research and just wasting time was so blurred,
Speaker 2: so I could not find a procrastination charity.
Speaker 3: I don't think they exist.
Speaker 2: So Vasculitisfoundation dot org is this week's recipient, and let
Speaker 2: that be an indicator of just how little people recognize
Speaker 2: the impact of procrastination on physical and mental health and
Speaker 2: on industry. Anyway, that donation was made possible by sponsors
Speaker 2: of the show, who you may hear me talk about.
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Speaker 2: Okay, back to your questions, and honestly, there were so
Speaker 2: many people with this question. I'm going to list just
Speaker 2: first names for brevity and also anonymity, but I see
Speaker 2: you my pod children Ethan, kat Andrea, Anna, Leah, Nicole, Julie,
Speaker 2: Nick Maddie and first time question asker is Maria Ethan
Speaker 2: and someone by the name of I'm not your Lama.
Speaker 2: But the biggest question I got, and I can't even
Speaker 2: list how many people asked this was just doctor Ferrari.
Speaker 3: World expert of procrastination, what do I do?
Speaker 4: Okay, Well, again, if you're part of the twenty percent
Speaker 4: where this is your I'm honest, I have to tell
Speaker 4: you the truth. Maladaptive lifestyle. It seems to be pervasive,
Speaker 4: and you've been doing it all your life and you're
Speaker 4: doing it in all these settings, then you need therapy.
Speaker 3: I'm the story.
Speaker 4: You need cognitive behavior therapy. I don't want to diss
Speaker 4: any of my colleagues, but I'm saying, find a good
Speaker 4: clinical psychologist who's trained not in time management, who's going
Speaker 4: to help you change the way you think and the
Speaker 4: way you act. But suppose you're part of the twenty
Speaker 4: percent that many of your respondents might have been people
Speaker 4: who say I only procrastinate as one thing or this
Speaker 4: area of my life. Okay, if because they're so concerned
Speaker 4: about social esteem, what others think. Publicly post what you
Speaker 4: have to do, put it on Facebook or Instagram, whatever
Speaker 4: you use. Okay, I say, if friends this is what
Speaker 4: I gotta do, contact me in three days. Let me know.
Speaker 4: They're very concerned about what we'll think about. Now, that's
Speaker 4: not a new technique. You see. We talk about how
Speaker 4: technology public posting goes back to God when I was
Speaker 4: in college in the seventies. But and I remember reading
Speaker 4: in the sixties that literature on public posting, you're more
Speaker 4: likely to do something if it's publicly posted than if
Speaker 4: you don't. So with technology we can use that again.
Speaker 4: But it's not a new concept. Surround yourself with doers,
Speaker 4: not with people who are going to black people who
Speaker 4: are going to get things done. I didn't finish more
Speaker 4: about the procrastination and perfectionism.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and.
Speaker 4: I just got jump back there from me. Okay. I
Speaker 4: had a one year visiting position in the Qunity System
Speaker 4: City University of New York. And while I was there,
Speaker 4: I had business in Baroque College, well known excellent school
Speaker 4: for business. I had a lot of business majors MBAs
Speaker 4: and psychology students starting to be business. So I had
Speaker 4: to go out and collect data on their jobs. And
Speaker 4: I said, let's take a vignette, a little story about
Speaker 4: a guy. We called them mister Nolan. He was a
Speaker 4: company auditor. He worked really hard, but he never got
Speaker 4: things in on time. Happily married, fine, everything's financially stable,
Speaker 4: and whenever you asked, I'm working on it. At the
Speaker 4: end of that vignette, for one third, he calls himself
Speaker 4: a procrastinator. For another third he calls himself a perfectionist,
Speaker 4: and another third no label. Okay, So they had people
Speaker 4: at their workplace because I like to use adults. It
Speaker 4: was just commege students in my data, because I think
Speaker 4: it's easy to generalize to non university populations. So we
Speaker 4: had the three people. The people read over that and
Speaker 4: then they filled in measures on whether they were procrastinators
Speaker 4: or not. So we compared procrastinators and non procrastinators on
Speaker 4: how they evaluate another procrastinator. Because my question really was,
Speaker 4: as I listened to these business people, if I'm a
Speaker 4: procrastinator and my boss is a procrastinator, when I come
Speaker 4: up from my annual review at the end of the year,
Speaker 4: is she going to be easier on me? Because after all,
Speaker 4: two of the same or she going to be harder.
