Producer: Okay, welcome back to Full PreFrontal where we are exposing the mysteries of executive function. As always, I’m here with our host, Sucheta Kamath.

Good morning, Sucheta. Boy, today’s conversation, our guest is Dr. Tim Pychyl. We’re going to center it around procrastination. I just shuddered when I heard that because I know how evil and how bad, and how distracting and damaging procrastination is. I just continue to do it again and again, and again. Lead us off with a where were going to go today with this conversation.

Sucheta Kamath: Yes, it’s great to be with you, Todd, and you know what went into recording this particular session. I would like to claim that I never procrastinate, but that will be a big lie. So, every day, we are procrastinating something or the other, something we want to do but we just can’t seem to get in the groove for, lollygagging, time wasting endlessly, idling, or doing something completely different just to get out of what needs to be done. Have you found yourself in front of the refrigerator as you are about to launch a big project or get started with something big and you suddenly start cleaning the refrigerator?

Producer: It’s amazing, the hassle of chores that get done when I have to really focus on a hard project.

Sucheta: Exactly, so I often find myself sucked into the whirlpool of get to it in a minute kind of problem. For example, this happened yesterday. I woke up in the morning and I was literally opening my eyes, grabbed my phone, and I had a push notification from Anthropologie which is one of my favorite stores, and guess what it said? It says, tell them you’ll be late. A simple push notification captured my temptation to actually want to tell somebody I will be late, and I kind of skimmed through what this little push notification was all about. So, a simple reason for letting your concentration dwindle can be not wanting to do what needs to be done. So, take an example of my friend Emma. Her recent Facebook post said that, why is time management so hard? And who created five-day, 40-hour week as a standard way? This girl has too many hobbies to stand around at work all day and a huge yard, three dogs, one kid 10. I need to be mowing, harvesting, and don’t even want to talk about the inside of the house. Plus, I want to go swimming, be in shape. Sigh. Fun versus responsibilities versus energy levels. So, I mean, I kind of empathize with Emma because if she has not only full-time job and she has a yard and dogs, and cats, and inside outside of the house to take care of, when you look at the scope and breadth of all the work that needs to be done, I can see her lollygagging, postponing everything that she needs to be doing.

So, funny thing is, not only everybody struggles, Todd, with procrastination but people have their own opinion about it. People harbor views of like it’s a character flaw, like procrastination is a sign of laziness or often, people lump it into time management or they say it’s just bad time management problem, but it’s a more deeper than that. A recent study that I read, it was actually conducted by Case Western Reserve University. I read it recently but it is an old study done in 1997. They found that college-age students who were procrastinators ended up with higher stress level with more illnesses and lower grades by the end of semester. So, it’s not just a casual problem of not getting into the group, so that’s why we have this amazing guest today and he is not only an incredible researcher but a podcaster like me and has a huge following, and you mentioned him earlier. This is Dr. Tim Pychyl.

He is the director of the Center for Initiatives in Education and Associate Professor of Psychology at Carlton University in Ottawa. Tim has developed an international reputation for his research on procrastination. In addition to journal articles summarizing his research with the students, Tim has co-edited two books, the most recent of which is Procrastination: Health and Well-being, and my personal favorite is this other book which is called Solving the Procrastination Puzzle: A Concise Guide to Strategies for Change and this came out in 2013. It is a tiny 106-page personal guide that everybody needs to have it on their nightstands, so in case you kind of lose sight of procrastination being a major roadblock in self-progress, you can refer to it and kind of find a personal strength to overcome it. You can learn more about Dr. Pychyl’s research and access the Psychology Today blog on his iProcrastinate podcast which is at procrastination.ca, and Tim’s research is complemented by his passion for teaching for which he has won numerous awards including the 3M National Teaching Fellowship, Ontario Federation of University Association’s teaching award, and the university medal for distinguished teaching. Tim has been an invited speaker across the country, working with professors in universities and colleges to enhance teaching and learning, and I am an avid follower of Tim’s work and I highly recommend his podcast that he has been doing, I think, since 2009 or 2006, in fact, and it is such a joy and pleasure to have him talk. You and I are going to learn a lot from him.

Producer: Yeah, I’m very much looking forward to it. It’s a conversation that I think every single person listening to this podcast will benefit from. So, excuse the joke here, let’s not procrastinate any further, let’s get to it. Here is Sucheta’s conversation with Dr. Tim Pychyl.

Sucheta: Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Pychyl. It’s such a pleasure to have you here today.

Dr. Tim Pychyl: Thanks, Sucheta, it’s great to join you today.

Sucheta: Let me start with what I am most interested in which is executive function and your research began with gold management or understanding how people pursue goals, formulate goals, rather formulate goals, pursue goals, and avoid them. So, executive function is often described as the goal directed self-regulation. What is your understanding of the process of goal setting and planning, and how do you think these two are connected?

