Why we procrastinate and what we can do about it

0:02 A listener production. Welcome to another solo episode of Crappy to Happy, and this week I am super excited that we have another listener question. I love the audience participation. Let's hand over to our listener and hear the question she's got for me today. Hey, Cas, I'm wondering if. You could do a bit of a deep dive on the topic of procrastination, particularly why people procrastinate and the potential solutions to overcoming those reasons, but also the science behind them. Okay, so procrastination, this is something that I am very familiar with, and in fact, to prepare for today's episode, what I actually did was I went back to some previous work that I have done on this very topic.

0:53 So when I was running my membership, which was called Beyond Happy, we would cover a topic each month, and one month we covered procrastination. I talked about it in quite some detail. So that was my starting point to prepare for this episode. That was all the way back in July twenty twenty that I recorded that content. Interestingly, as I went through those nodes, I found that a lot of the things that I said then are still relevant now and I will share them with you today. But there are a couple of really important things that I didn't cover back then that I thought were really worth adding to the conversation today. And those two things particularly are the links between perfectionism and procrastination. And the second one that I didn't talk about was the link between ADYHD and procrastination. So given that I have recently done interviews on this show with Catherine Morgan Schaeffler about unhealthy perfectionism and you maybe have some sense of that now, and also with Candon Phillips about ADHD, thought both of those are really relevant to tie into this conversation about procrastination.

1:59 So let's talk about procrastination, what it is, what does the research say, And again just flagging that I think maybe some of the research that I have looked at in the past is not inclusive of some of what we know now about ADHD and neurodivergent brains, etc. And what can you do about it? Because I think procrastination is a universal problem. I don't think that's an exaggeration. I think everybody procrastinates. The thing is that some people procrastinate about different tasks at different times. So getting to the root cause of what is causing it so that you can be more productive and happier is obviously the name of the game. So I always love to start with a definition. And I think we all know what procrastination is. It's putting things off, right, It is postponing the thing that you know that you need to do.

2:49 So the word procrastinate comes from the Latin verb, but procrastinaire, which means deferred until tomorrow, perfectly sums it up, doesn't it. So vscinator is a person who delays or puts things off, work, chores, any other action. Anything that they know that they need to do is not done in a timely manner. Things are left until the last minute, or just put off and rescheduled and postponed and continuously pushed down the line, often until that thing becomes urgent, and then it's you know, there's a whole lot of stress involved in getting the task done, and we all know that it could have been a whole lot less stressful if we got to the task earlier. And that pretty much describes the process of me writing now four books, three Pepper books, and an audiobook. They have all been done at the last minute.

3:43 And I have often reflected that I will say that I do my best work under pressure, and an actual fact, I'm not really sure that that is true. I think that is what I tell myself because I have this habit of putting things off. There are negative consequences obviously to procrastination, and I think the reason that we are interested in the topic and we reason we want to understand why we do it and find solutions for it is because it comes with a whole lot of like I just said, stress and overwhelm and anxiety if we've left something to the last minute and then and it is the critical self talk that goes with that when we know we could have got it done sooner, and we know that we have created this problem ourselves by our delaying something and not just getting on with it earlier.

4:35 So it comes with a lot of frustration, self criticism, self judgment, under performance. It will lead to you doing not necessarily your best work, and potentially there's a little bit of psychology and that to a little bit of self handicapping that goes with that, which I'll get to in a minute. And then there can be some other really negative consequences. For example, if the thing that you're putting off is health appointments. If the thing that you're putting off off is important health checks or behavioral changes that you know you need to make for your own good, then there can potentially be a lot worse consequences. It can have really dire effects if you leave something unchecked for too long and then you end up with a problem, potentially a health problem, either through disease or through lifestyle that could have been prevented. At the low end of the scale, it's just a frustration, like I really should have just got that thing done. But it's important to note I think that it can have much more serious consequences to that if you are continuously delaying or deferring things that you know need to get done. The other thing that I want to say, and I said this in my membership, I was reminded that sometimes we are busy.