Speaker 4: So what did we find? Wow, it didn't matter if
Speaker 4: they called themselves a perfectionist or a procrastinator. But the procrastinators,
Speaker 4: more than the non procrassion wanted to fire him, said
Speaker 4: he is the cause of the problem, a terrible, horrible
Speaker 4: So what's the takeaway if you're a procrastinator, and even
Speaker 4: if you call yourself a perfraction is people are not
Speaker 4: gonna like you other procrastinators. They want to distance themselves
Speaker 4: from you. Again again, they're very concerned about that social image,
Speaker 4: going back to how to treat it. So don't surround
Speaker 4: yourself with other procrassors. They're not gonna like you that
Speaker 4: you surround yourself with non procrastinators.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, So my fellow procrastinators, the ones who are
Speaker 2: afraid of doing a bad job and having people mad
Speaker 2: at you. I have good news and I have bad news.
Speaker 2: They're mad at us anyway. Everyone hates us for taking
Speaker 2: too long. We're just screwing ourselves. There's no need to
Speaker 2: delay it. People can only like us more.
Speaker 4: This is a revelation in social psychology. Another study we
Speaker 4: did is a concept called social loafing. Have you heard
Speaker 4: that social loafing. Oh yeah, that's an oldie.
Speaker 3: Never heard of that, never got to have me as
Speaker 3: I know once a month.
Speaker 4: Come on, let's talk to Ferrari. But yeah, social loafing
Speaker 4: that when people are in a groups and the individual
Speaker 4: performance is not evaluated. But it's like in a classroom
Speaker 4: setting or job, I want one report from the group,
Speaker 4: you will get social loafing. Okay, people will not do it.
Speaker 4: PROCs are notorious for that.
Speaker 2: In his book Still Procrastinating, The No Regrets Guide to
Speaker 2: Getting It Done, doctor Ferrari defines a social loafer as someone,
Speaker 2: say on a group project, who just coasts like, hangs back,
Speaker 2: lets you all figure a project out. And maybe you
Speaker 2: think that they are smoking a doobie and playing bongos
Speaker 2: in the parking lot, but actually they're wringing their hands
Speaker 2: in the bathroom, worried they're just gonna let everyone down.
Speaker 4: So in a one study, we had procrastinators read other
Speaker 4: evaluate other people in this scenario who were loafing. Oh
Speaker 4: they were the hell on living hell.
Speaker 3: They were a public enemy, public acaty.
Speaker 4: So even with you socially loaf, they're not going to
Speaker 4: give you why why when they're just like me that
Speaker 4: because again I want to distance myself and this is
Speaker 4: not a socially acceptable concept. And I have to tell
Speaker 4: you I have seen in the last fifteen twenty years
Speaker 4: a lot more media, a lot more on procrastination out
Speaker 4: there than ever was when I started forty years ago,
Speaker 4: thirty well, god, forty years ago, whatever it was, there
Speaker 4: was nothing. Now it's a very common thing. So back
Speaker 4: to what you can do. Surround yourself with doers publicly post.
Speaker 4: Don't let people let you get away with it, hold
Speaker 4: you accountable, okay. And then there's lots of other time
Speaker 4: time management and I really hesitated that. You can hear
Speaker 4: it in my voice saying time manager, because you don't
Speaker 4: manage time but break the task down into small little chunks.
Speaker 4: You ever hear the expression don't miss the forest for
Speaker 4: the trees, in other words, don't miss the big picture
Speaker 4: because you're caught up with all the little parts. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's not the procrastinators problem. They see the forest, they
Speaker 4: forget that it's what made of trees.