Dr. Pychyl: There is so much work in psychology and philosophy about planning and goal setting, and so it’s quite a complex process because goals and plans have motivational force, and you can even think human beings are just a goal directed species; we have all sorts of goals. We have multiple goals at once, so we can conceptualize using our imagination the future, things that we want to have, desires, and goals, and that to the extent that we initiate a plan around those than we are more likely to act on them. So, this process of setting goals, planning, action, and completion is the kind of cycle we see in the psychology of action, and it can break down. I mean, as you said, I was fascinated when I was doing my own graduate work with personal projects, personal goals, how we were achieving the things we were in our lives and how it made us feel. It became painfully obvious to me, it was the things that we said we were going to do and never did, the goals we set that never acted on the predicted a downturn on our well-being. So, many models in goals and planning, but that’s the gist of it.

Sucheta: Yes, and in my practice, I have seen nothing but people who struggle in all aspects of goal management, and this topic is so interesting to me because when people procrastinate, they come to believe that when they seek help, somebody’s going to tell them how to get over it but somehow, they will get over it because they are seeking help, and they don’t recognize the work that needs to go into it.

So, let me start with having you define procrastination for us. Do people plan first then procrastinate, or they have an idea, a vague idea, and they want to accomplish it but they don’t have a specific plan and is that what procrastination looks like?

Dr. Pychyl: Oh, I’m glad you jumped away from where we are at because it’s tempting to jump right into how to fix the situation, and because girls of plans will come back in that conversation, but what procrastination is, it’s a form of delay, and that’s really important because that will distinguish purposeful belay that we all engage in it every day. In fact, we delayed to, for example, having this interview. The moment you contacted me, we didn’t say, okay, let’s do it right now. We set a date, it’s that both our schedules, and so we delayed until that point in time, and that is just point of rational action, but procrastination is a form of delay. It is voluntary. In other words, I’m choosing delay, but I’m aware that this delay will probably cost me. In other words, I set an intention to act, like I decided last week that I should work on a certain report today, and today comes along, and I voluntarily delayed that even though I think this isn’t in my best interest. I’m probably going to pay for that. Now, I’m emphasizing probably because the world is not a perfect place, and of course, it may not harm you, but generally, all things considered, I think I’m going to be worse off for that delay. So, procrastination is a negative form of delay.

Sucheta: So, I see you are emphasizing two important key points. One is purposeful and second is voluntary. So, there are some circumstantial delays, that unexpectedly, the flight got the way did you were planning to go for a wedding, you just can’t go, so it’s not just delay, the task is canceled, so to speak. So, something that you mentioned here about the purposeful delays, so there is somewhat level of awareness, right? And, that you are aware that you are procrastinating it.

Dr. Pychyl: Not always, and actually, I want to contrast purposeful delay from procrastination. So, purposeful delays I decided a putting something often it is in my best interest to put it off because I need more information or other things are going on, and there’s inevitable delay, like you talked about with the plane being late, right? It’s inevitable that I’m going to be late because the plane was late, or I’m a busy dad – I have two fairly young children and if the school has called today and said one of your children is sick, I would’ve delayed our interview today for the podcast, but it would’ve been an inevitable delay. It wouldn’t have been that you’d say, well, Tim is such a procrastinator. So, there is a voluntary nature to procrastination but not always unawareness, and the reason I want to emphasize that is that procrastination itself can become a habit. So, at the beginning, I might be aware. Later on, it’s just that every time that something that I don’t feel like doing comes up, my goal to coping strategy is avoidance or procrastination. So, awareness is not always key and in fact, when we talk about how we might address procrastination or how to come back to that too, because one of the first things we have to become aware of is the fact that that’s what we’re doing, we are coping through avoidance.

Sucheta: I see, so do you mind explaining to our listeners from a psychological point of view, how is habit defined and how does procrastination become, like what is the threshold when it becomes a casual procrastination to a habit of procrastinating?

Dr. Pychyl: Well, habit is repetition and habit is something that isn’t unconscious. So, once something is established as a habit, it is something that we don’t have to be aware of as we said a moment ago that really what’s happened to you is that you have repeated this behavior and it’s been rewarded in some way so that it becomes, as we would say, the pre-potent response or in other words, habitual, when the situation arises, this is the response.

Now, with procrastination, what that typically is, is that I face a task that I find aversive in some ways. So, I find it boring or frustrating, or causes me anxiety and fear, or resentfulness – all these negative emotions. You pick your favorite one or and others, and my response to that, it can be habitual in a sense that as soon as I experience those emotions, I try to escape from using avoidance. So, it’s when it becomes automatic for us, a pre-potent response, though thinking required that we would say procrastination has become a habit. It does not take very long, really, because we get rewarded for procrastination. If I’m facing a task I don’t want to do and I put it off, I do get an immediate reward. [0:12:44] later on, going to pay a big price, but right now, present self benefits and future self, well, who cares about feature self?