5:48 We are juggling a lot of projects, a lot of responsibilities. If you are listening to this, and if you are a working mother with a family, perhaps you've got an aging parent's kids in school, maintaining your own career, friendships, partner, running a household, all of the things that you need to do, then sometimes what we're doing is we're just prioritizing. Sometimes we get down on ourselves because we've put something off, when what we're really doing is just dealing with the most urgent thing first and then leaving the other things to wait until later. And it's not necessarily I would argue procrastination in the true sense of the word, if what you're really doing is just trying to keep all the bulls in the air, and that means that some things get forgotten or put off or deferred or delayed until later. Procrastination is the choice, the voluntary choice to delay something even when you know that there are negative consequences to delaying that thing. And again, I feel like I need to put a disclaimer on this because I think that was the description that I gave it last time I talked about this, and I think that now I would say it's at some level it's not necessarily voluntary, because I think sometimes the way our nervous system is wired and the way our brains are wired, particularly if there is something like undiagnosed ADHD or diagnosed ADHD, or past trauma or things that are affecting you at the nervous system level and keeping you kind of stuck in

7:18 a bit of a freeze response. Then sometimes that's not always voluntary, but the official definition that it is the voluntary delay of an important event or task that you've committed to doing, knowing that their a negative consequence is attached to not getting that thing done. I think we have to rethink that. I'm just going to put that out there right now. I think that it is not always necessarily a voluntary choice, and I think that's the frustration that most people feel, isn't it. I think that it's like, I know I need to do this thing, somehow I cannot get myself to do it. Like I know that it has to be done, I know I've got this deadline, and that is the frustration, because it's not necessar earlier choice. It feels like we just can't get started on this thing. Let's just start with how we conceptualize the problem of procrastination. So typically, when we recognize procrastination in ourselves, it's something that we habitually do and it is very habitual. It's often if you are a person who leaves everything to the last minute, that is often very habitual kind of behavior. We think about this as a time management problem or an organizational problem or a lack of focus. It's an inability to manage ourselves or manage our time or just get on with things.

8:40 And often what the research is showing is that actually this is not so much a time management or organizational problem. It is actually an emotional management problem. It is how we manage our emotions. So there will be an emotion if you've got a task that you need to do, a project that you need to get done a deadline. When you think about that thing, there will be some emotion attached to it. There will be thoughts and feelings about that. Maybe it feels overwhelming, maybe it feels boring. Maybe there is just something about that that causes you to feel a little stuck or raises a feeling of discomfort that you were trying to avoid. So when you avoid doing the task, what you're really doing is avoiding all of that uncomfortable, unpleasant emotion that you are attaching to the task. It is not so much about the time or the organization or the focus. It is about I just don't really have it in me to look at that right now because it makes me feel uncomfortable.

9:45 So I think that's a really key thing when we're talking about overcoming the problem of procrastination. We have to look at what is actually going on at an emotional level. What is this bringing up for us, what's causing us to feel overwhelmed, what is causing it to f feel uncomfortable, Because sometimes that is just how we're thinking about the task. Sometimes I know for myself that a task can feel so big that I don't know where to start, and therefore I just dither and I'm all over the place because I don't seem to have the capacity to break this down into manageable, bite sized pieces. So if something feels big and overwhelming, that will cause me to procrastinate some of the other things that can be happening. If you have got a little perfectionist tendency, then you can often have that all or nothing type of thinking. So if you have an unconscious belief, Now this is something that comes up in my Beyond Confident program. We talk about this a lot, the perfectionism procrastination loop. If you have an unhealthy perfectionism, an un helpful belief that the only possible performance standard is everything has got to be perfect every time, and that's the standard that you're holding yourself to, then that can feel really overwhelming. And so oftentimes the flip side of perfectionism is procrastination because it's