Speaker 3: They just see one big terrifi.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, I have to do this thing. Holy god,
Speaker 4: I can't. This is a I'd never do it. I
Speaker 4: can't do it. Right. They see the fart. They see
Speaker 4: the fart. So you teach them cut one tree. You
Speaker 4: can't cut one tree, give me three branches. Can't give
Speaker 4: three branches, take a handful of leaves. Because what's the commercial?
Speaker 4: A body in motion stays in motion. It's more physics.
Speaker 4: Okay that once. Yeah, stopping a train is very hard
Speaker 4: once it's a movie. So get going. Just do it now,
Speaker 4: not Nancy Reagan's just say no, Just say now.
Speaker 2: Okay. So this next question was asked by so many
Speaker 2: people on patreon dot com soshologies. I'm gonna say your
Speaker 2: first name's gonna do it quickly. Margaret Shock, Honor, Beatrice, Ryan, Margaret, Alisa, Jamie, Noah, Elizabeth, Nikula, Sandro, Moses, Ali, Zultan, Annie, Sophie,
Speaker 2: Mike and my first time question asking bbes Tracy, Andrea,
Speaker 2: so Lemia, Angela, Deborah, Maria, Kelly Elliott and Xavier or
Speaker 2: Xavier I'm not sure how French you are? And now
Speaker 2: what about things comorbidities like ADHD, say or generalized anxiety disorder,
Speaker 2: like what other factors can someone may be attack that
Speaker 2: might be a component of their procrastination.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in this book, I actually have on chapter twelve
Speaker 4: looking at procrastination and personality styles and some of these
Speaker 4: negative consequences. I hesitate to say this because sometimes people
Speaker 4: get very annoyed with my comment. But there's only been
Speaker 4: one study that looked at procrastination in ADHD, and I
Speaker 4: did it, and I found practically no relationship.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 4: Yes, again, people say that's cuch a word and proneness different,
Speaker 4: thrill seeking different, easily distractable, yes, but not ADHD. See,
Speaker 4: there are different measures we use in psychology, and thrill
Speaker 4: seeking is a measure of the Zuckerman Martin Zuckerman Zuckerman
Speaker 4: from I can put it in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, okay, yes, I look this up and the
Speaker 2: late Marvin Zuckerman's work focused on sensation seeking. There's even
Speaker 2: a sensation seeking scale and yeah, yeah, I found it
Speaker 2: online and I took it. I answered this nineteen point
Speaker 2: academic quiz and at the end it said, if you
Speaker 2: checked eleven or more of the items, you're probably a
Speaker 2: sensation seeker. If you checked seven or fewer of the items,
Speaker 2: you're probably not a sensation seeker. My score?
Speaker 3: Are you ready for this?
Speaker 2: Six? Just off the charts? Risk averse, my friends. But
Speaker 2: if you would agree with statements like I prefer friends
Speaker 2: who are unpredictable, or I often wish I were a
Speaker 2: mountain climber, or I would like to try some of
Speaker 2: the new drugs that produce hallucinations. You might seek thrills ps.
Speaker 2: This quiz was written in the late nineteen sixties.
Speaker 4: Groovy Time uh Zuckerman's thrill Seeking Measure shows are you
Speaker 4: easily distracted? Are you boredom prone? There are people and
Speaker 4: so while it sounds like ADHD, it's a different cut.
Speaker 4: That's true, and it's only one study, so I'm not
Speaker 4: willing to say there isn't a relationship. Although when I
Speaker 4: say that, they get very people in the field get
Speaker 4: very angry. You're understanding, I see that. You know, it's
Speaker 4: a hard concept to wrap around progressing because it's sometimes
Speaker 4: the outcome and sometimes it's the cause. You see, I
Speaker 4: think with ADHD, it's an outcome. It is procrastinating from that.
Speaker 4: But then this also, which is my interests, the cause
Speaker 4: that where it starts. So it's a there's two different
Speaker 4: you know which way you look at it. But if
Speaker 4: nothing else from today's show, I hope your listeners realize
Speaker 4: that everybody procrastinates, all right, And that doesn't make you
Speaker 4: a procrastinator. You told me you had lots of people
Speaker 4: asking questions. I would bet if we look closer, for
Speaker 4: many of these people, they're just delaying a task or two.