Sucheta: so, certainly, kind of a tantrum, psychological tantrum to emotionally unbearable or unbearable emotional responses to something that is either going to be difficult or challenging, and is it always been a psychological response is procrastination, psychological phenomenon?

Dr. Pychyl: I would argue that it is, yes, and I would take it a step further and say that it’s not really a time management issue. That’s one of the big things that everyone would say, “Oh, you study time management.” No. No, I don’t. Actually study emotion management because what we’re trying to do is manage our emotions and. There with that psychological response to something that I find upsetting or aversive, you would say, and that if I can escape those emotions, I will because I want to feel good now and that’s got that tantrum quality – I like that word you used – that yeah, I’m acting like a little kid, and we have a little kid alive and well in us and in fact, if we wanted to stretch it a bit, we would say, yup, that is our limbic system. Children are primarily limbic system and not so much prefrontal cortex, but we are all – we all have a limbic system, and so I have that strong emotional response and I don’t want those negative emotions, so I cope by avoiding, and it’s very quick to reinforce.

Sucheta: Oh, thank you for clarifying. I think this is a quite common misnomer, at least in the way I see people are handling procrastination, particularly dealing with young developing minds. So, this is interesting to me that when we find something that we need to do, ought to do, but the way we need to do it or what goes into getting it done is quite anxiety provoking or maybe it’s not clear, or it’s difficult, or its boring, and then we procrastinate, and as we are doing that, do we forget about the goal that we are avoiding to achieve or is that still in the back of our mind? What is actual process in the brain if we understand it the way you see it now?

Dr. Pychyl: There is a lot of cognitive dissonance there. In other words, that we had an intention but were now not acting on, and we don’t like this cognitive dissonance, and cognitive dissonance is studied a great deal in terms of having an attitude or a belief that is opposite to the behavior, so my attitude in my believe is I should be working now and my behavior is, I’m not, and so we do our best to cope with that by trying to forget. In fact, you want to push it into the background or to rationalize that in fact, I were delay is a good thing, so we try to convince ourselves, things like, I’ll feel more like it tomorrow where we are better under pressure. These are rationalizations to try to deal with the fact that what is provoked when we have cognitive dissonance is even another level of negative emotions, so the task created negative emotions, we resented it or it would be kind of boring or frustration, or causing anxiety, but then when we avoided it, those emotions go away but individual differences come to play here. We can have other emotions like guilt and anxiety about not doing our work, and I say individual differences come into play because some of us are less emotionally stable, more worrisome, and we are more likely to grab by that, and others that are more easy-going, once they’ve put it off, it’s out of sight and out of mind, at least for a little while and they actually do feel good. So, it does vary from person to person, but again, the notion there is that what’s happening psychologically is cognitive dissonance, it’s a discrepancy between what I said I was going to do – work on my assignment when I’m doing, playing some game right now, and I do try my best to forget things. In fact, in some of our early research, we found that people who score high on self reports of procrastination actually drink more alcohol as well. We would argue that some of that some of that is an activity that you are trying to push down the thoughts about the task at hand that distract themselves.

Sucheta: I see, so people who are less emotionally stable are more aware of their procrastination and the negative feeling or disappointment in themselves, and then they would like to numb it down with something like alcohol or drugs, and I see that a lot of my practice, particularly adolescents and adults with ADHD, that a lot of coexisting behaviors that result from having some emotional challenge in dealing with the unanticipated, dealing with having to go into the depth of a task, or having to analyze parts in the hole, and a lot of cognitive processes that go into organizing, sequencing, categorizing, and then the response is always of emotional frustration and disappointment, anxiety, anger, and is coped poorly with a lot of adaptive behaviors that are not acceptable. So, do we see that, is there good understanding of the literature that how children’s behavior with respect to procrastination and how it is similar or different from adults?

Dr. Pychyl: Yes and no. There is not enough research on procrastination with younger children, so we have to extrapolate from other existing research, and really our focus today on executive function and even your mention of ADHD brings that up. Certainly, children have less resources in terms of development. In terms of sequencing behaviors or inhibiting impulses, that’s why I said earlier that we’ve got primarily this limbic system when we are younger and we don’t have the same resources in terms of executive function, and if it’s compromised at all in terms of diagnoses of ADHD or other shortcoming executive function, we have other problems there. So, certainly, the maturation of executive function is going to be very important resource to anyone to stop or inhibit procrastination, but so are volitional skills, just to learn volitional skills so that we developmental issues and naturally, we have learning issues as well, and so children need to both learned these things quite concretely, and the more that you faced challenges in executive function, the more you have to learn the strategies, and you also have the fact that yup, there is strictly development going on as well.