11:17 underpinned by this exacting standards, this un healthy standard that you're holding yourself to. You want to go a little deeper into that, then maybe your perfectionism and I remember talking about unhealthy perfectionism here. To be clear, not all perfectionism is bad. But if it's that maladaptive style of perfectionism that says my self worth, my sense of my own value is contingent on me doing an exceptional job every time and other people perceiving me as being very competent and doing excellent work all of the time, then that can be enough to make you feel stuck and to procrastinate on just getting started because it feels big, feels overwhelming. Of course, that feels impossible, and it may not always be conscious. That may not always be prevalent or present in your conscious thinking, but unconsciously that can be what's going on under the surface when we talk about procrastination. So remember that so much of our behavior, so much of the things that we do every day, is driven from this unconscious thoughts and feelings. It's not even necessarily because our brain, our prefrontal cortex, tells us there's a deadline. I've got to get this thing done.

12:34 Like of course, that's the goal, that's the plan. You wake up in the morning, I'm going to do that thing. Today's the day. I'm going to get a start on that project. End of the day, what did you do? Three loads of washing, you know, made an appointment for the dog at the vet, cleaned out the pantry. Maybe I'm just describing myself here, but I think we've all had that experience. And then you get to the end of the day and you haven't made any progress, and it is not full lack of prefrontal cortex and logical thinking telling you what you need to do. Your behavior is driven by this unconscious rules, beliefs, emotions, nervous system response that is keeping you stuck. This is why when we look at procrastination, it is different for different people.

13:18 Different tasks will cause some people. Some people will jump straight in, and some people will dither and delay and avoid and go all around the edges and do everything other, you know, everything else except for that thing. So it's a very personal thing, and it's important to have a look at what is actually going on underneath the behavior. So, for example, it might be we've talked about the perfectionism. Maybe there's a fear of failure, a fear of judgment. Sometimes there's a fear of success. Sometimes there is a fear that if I actually do this thing and do it really well, then there might be some negative consequences attached to that. Again, this is often unconscious. This is all to do with unconscious core beliefs about possible negative consequences of doing the thing that you say you want to do. If I get the book out, if I publish the book and it's out in the world, and it's in bookshops all around the country or all around the world, then what if somebody reads it and posts a negative review. What if somebody rebukes everything that I said, They've got different research than what I think. That can be very, very prevalent, particularly if you are in a profession where a lot of your identity and a lot of your self worth is attached to being an authority on a subject, or maybe you're rutting your memoir, your personal story, and you're putting it out there for other people to judge and criticize. Negative consequences of success are not often talked about, but they're there and we need

14:48 to uncover them because that can often be something that keeps you from doing the thing that you say you want to do. So I said at the beginning also that I wanted to talk about the ADHD brain. So I recently interviewed Candon Phillips. She's an ADHD coach and a licensed therapist in the USA, and she introduced a concept to me that I had not heard before, I was unfamiliar with, and that is the concept of the interest based nervous system. So people with ADHD, and I think more and more people are being diagnosed or are starting to realize that potentially this could be what's going on for them. I'm not saying it's everybody, but it's certainly much more well recognized now among adults than it ever has been before. Than those people often find that what is required for them to take action, to start to get into gear and to get that focus that they need to get things done, are certain conditions, and those conditions are novelty. So something that's new and interesting, something that they really enjoy, something that they find intriguing.

16:02 Sometimes competition is something that gets them hyper focused, and the other one is urgency. So hence the leave everything to the last minute. I work best under pressure. An ADHD brain will often they require particular conditions and circumstances to get them focused, and maybe you can relate to that. The other thing I find really interesting about this the ADHD brain is that attention deficit is actually a bit of a misnomer. It's not that they have a deficit of attention. It's that they have scattered attention. They actually attend to too many things at once. It's not that they can't sustain attention, it's that they're attempting to sustain attention on too many things, pulled in too many different directions, with an inability to rate those things in order of importance.