Speaker 4: And that's okay. You know. Look, if I'm a manager,
Speaker 4: I want to delay why because I want information from
Speaker 4: my employees give me before not just jump into a decision.
Speaker 4: That's not good effective, good decision making. You need some
Speaker 4: time to think. Sure, But the question is if you
Speaker 4: have another focus group and another focus group and let's
Speaker 4: do another one now again, that's the problem.
Speaker 2: That's excessive. Elliott Alder, first time question, asker awesome questions.
Speaker 2: I know, right, How do you tell the difference between
Speaker 2: procrastination and not having enough spoons for the task at
Speaker 2: that moment? Like, how do you know whether or not
Speaker 2: you really are overloaded or whether or not you're procrastinating.
Speaker 4: Think of this as a continuum, and so there could
Speaker 4: be a moment where you have many spoons, a lot
Speaker 4: of irons in the fire. As they say, there could
Speaker 4: be a lot going on. But the question is are
Speaker 4: there always irons in the fire? You asked about treatment.
Speaker 4: One simple way is to delegate gives the task to
Speaker 4: somebody else. But if you have too much to do,
Speaker 4: trust that someone else can do this for you, that
Speaker 4: you've mentored along or that's skilled enough. And well, they fail, maybe,
Speaker 4: but if they succeed eight out of ten eighty percent
Speaker 4: of the time, be happy with that. Don't harp on
Speaker 4: the fact that they fail twice. Feed at eight. So
Speaker 4: if you have too many irons in the fire, too
Speaker 4: many spoons that you have to feed and do that,
Speaker 4: consider what you have to do. And again, prioritizing is fine.
Speaker 4: That's not the same as procrastinating. You're not structuring your procrastination.
Speaker 4: You are simply learning to prioritize. Procrastinator is a very
Speaker 4: bad ad judging time. They either underestimate or overestimate. They're
Speaker 4: very good. So another technique is to help them learn
Speaker 4: to practice time, not to read a watch. Of course
Speaker 4: they can do that, but we're telling them practice how
Speaker 4: much time something's going to take and more or less. Again,
Speaker 4: this person might be saying, I have lots of spoons
Speaker 4: to use. Well do you always find that? Are you
Speaker 4: good at judging the time? Life is full of peak
Speaker 4: periods in times we need to reward people for me
Speaker 4: is another suggestion we need to reward people who meet
Speaker 4: the deadlines. So again, if you're a manager and you
Speaker 4: have a department twenty people, thirty people, you know, and
Speaker 4: you say I need this report done. We need to
Speaker 4: get the Snyder report done by uh March fifteenth, all right,
Speaker 4: but if you get it to me to look at
Speaker 4: a March first, everybody gets that Friday off. Got see
Speaker 4: an incentives again.
Speaker 2: Now, This next question, or a variation of it, was
Speaker 2: asked by Julie bear Eva and Genessa about whether or
Speaker 2: not it's better to dangle a reward in front of
Speaker 2: your own face or to swat your butt mercilessly.
Speaker 3: So that's the caret and not the stick as they Oh.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, we do too much punishing. We don't do enough reward.
Speaker 2: Kendra Niedercorn asks first time question asker, how come when
Speaker 2: I'm procrastinating other tasks I don't want to do see
Speaker 2: more appealing, like cleaning my kitchen when I should be
Speaker 2: doing my taxes.
Speaker 3: What's happening? Is it like a dope?
Speaker 4: Corresponses No, No, we're turning the bio again. No, not necessary.
Speaker 4: We don't know, And if it is bio, it's much
Speaker 4: more correlational than causal. They correlate, and it doesn't mean
Speaker 4: once causing the other. A very common mistake people make
Speaker 4: is they take correlation and they make it causal. Okay,
Speaker 4: so yes, of course you're doing something that's more fun
Speaker 4: than something that's not fun. But how on the other hand,
Speaker 4: you may be doing a task. They both need to
Speaker 4: be done. You've got to do the taxes, you've got
Speaker 4: to do the dishes. So it's logical. It's not illogical
Speaker 4: to be born illogical. Sure, I need to do that,
Speaker 4: but at some point there's a deadline where the taxes
Speaker 4: have to be done and you need to pull that
Speaker 4: together and work it together.