Sucheta: Wonderful, and we will be talking about strategies in our next segment so people should really tune in. This has been a question that has been bugging me and see what your thoughts are, but human evolution allowed us to pursue goals, delayed goals, our prefrontal system came on which allowed us to see ourselves in the future and that ability to inhibit current gratification in order to benefit in the future in the hallmark of human development, and procrastination is such a contradiction to that. So, how does this fit in that framework?

Dr. Pychyl: That’s a tough one because we’re all going to have to speculate what we think about the evolutionary adaptive this or not – it could be a side effect, you could call it a residual aspect of some other adaptive process, but I would argue that with procrastination, what we are seeing is that battle between two systems, and I referred to earlier, the prefrontal cortex or executive function, we need to talk about that in an evolutionary sense, it’s the newest part of the brain, and then we have this old, people call the reptilian brain, the limbic system, and they are working at odds at times. So, I’d like to feel good now is the primary focus of let’s say the limbic system that how we are feeling and we lay on top of that the slower and more laborious processes known as executive function, and the two are at odds at times, so as much as it is adaptive for us to be able to have long-term goals and plan, it’s also related to social process as well. At the same time, does not negate the fact that I have feelings right now and I also have a [0:20:15] priority that has left of the human body, then we prefer to feel good now. We’re not always interested in long-term gain. So, I think that my best guess at this point in terms of my understanding as a researcher is that really, the procrastination is the outcome of the conflict between these two systems.

Sucheta: I think well said. I’m laughing because I had a conversation with Carol Taveris who is a researcher who studies cognitive dissonance, and if that hot potato, and we would love to get rid of these conflicting thoughts that are harboring in our heart or in our brains, and an action tends to favor always the current feelings, always the current self trumps. It’s so dominant, isn’t it?

Dr. Pychyl: Yes, in fact, there’s lots of research that show that, I think Hal Hershfield out of UCLA has demonstrated a number of different studies that we think about future self like a stranger, and we do that both with physiological level in terms of even how we conceive of our own self, we act differently if we can bring that self closer. So, yeah, that’s a real problem in terms of human functioning. We have these biases that some behavioral economists say were predictably irrational, and when we see these unpredictable irrationalities, we are seeing what we would want to call design flaws and what it means to be human, but really, what we are saying is this is part of what it means to be human. We have these conflicting messages from our own brains.

Sucheta: Yes, so that brings me to another very important question regarding procrastination and the social context. What is the social psychology behind procrastination? I think when we procrastinate something, we are not affecting our future self. We are also affecting our surroundings, goals that we may share with others, and in fact, we may be one part of the larger picture and withholding that piece or delaying that piece is causing a lot of pressure on the system of collaboration. So, do you have any insights about that?

Dr. Pychyl: Oh, in fact, on our most recent book, it was an edited collection of chapters. The book is called Procrastination: Health and Well-being, and the first editor is a colleague of mine from Sheffield University in UK, Fuschia Sirois, and she had done some research with [0:22:29], Welsch University, and they took the first real social psychological perspective to procrastination. It interested me a lot because they talked about norm-based approach to procrastination, and basically, the premise is this, that well functioning group, self-regulation failure which procrastination is will typically transgress social norms because if self-regulation failure were normative and that is that the majority of individuals did this behavior, and over time, the vitality of the group would be diminished, so what’s happening here is, when you see from this perspective, procrastination is not just might my problem, and all my utter. Procrastination signals to the group that you really can’t be trusted, like we can’t put faith in you and that you will reciprocate, for example, or you will be there for us during tough times, and so this transgression of social norms is another very interesting way to think about procrastination, and sure enough, if you try to look for indicators of this, well, what would be an indicator that you have transgressed a social norm? Well, on emotion like shame because you realize that you are doing something that is a transgression to others and guilt. So, shame and guilt are highly correlated with procrastination and we are seeing this from this perspective is evidence, the fact that procrastination is a violation of a social norm, and some ways, it might relate to the evolutionary question you asked me, so where does this come from? Well, we see the major personality traits, indicators of traits that we value in others, and one of them that we don’t value very much is not being dependable and having self-regulation problems, so that’s really the broad brush of understanding. So, how can we understand procrastination on the social norm perspective? I think that a lot more research to be done in this area.