16:54 So how interesting is that? So perhaps if you're the person who starts doing the assignment or starts working on the project, but then you remember that you had to make an appointment for the vet for the dog, and then you're remembered that the washing needs to be done, and then you remember that something else needs And this is what happens. I do this thing, I start that I get distracted, I walk into the other room, to drop something into there and I realize that that other thing needs to be done, and so it looks so disorganized and so scattered, which it is, But it's because there's this inability to just stay focused on the one task until that task is completed, or until you make the decision that you are going to complete that task and move on to something else. Your attention is pulled in a thousand different directions with no sort of ranking system to prioritize importance. People with neurotypical brains are able to do things even if they are not interested in them, just because they know they have to do them. They can do things for a reward, and they can do things based on important. Neuro divergent brains ADHD brains don't necessarily have that ability. So this just doing something that's boring, it has to either be interesting, engaging, or urgent. So I think that there's probably many people who struggle with procrastination who perhaps haven't considered that aspect of it. So that's interesting. So just going back to something that I mentioned earlier about that leaving things to the last minute

18:26 and that potentially being a form of self handicapping, and I'm giving you lots of different scenarios here. But that's the thing about procrastination, right There can be any number of things going on, So I want to run through like all of these scenarios or many of these scenarios, because it will be different things at different at different times, in different circumstances. The idea of handicapping self sabotage, if you will, The definition is that it is giving yourself a built in excuse to fail. And you might wonder why anybody would do that, why anybody would give them a built in excuse to fail, And the reason for that is because if I do my best at something, if I put in one hundred percent effort with something and I fail, then that can be very damaging to my sense of self worth, to my sense of competence self competence. So if I leave things to the last minute, and if I then have to scramble to get something over the line and I don't do well, then I can always tell myself that the reason I didn't do very well is because I left it to the last minute, because I didn't give myself enough time to do it, And so my self esteem remains intact. In that way, it feels a bit crappy, because you also always have the idea that if you'd really given yourself the opportunity it really started earlier, and given yourself the time that was necessary to do that thing properly, to do a

19:57 really good job, that you could have done so much better. So there's always a little disappointment in that scenario. But at the end of the day, sometimes that behavior is designed to protect your self esteem so that you don't have to live with the fear that I could actually do put in my best effort and fail, because I'm not sure that I would handle that. So you see how there's all these underlying things that could be going on. Something else that has been discussed in the research is the idea that we all have a future self. Now. Sometimes that future self is the perfect version of you, who we always imagine exists, who is so much more organized than our current self. This future, ideal version of ourself is often going to turn up next Monday to start the diet or start being more organized. All of the things that we don't currently do in our lives, this ideal future version of ourselves is going to do.

21:00 So what we do is when we set goals and When we make plans, we often seriously overestimate what this future version of ourself is going to be able to do. We often load up our future self with a whole lot of really unrealistic expectations and timeframes. I'm sure you have had this experience, right, I'm sure you have made a plan, You've sat down in it. I thought, right, then, I'm going to get so organized and these are all the things that I'm going to do, And I'm going to meal prep and I'm going to shop, and I'm going to be organized at work, and I'm going to keep on top of all of my reports so that I don't get behind all of the things. And we lay this all out and it is completely unrealistic because that future version of yourself does not exist, and so we tend to have a quite disconnected relationship between our current self and with our future self. And how that can also play out is that we kind of ignore the pressure that our future self is going to feel.