Speaker 2: Doctor Ferrari then produced a small weekly calendar, the days
Speaker 2: filled up with Harry notes and tasks, each task scratched
Speaker 2: off deeply in the tight zigzags of ballpoint. Ink.
Speaker 4: I'm old fashioned. This is going to blow you away.
Speaker 4: I write them down and some weeks away, so I
Speaker 4: write that in pencil. Work on the taxes, so I
Speaker 4: think I have that down on Saturday. Work on taxes
Speaker 4: next Sunday. So I put down a few times so
Speaker 4: I can do that. But sometimes it's even crazier. I
Speaker 4: prefer this much better than putting it down because I
Speaker 4: can get to much more things that are done this way.
Speaker 3: Nice.
Speaker 2: And I love that when you're crossing things off, you're
Speaker 2: not just crossing it off, you are obliterating it, like
Speaker 2: perhaps your ped marks are Like is that is there
Speaker 2: something that's rewarding about like, yes, I got it done,
Speaker 2: like scratching it off, like it's out there.
Speaker 4: There's a new body of literature call procrastination, people who
Speaker 4: like to do things ahead of the time. Yeah. And
Speaker 4: then I may fall more under that because yes, because
Speaker 4: I only don't write it here. I have a calendar
Speaker 4: in my office and in my work office there's a
Speaker 4: calendar by the desk, and when I turn it.
Speaker 3: Around, yeah, because another calendar.
Speaker 4: So I make sure I have it in both.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: But that's great because the reward is you get to
Speaker 3: cross it off.
Speaker 4: I get to cross it off each time. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean sometimes people put things on there to do
Speaker 2: list already did, just so they can cross it off.
Speaker 4: It feels amazing. That's kind of what else we have.
Speaker 3: Last questions?
Speaker 2: I always ask everyone, Uh, the the crappiest thing about
Speaker 2: your job, the thing you hate about procrastination, the most
Speaker 2: thing you hate about your work, But the thing that
Speaker 2: just irks you, the worst thing about what you do,
Speaker 2: or the thing you hate the most about procrastination or people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the thing I hate about procrastination is people not
Speaker 4: taking this as a serious problem. You asked me earlier,
Speaker 4: do I have empathy for the people who are chronic procrastinators?
Speaker 4: And the answer is yes. And I think our society,
Speaker 4: by not taking it seriously, cheapens it makes it less
Speaker 4: of a serious kind of thing, and I think that's
Speaker 4: not fair. I think it was Al Green who came
Speaker 4: up with a line. There's a song Sexual Healing said
Speaker 4: if you listen to the very last as a song
Speaker 4: fades off, wait one, it says, don't procrastinate. And it's
Speaker 4: the only time I ever heard that word used. Then
Speaker 4: there was a singer I forgot her name after my
Speaker 4: generation who has a song called procrastination. Lizzo No, no, no,
Speaker 4: she killed herself.
Speaker 3: Oh Amy Winehouse.
Speaker 4: Yes, I think she had a song called procrastity.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, I'll look it up and.
Speaker 4: Jubbing.
Speaker 2: So this leaked song is titled Procrastination. It's on YouTube.
Speaker 2: It's said to be about Amy Winehouse's trouble writing songs
Speaker 2: after her debut album, and apparently she titled the song Procrastinate,
Speaker 2: and it, along with about a dozen other tracks, are
Speaker 2: to remain in the vault. She wanted them unreleased in
Speaker 2: the event of her death. Also, the official cause of
Speaker 2: death was accidental alcohol overdose, which is tragic and gutting.
Speaker 2: And for more on addiction see the Addictionology episode. Also,
Speaker 2: as long as we're clarifying things, sexual healing is a
Speaker 2: Marvin Gaye song. And I know that you were just furious,
Speaker 2: some of you thinking I'm just gonna leave that hanging
Speaker 2: out there, but I know when you get feeling you
Speaker 2: need factual dealings. Anyway, Procrastination is in the hearts and
Speaker 2: on the lips of so many artists.