Sucheta: Yeah, this has got me thinking about, in my family, I have two boys and that they are young adults. They are in college, and I texted them about information about your blogs and your book, and all the amazing research you are doing because I think it’s such an applicable topic and it really profoundly affects all of us on a daily, particularly when you mentioned what were trying to accomplish multifaceted goals, and I asked both my sons to send me a quick list of things that they are trying to avoid as we speak, so I said this will give me a chance to talk to Dr. Pychyl, and so one son immediately texted me and his list was very specific: updating my resume, replying to an email, homework for my Econ class, by a shampoo and conditioner, and my other son who did not reply right away, I had to nudge him, and so he responded that after 2 to 3 days, and one of the items on that list is sending text to mom and a smile emoji. So, I think the conversation I’m going to have with the about this, so why do we avoid tasks? Why do we delay this? Is this a personality issue? Is this a task related issue? Is it a thinking failure? Or is it a lack of willpower, motivation, ability to push one’s self?

Dr. Pychyl: The interesting thing about it and the thing that keeps me so interested in the topic is it’s all of the above, and first of all, it’s person by situation, of course, because you can never have a personality without a situation that they are in, and so for example, if I’m someone as I described earlier is highly emotionally unstable and may be very low on conscientiousness, particularly though on conscientiousness – we see that as a strong predictor of procrastination because what is conscientiousness but another word for many of the executive functions because your plan – if someone is high in conscientiousness, they are planful, they are dutiful, they are organized, and so if you lack those things, then many things come off the rails when you are trying to have goal pursuit, but if you add to that worry and things like that, now, you’ve got this very strong emotional reaction to things. When I listen to your sons examples, what interested me so much is that on the one hand, I can see exactly why someone would say I’m procrastinating on getting my CV together because it can be linked with some deep existential angst and uncertainty of will I get a job or what would my life be like, and I don’t even really know what a good CV is, particularly for this circumstance and certainly in research, we see uncertainty as to the high correlate of procrastination, when we are uncertain or fearful, and then we just want to avoid it. At the same time, when your other son talked about, tongue-in-cheek he said, well, texting back to mom, I think of my own son. What he was about six years old, I said to my son, it’s time that you started making your own bed. He said, “I don’t feel like it. I don’t want to,” and I thought, am I going to have this fight today because this is not good ago very well? So, I played a little trick on him and I said, “Hey, Alex, how would you like to make a dollar?” He said, “You will pay me a dollar to make my bed?” I said, “No. I’ll give you a dollar if you can count to 10 before I make your bed.” He said, “Really?” I said, “Yeah, but you have to count 1000, one 1000, two, so basically, in seconds,” so he practiced for a moment, so he got the counting right. He has a single bed with this sheet and a duvet and a pillow.

Sucheta: You tricked him, didn’t you?

Dr. Pychyl: Yeah, it took me six seconds, not even going very quickly to make his bed, and he said, “I don’t get the dollar, do I?” and I said, “No, but what did you learn?” He said, “It takes six seconds to make my bed.” I said, “Exactly, and I think you would have followed me for an hour about making it,” and that takes me back to this story of your second son. So, when we procrastinate these little things like answering moms text, it’s the strangest thing to me and I don’t think we completely understand it yet at all, but we create this momentous task out of bed, like the bed making were putting away dishes, or picking up socks. It literally takes seconds, and in fact, if we just get started on that, we are there, and so with your second son, I find it really fascinating that even putting that off, so there’s many layers to this. So, I mean, I talked about person and situation. It’s certainly the way we think about things. We can catastrophize and make things worse than they are, we’ve seen that in some very early research we did with experience sampling where we would put pagers on students and early in the game, when they are avoiding their tasks, they’d say, “Oh, I work better under pressure and I will feel more like it tomorrow,” but finally, we paged to them and they were doing a task they have been putting off, and none of them spontaneously said things like, “Oh, I’m so glad I waited until now because I work so much better under pressure.” Instead, they were saying, “I don’t know why I didn’t start earlier. This is not nearly as bad as I thought.” In fact, we even saw that in statistical appraisals of how difficult or stressful, or non-enjoyable tasks were, they are appraisals changed once they get started. So, it is the way we think about and construe our tasks, so all of these things can conspire and if you put them all together, of course, you can get the proverbial perfect storms for procrastination. So, all of these things playing a role.

Sucheta: Wow! Well, this just made me think about my experience with my clients that – many students, rather – many clients that I worked with have difficulty conceptualizing or visualizing the future self, but they also have difficulty conceptualizing and visualizing the task in its complete statement. What does a completely well-made bed look like? What does a sink without dishes look like? So, it is, you are working your way backwards, so that planning and when I do the planning training or goal management training, one of the things that I always tell parents, for example, is take a picture of a bed when it is made to show them what the target looks like. So, this understanding of how to do halfway and not feel anxious that I didn’t do it all the way, particularly for those who are perfectionists, and those who push off the starting point, they can have some starting point, like you showed it to your son so beautifully. So, I’ve kind of said that the pillow is right here, the duvet cover is right here, and in the sheet is right here. So, let’s see if you had to divide this into three parts and you don’t have time to do all of that, which one part will you do that is easy and manageable? So, giving the full complete picture of a well-made bed as a target, and the teaching people to do piecemeal so that they learn to manage the anxiety that goes into not wanting to start, I find it very helpful to people as I’m training them.