22:05 We feel like this future self is going to magically have all of the motivation and the energy and the organization and the focus and the interest which we currently do not possess. We don't really care about future self. We're so worried about protecting current self and keeping current self from having to deal with the discomfort or the stress, or the boringness or the overwhelm or whatever other thing is going on, that we just offload the task to our future self without too much concern for how he or she is going to handle this. So one strategy is actually to really make an effort to connect with that future self, like to bring the future self and your today's self kind of merge them together so you don't have this disconnect anymore. That you really think ahead to that future self and even think about how much that future self is going to thank you for doing the thing today. If you just did that one small thing today, how much easier would it be when you get to next Friday, or the end of next month, or whenever this thing needs to be done. What's it going to feel like in the future when you don't have that last minute stress and frustration and having to pull an all night or burn yourself out getting this thing done because you delayed for so long, really almost future pacing yourself into that future position, looking at how

23:36 you want to feel, what you want that to be like, and then coming back to now and just having a think about what could you do today that would take the load off that future self a little bit. It can be a really effective strategy, can really help you to break things down and just take small steps thinking about how much you're going to appreciate that when you get to that point in the future. So that is one strategy. Another strategy that can be really effective is you've probably all heard of Mel Robbins. She's you know, talk show host, life coach, got quite a big profile, written a few books, did a Ted talk and she has this five second drule that she came up with, and she was probably quite depressed, to be honest, when she came up with this. So she was really avoiding a lot of things in her life. She says that she was drinking too much, she struggled to get out of bed, like her life was kind of really she was not in a good place at all. And so she was watching TV one night and she watched a rocket launching and she watched this five four three to one blast off thing happened and something clicked in her brain where she thought, that's what I need to do, just count down and go no time to think about it, and so she basically the next day decided to implement that.

24:51 And so instead of just lying in bed thinking of all the reasons why she should stay in better she didn't want to get up, or how bad that there was going to be, or what would be the point five four three two one go. It changed her life, and she's obviously made quite a successful career out of that little strategy because now people all around the world use her five four three two one. So what she realizes now, which she didn't at the time, she just found an defective way for her to shortcut the negative self talk and all of the talking herself out of doing the thing that she needed to do. That's it just got her moving into action without overthinking anything. And what she realizes now is that there's lots of neuroscience as to why that actually works. So the counting backwards, it engages a different part of your brain. Obviously, it distracts you from the thoughts of not wanting to do it, coming up with the pros and cons and I could do it later, and you know all of that talk that goes on in our brain when we're trying to avoid something. So it bypasses all of that. It basically overrides that amygdala, that fierce sounded of your brain, that stress part of your brain, which is often the limbic involuntary part of your brain, which is connected to your nervous system, which often just keeps you frozen and stuck.

26:06 You just shortcut that whole circuit and just get going. And then ideally, once you get going and you get some momentum and you get some movement, then oftentimes that can lead to progress, which then builds motivation, which builds interest, which gives you a bit of a dopamine hit that you're getting something done, and then you can continue building on that energy and that momentum. This is often really useful in terms of changing habits, you know. So when we want to change something in our lifestyle, and our brain is very fixed on and very focused on keeping us where we are. Our brain likes consistency, familiarity, It likes stuff to just stay. How it is any sort of change that you try to introduce to your brain. Again, it's not at the conscious level. It's not at the prefrontal cortex where you do all of your conscious thinking.

26:57 It's that primitive part of your brain. It's worth all of the time to say no, no, no, we're not going to do that. We're just going to stay doing what we're doing right now because that feels safe and that feels comfortable. Anything different feels threatening. But tiny, tiny, little microactions can have the effect of kind of slipping underneath the radar of that fear part of your brain. So the smallest thing that you can think of that would just take you one little step closer to achieving that goal or getting a start on that project can be a really powerful way to just get a little bit of momentum going. Like I said, it gives you that little bit of a dopamine hit. It can help then to create some progress and some momentum. The one last point that I want to make on this is that we've talked a lot about procrastinating at the beginning of a project, making a start on something. Oftentimes, what can happen is that we get into the procrastination in the middle of the project, and that can be really confusing and frustrating. When we start off doing something, we've got a whole lot of momentum and energy and enthusiasm.