Speaker 4: But it's not procrastination. But I just love that that's
Speaker 4: not procrassi sexual healing. So what do I hate that
Speaker 4: after all these years that I've been talking about this
Speaker 4: in the media, the conference presentations, that people will put
Speaker 4: me at the end of conferences when I talk because
Speaker 4: you're on procrastination. Yes, that we don't take it seriously
Speaker 4: as a culture, that it's more than a time management issue.
Speaker 4: It's a maladaptive lifestyle. For twenty percent of people more
Speaker 4: than depression. And I'm not dis depression. It's a very
Speaker 4: serious issue. Substance abuse and alcoholism very serious. We treat
Speaker 4: those very seriously, as we should, and we should really
Speaker 4: treat the chronic procrastination be careful. So I don't like that.
Speaker 4: I think people still think it's time management issues because
Speaker 4: it's a socially acceptable kind of thing.
Speaker 3: But that's and that's great.
Speaker 2: I mean when we were writing back and forth, you
Speaker 2: were like, don't.
Speaker 3: Make life, yes, and I was like, oh no, this.
Speaker 4: Is and then you had self disclosed beause not looking
Speaker 4: for you.
Speaker 3: I didn't care.
Speaker 4: This is I want to have videos and I saw
Speaker 4: kind of comical, funny things and I thought she's going
Speaker 4: to set me up for something, and this is not
Speaker 4: a funny thing.
Speaker 2: No, I'm like, this is literally the thing in my life.
Speaker 2: I have a list of things that I want to
Speaker 2: accomplish in my life, not even a little bit joking. True,
Speaker 2: the goal conquered procrastination is at the top of that list,
Speaker 2: and I want to scratch it off so hard that
Speaker 2: the pen rips the paper. And so should procrastinators have
Speaker 2: a little bit more self compassion, a little bit more like, hey,
Speaker 2: don't be so hard on yourself.
Speaker 4: Another good topic for you to interview. There's a research
Speaker 4: I forgot her book. There's a great book, self help book.
Speaker 4: Forgot the author's name on self compassion.
Speaker 2: Look this up and he's talking about self compassion expert
Speaker 2: and Austin based psychology professor doctor Kristin Neff. I felt
Speaker 2: so stupid because I got her confused with shame expert
Speaker 2: Brene Brown.
Speaker 3: And then I went to.
Speaker 2: Doctor Nef's website self dashcompassion dot org, did a little
Speaker 2: poking around, and I was like, you know what, hey, Ward,
Speaker 2: It's okay. You got those two researchers confused. You are
Speaker 2: a fleshy vessel of meat and matter. You're not an
Speaker 2: information Kiosk, Kit, Barnes and Noble. So thanks doctor Kristin f.
Speaker 4: And she weaves a lot of social personality psychology in it.
Speaker 4: People need to forgive themselves. It's much easier for us
Speaker 4: to forgive other people than it is ourselves. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: that's a tendency people have.
Speaker 3: Last question.
Speaker 2: I always ask last question, Yes, what's your favorite thing
Speaker 2: about your job?
Speaker 4: The exciting part of being an academic a faculty member
Speaker 4: is you can ask questions and get answers, and I
Speaker 4: love making me think. Now. I love working with my students.
Speaker 4: The joy bringing them to a conference and having them present.
Speaker 4: Can't tell you the joy of that. You just said,
Speaker 4: that's the job. It's not the money. Well that's nice,
Speaker 4: but it's not the money. It's not the time, it's
Speaker 4: not the schedule. It's seeing the next generation rise. That's
Speaker 4: just beforic.
Speaker 2: And just think of all the people that are going
Speaker 2: to be studying this and that are interested in this.
Speaker 3: Hopeels of you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I hope that your listeners contact me if they're interested.
Speaker 3: Read your book first. What's the name of that book.
Speaker 3: It's called Still.