Dr. Pychyl: I think that’s brilliant, and I would encourage listeners to stick around for the second part because I want to build on that too because I know from research that if you try to think of a whole project that is much bigger, like a thesis, it can freeze you in your tracks, so we do need to add a piece later on about okay, it’s one thing to understand, okay, this is what a final thesis looks like and then you look at those 200 pages and go, oh, my goodness, how am I going to do that? So, that is a piece of the puzzle we can address on the second part.

Sucheta: So, as we end, is there any upside to procrastination, probably a foolish question, but what are your thoughts about that?

Dr. Pychyl: Well, I’m glad you asked that question. It’s not foolish at all because almost every reporter [0:31:26] asked me that because there’s been terms of described even in the research literature such as act of procrastination and just this past January, published a paper demonstrating that this is kind of – not kind of, this is an oxymoron, active procrastination. Really, these people aren’t procrastinators at all. They used delayed, but the use delay with the awareness that they can still pull it off well and they are not going to be upset by it, and that is not true for the procrastinators, and even the authors that describe active procrastinators really delineate these people as being emotionally stable and capable, and they can assess the fact that they can do it, so I’d say, well, they are not procrastinating; it flies in the face of the definition of procrastination. So, the short answer to your question is no, there is no upside to procrastination. Because procrastination is quite narrowly defined as that negative form of delay where we voluntarily delay unintended act even though we expect to be worse off with the delay, and all the other flavors of delay should be distinguished from that because delay is part of our lives. If we only have one word, procrastination to define all forms of delay, they were going to feel horrible about ourselves.

Sucheta: Thank you so much for your incredible exclamation and most importantly, I’m so grateful for you to dedicating your life to studying procrastination, particularly in the 21st century, it has he become even more relevant, and I really appreciate you being on the podcast today, and I can’t wait to get started with the second part because you will be telling our listeners what can we do since they probably are suffering from procrastination just as you and I are suffering from procrastination. So, thank you so much, Dr. Pychyl, for being on this podcast today.

Dr. Pychyl: It’s my pleasure.

Producer: All right, so that was our conversation with Dr. Tim Pychyl. Sucheta, what a great conversation. I learned a lot in helping you rethink how I approach this problem that I have and everyone else has with regards to procrastination. So, lead us up with some of your initial thoughts.

Sucheta: So, all I can say, Todd, is procrastination is a real, and it is a real problem. So, with managing executive function disorders, we cannot ignore the clients tendencies to procrastinate. It is not something they are doing because they are disorganized. This has a deep emotional connection and everybody who is dealing with executive function or executive function related disorders must understand the psychology behind it. So, let’s review the definition that Tim was talking about. Procrastination is a needless but voluntary delay, and often intended action in spite of knowing full well that it will cause harm or will prove to be disadvantages to itself, and so the key feature of procrastination as I have now come to understand that we all need to think about is delaying that happens here is needless, but it is deliberate. So, it is such a contradiction, right? You make the goal, that you should have no reason to delay, but then you are delaying because the goal you made is important, but what goes into pursuit of that goal is painful, so we are also very aware that it will cause harm, and the harm is not so much physical harm as a you can imagine. It is a harm because we are not going to accomplish the very goal that we want to accomplish. So, this delay which is the procrastination itself is a coping mechanism to handle the uncomfortable feeling, the task, or intended action generates, so that’s where the true psychological growth is to understand that there is a goal, there is an intention, then there is a delay because that intended goal hurts. So, as you heard Tim was saying that there are other types of delays, they are not the same as active procrastination though. For example, an unintentional delay in getting something done, so for example, you were planning to pick up the laundry but your car wouldn’t start, or you have a flat tire on your way. It’s an unintentional delay. It does postpone, so to speak, intended action to further future in time, but that is not an intentional delay, and the second part is the necessary but needed delay. That means for example, you have a plan to go to the bank, and then that morning, you wake up in your child is sick, so now, you have to make an urgent appointment with your doctor, then going to the bank gets postponed. So, certainly, procrastination needs to be understood with that kind of clarity that it is certainly very, very much related to that needless but voluntary delay.

Producer: Yeah, boy, what frustrates me about procrastination is that when I do ultimately get to work on the thing that I have been delaying, it was easier than I thought, and I’m like, why did I painfully delay this thing? It always frustrates me. So, that is what’s so frustrating though, right? So, procrastination does have a substantial cause. It causes grief to our future selves but yet we keep doing it again and again, and again.