28:02 We're kicking goals, getting it done, and then when we're in the middle of the project, suddenly we lose all interest and motivation and then suddenly we're just not getting it over the line. So a couple of things can be happening there, and really briefly because I've talked too long about this, In fact, we could probably do a whole other episode on this. It's really normal during the change process to go through periods of ambivalence in the process of working towards a goal. So even if you start out with interest and enthusiasm and are you developing some momentum, then often you can get to this sort of murky middle bit where enthusiasm of the beginning has passed, but you not really quite at the celebration of the ending, and you're in this zone in the middle where it just feels like, maybe what was the point of this?

28:56 It all feels too hard. Should I have started this thing in the first place? And so it can be really helpful just to remember that that is often really normal, and in that situation, it can help to go back and remember why you did start this project in the first place, use all the same strategies for dealing with that procrastination connecting with your future self, thinking about how that's going to feel, taking those microactions, doing a little bit of work about uncovering what's potentially going on underneath that could be keeping you from making progress. Are there some fears there, some anxieties there, Calming down your nervous system a little bit, regulating your nervous system, just with mindfulness and breathing and all of those things, Doing some yoga, going for walks, getting outside, helping to regulate your nervous system so that if there is something activated there that is instigating that freeze response that we talked about, that you can work through that. But also, I think it really needs to be said that it's okay if you get halfway to a goal and you decide that that goal is not for you anymore. So I reckon, I'm going to do another whole episode on quitting. I think that is such an important topic. So many people stay committed and focused and persevering towards a goal even though that goal is no longer relevant, no longer meaningful, and they are just wasting their energy continuing to pursue something that they no longer have any interest in. And they would be so much better to put their attention into

30:28 something else that might be more worthwhile. It's not really the thing that gets applauded is quitting. We really applaud the action and the momentum and the achievement and the progress and the persistence and determination and commitment like we value all of those things. And sometimes, honestly, it's okay to pull the pin on a project if you've decided that it is not worth the effort or the investment of your time, energy, resources, emotions any longer. So if you're procrastinating on something, I'm not saying everybody needs to go out and quit everything. Everybody needs to just stop taking action and stop pursuing goals. But if you're finding that you are really struggling to persist with something, and you're wondering, why am I procrastinating? Why can't I just get going with this? Then maybe it is worth And I asked this of my coaching clients. Are we still on board with this? Do we need to reconsider whether this is still the goal? Because it is totally fine for it not to be anymore, And we need to give ourselves permission to let go of the projects or the tasks, whatever it is or the goals that are no longer relevant or meaningful in our lives. And I guess last but not least, and anybody who's listened to this show for a while will know. Of course, the last thing I'm going to mention is self compassion, because it's always comes up in every topic that I talk about.

31:56 So the more that you feel guilty for your procrastination, the more that you feel guilty for your lack of progress, then the more likely you are to continue not making progress. If there is anything that is negatively associated with goal progress and goal achievement, it is self criticism and shame and self judgment and guilt. We started this episode saying that procrastination is pretty much a universal thing. Everybody doesn't There can be different reasons why, but cutting yourself some slack, giving yourself the space to observe, to question, to get curious about what's underneath this, what's really going on, using the things that I've talked about today to help you to maybe gain some insight and some self awareness, and then coming at that with some value sort of strategies and ideas and tips and tools instead of just getting down on yourself with the self judgment. The self judgment will just keep you more stuck. Self kindness is key, curiosity over judgment and deeperfectionism. Procrastination loop is something that resonates with you. For this concept of the ADHD brain and procrastination. These are all things that I cover in my online coaching and training program, Beyond Confident. The doors are going to be opening again soon, so I would love you to get your name on the wait list to hear when that is opening for enrollment. You can also don't forget download and listen to my brand new Audible original. It is called The Imposter Solution. It is available right now on Audible Free for subscribers. You do

33:29 not need to use a credit to download that, and if you are not currently an Audible subscriber, then just sign up for a thirty day free trial and you can listen for free. If you enjoy this episode, As always, please share with your friends, try to help us reach more listeners. Leave us a rating and review. It really does help and I can't wait to catch you next week on another episode of Crappy or Happy Listener