Speaker 2: Procrastinating, The No Regrets Guide to Getting It Done by
Speaker 2: doctor Joseph Ferrari, PhD.
Speaker 4: Yes, great book.
Speaker 3: Thank you, yes, of course, thank you so much for
Speaker 3: doing this. You're amazing. You need your own television show.
Speaker 3: Can you get your own television show? Please?
Speaker 4: That's fine with me.
Speaker 2: So ask experts and smart people's stupid questions and know
Speaker 2: that there are actually not stupid questions. That is an
Speaker 2: ironic statement. Also, have compassion for yourself, celebrate your own curiosity, and,
Speaker 2: as doctor Ferrari inscribed in My Now Dog eared copy
Speaker 2: of Still Procrastinating, The No Regrets Guide to Getting It Done,
Speaker 2: Just Do It Now. So that book is available wherever
Speaker 2: you get books, and I'll put a link in the
Speaker 2: show notes as well as links to a lot of
Speaker 2: the things that we discussed in this episode. Up at
Speaker 2: aliward dot com slash ologies slash procrastination because volitional psychology
Speaker 2: is too hard to spell and the last thing you
Speaker 2: need is a harder time getting to those resources. So
Speaker 2: we're at ologies on Instagram and Twitter. I'm at ali
Speaker 2: Ward with one L on both. Come say hi, I
Speaker 2: be friends. Shirts and hats and beanies and toads are
Speaker 2: available at ologiesmerch dot com or up at aliward dot com.
Speaker 2: Thank you Shannon Feltis and the recently engaged Bonnie Dutch.
Speaker 2: Congrats Joe of the podcast. You are that for a
Speaker 2: managing merch Aaron Telberd admin's Theologies podcast Facebook group, and
Speaker 2: huge thanks to Emily White and all the transcribers making
Speaker 2: transcripts available. They are blazing through them. They're so many
Speaker 2: up and they're so helpful, And I'm going to put
Speaker 2: a link in the show notes where you can get
Speaker 2: those for free. They're on my website at Aliward dot com.
Speaker 2: Thank you to Jared Sleeper of the mental health podcast
Speaker 2: My Good Bad Brain for assistant editing. Also, if you
Speaker 2: liked the traumatology episode with doctor Nick Barr, he and
Speaker 2: Jarrett are now doing free week mental health live streams
Speaker 2: on Sundays at ten am Pacific time. I live tweeted
Speaker 2: it last week at Theologies Twitter and it's on mixer
Speaker 2: dot com slash My Good Bad Brain, and I'm going
Speaker 2: to put a link in the show notes for that too,
Speaker 2: because it was really great and I think you might
Speaker 2: like it. Also, thanks, of course, as always to Stephen
Speaker 2: Ray Morris of the podcast see Jurassic Wright and the
Speaker 2: per cast for putting these together each week with me
Speaker 2: and bearing with my fears of just not being enough.
Speaker 2: He is a saint and I'm working on being faster
Speaker 2: for my sake and for his. He's the best. Nick
Speaker 2: Thorburn wrote and performed the theme music. And if you
Speaker 2: listen until the end of the episode, you know I
Speaker 2: tell you secret. And this week is that I just
Speaker 2: realized I was in a sound booth doing some voiceover
Speaker 2: stuff and yes, if you heard me on a grocery
Speaker 2: store ad, that is me. And I realized it between
Speaker 2: takes that if you take a regular pencil like one
Speaker 2: of those Dixon taekwonder rogas you know that has like
Speaker 2: the non roly sides, and you rub it between your palms. Ready,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna do it. This is hell a smr. Okay.
Speaker 5: Ready if you do this, kay, sounds like a cat burry.
Speaker 2: I'm more of a dog person. But if you ever
Speaker 2: miss your cat or you need to be soothed, you
Speaker 2: can try that.
Speaker 5: That weird, it's just a bed.
Speaker 2: Okay, So that's fine. You're welcome by Pacodermic College Mombiology
Speaker 2: or do zoology, Lithology, New Technology, meteorologyology, menthology, seriologyology,