Sucheta: Yeah, that’s a really great question, Todd. The oldest part of the human brain or the reptilian brain is fueled by the [0:36:32] tendency to feel good now, and the human being prefers to feel good over the pursuit of something in the future which comes after a delay. Particularly if the pressure of incomplete task or the impending steps to getting to that task accomplished can cause a lot of stress. So, often, this desire to feel good now dominates or overshadows the more long-term goals over the futuristic plans. So, you can see, wanting to feel good now is at the seat of procrastination. The evolutionary adaptiveness governed by the prefrontal cortex is a relatively new kid on the block, and is often at odds with this ancient primitive dominating limbic system which hijacks that feeling of discomfort, moments of feeling uncomfortable, and that it will do anything to suggest to procrastinate. So, when these two systems work at odds, you can guess who wins – always the limbic system every time, and that is the reason that we, again, in my work, we do something called metacognitive training which is making people aware of the intentional control they have over not just their intended future task but their emotions as well. So, the mature prefrontal system, of course, learns the volitional skills of self-control and kind of resisting the temptation to give into feeling good, and that of course, requires a lot of hard work and that is why handling procrastination is as much work in doing the pain of having to do the task that are difficult which kind of development this urge to procrastinate, so to speak.

Producer: So, can improved habits help you and if so, how should one connect procrastination with habits?

Sucheta: Yeah, that’s a very good question. This is what I was thinking about, the procrastination is the highest form of self sabotage and when we procrastinate, we undermine our pursuit of goals or even happiness, for that matter, right? So, the act of procrastination comes from the deep reluctance to act because it is driven by emotions of discomfort, anxiety, uncertainty. We will do anything to avoid the pain that goes with the unknown or pain that goes with hard work, like diving deep is it really, really – I don’t want to use the word painful here, but requires deep work, and deep work can be exhausting, and so with the prospect of taking on something exhausting can be really worth wanting to avoid. So, from the executive function perspective, we have to be deliberate and intentional. We can do that by activating the regulatory part of the brain that is in charge of planning, taking decisions, delaying gratification, and seeing the big picture. So, what starts as coping mechanism to handle stress and discomfort runs the risk of becoming a habit which is much more internalized and subconscious. So, procrastination can become an automatic natural process of avoiding pain and discomfort. So, the way to manage that I see is great habits. That means I have a habit of making my bed or a habit of I get up in the morning, I talk a lot with my clients about developing three mental habits of reviewing routines, and in creating a mental map of the passage of time and reviewing at three intervals during the day, the end of morning routine, midday routine, end of the workday routine, and those who can’t afford it and with the night routine. So, routine is that intentional cause to view what got done and anticipate what is going to be needed to be done in creating kind of a roadmap and concrete plan, and that concrete plan can also become a stress reliever. So, the habit of reviewing plans that you make can also inoculate you from the pain of procrastination.

Producer: But, it sounds like procrastination is not the opposite of being good at practicing time management, right? And, it doesn’t sound like it can be remediated with traditional time management strategies.

Sucheta: I see this in the business world that people are using the time management word a lot and they talk about overcoming procrastination as if it’s failing to understand the importance of time, and that’s a really not the case. So, business strategists are saying five ways to manage your time better and none of them actually address the psychosocial, emotional issues of the reptilian brain wanting to feel good now. It says, oh, yeah, why don’t you make a good plan? Well, what if you don’t know exactly what to do? And so, yes, from that point of view, I think procrastination is different from time management problems, and those who procrastinate, did not suffer from lacking the sense of time as the only soap opera him. So, recently, I came across this wonderful coaster which is depicted average human life up to 85 years in this illustration of rows and columns where there are 52 weeks in a year, and than 85 years, and every day, you cross off one week as you go through time, and as you cross off, you realize that wow, I have a very limited time, so, managing time and that sentence requires you to have a great sense of the big picture of time, and the way I think about time is, time is truly one very important nonrenewable resources, and if we invest our energy to understand the importance of time, then we can actually understand that the delay caused internally by the pain that comes from having to engage in the task is futile and we must not waste any more time with the fear that we have when we have goals. So, either we go back to evaluating the goal or we go back evaluating the task and how to execute it rather than just part more on using time management techniques such as putting a timer alone because that wouldn’t help solve the problem of particularly in the context of procrastination of the pain and fear that is associated with having to take on the challenging task.

Producer: So, talk to me about procrastination and an existential crisis.

Sucheta: Yes, Tim talked about this and there’s a lot of philosophical connection in his work. At heart, I feel like he is such a deeply thoughtful philosopher and he has connected his philosophical mindset with his research and brought such caring affectionate solutions to all the folks that he deals with, particularly college students. So, why do we spend a lot of time but accomplishing very little? That is a dilemma that every individual is facing on a daily basis. When we face a daunting challenge or a large task, we use the mind to freak ourselves out instead of engaging into the very work that needs to be done and moving forward. In many situations, to do or not to do is the dilemma that all of us face, and it all boils down to that existential crisis. Man has always struggled with it and he is often trapped pondering over these questions like, what is the meaning of life? Who am I in the vast ocean of time? Why am I here and why does this matter? What are the small things I’m trying to complete here? How does this matter? And again, I’m going to bring another artistic reference here. One of my favorite, favorite artist is On Kawara. He is a Japanese artist and I was traveling in Switzerland and I went to Art Basel, and I saw this in an exhibit. He has produced the artwork called One Million Years. It is a two-volume collection of books. It is made up of 2000-page book. One is labeled past, and the second is labeled future, and in the title reads that for all those who have lived and died, it begins at year 998,031 years BC and ends 1 million years later in 1969. I think that’s when he produced this artwork, and the second one that is labeled future begins in 1993 and goes forward 1 million years. In this book, there are 10 columns, five blocks of 100 years. Each block contains 100 lines, and you flip this page into, in 2000 pages and 1 million years are over, and when you open to 2018, for example, you realize, that is a tiny dot in the passage of time, and so religion talks very much about this idea, describes this idea of sloth in the religious context of – that’s what we hear a lot about wasting time being a sin. As I was preparing for this podcasting takeaways and my discussion with Dr. Tim Pychyl, I got connected with a lot of my friends from various religions and to see what their religion says, and in Hinduism and in Sikh religion, we have this wonderful poet, Kabir, who says [different language], so it says that do anything that you intend to do, do it right away, and there is no need to wait for one to start a good deed because life is passing by. My Buddhist friend, Garrett, shared his thoughts on Buddhist views, and you know Garrett. He talked about time wasting behaviors. In Buddhism, there is a general admonition that a human birth is rarely encountered and as often as a turtle coming up in the ocean and happening to put his head through a floating ring. That is how we are a human birth is and it’s incredibly precious since it is in the human life that we have the opportunity for enlightenment and we share this philosophy in Hinduism as well. So, Garrett shared this wonderful Buddhist prayer with me which by Roshi Jetsunama Tenzin Palmo and it’s called The Song of Spiritual Change. It says, “Do not deceive yourself with laziness with things to practice tomorrow or the next day, or you will die praying for help. Quickly, quickly help yourself and take the essence of truth.” So, what I’m trying to say is it’s really, really an example that existential crisis happens when we are truly questioning the very essential step that at one point was important to us and we committed to achieving that goal through that step, but we are now hesitating to act on it. There are lots of forces that are encouraging us to act and that is the one and primary solution to overcoming procrastination.

Producer: Holy smokes. Wow, lots to think about there. Goodness. So, Sucheta, before we go, any final thoughts?

Sucheta: Yeah, executive function is doing. It is all about doing, and in knowing what needs to be done and doing what needs to be done. It is not about knowing and I always see these the people that if you want to master executive proficiency, we need to really master the art of engaging and engaging now without any hesitation. So, the secret there is to do and not just to sit with the idea, I should, I could, I must, not knowing how it can be a huge barrier and working on those barriers is the essence of mastering executive functions. So, I hope all the listeners here can say to yourself, I know too much, I better not procrastinate. I need to make use of every bit of time, a small window, a tiny opening, a slice of unaccounted time or unexpected free spot, I must make use of it, and the minute I know I am stalling, then the only thing I need to do is take action. So, when you find yourself in the middle of putting something off, ask yourself, what emotion is this task invoking me that I am wanting to avoid? What is hijacking my engagement and what is in this task that is causing this aversive response? Subscribe to the act now philosophy. Let’s say you are overwhelmed by having to get a response to somebody and you haven’t done the research. Take a minute to formulate an email which takes probably five minutes. Take a minute to look at that person’s email and send that and saying, you know what, I’m going to get back to you in a day because I’m looking into it. So, this acting into a step, even as you are handling the bigger steps can be very, very helpful. So, in the thick of it all, remind yourself that the opposite of procrastination is well-being, and that is where we must move. That is where the success is in that is where true, true joy of compensating for this existential crisis that we all are likely to suffer from.

Producer: Wow, great stuff, great stuff. I always say to myself, just start, buddy, just start because once you start, you get the momentum, then everything changes.

All right, well, that’s all the time we have for today. On behalf of our host Sucheta Kamath and all of us here at Cerebral Matters, thank you for listening. We look forward to seeing you next week for our second conversation with Dr. Tim Pychyl, and we will see you next time Full PreFrontal.