166. The Opposite of Procrastination is NOT Productivity—It is Persistence

Why do we procrastinate on the work that matters most? In this episode, Dr. Amy Bakos explores the psychology behind creative avoidance and why procrastination doesn't mean you're lazy—it often means you're deeply invested in what you're creating. Drawing from behavioral psychology, existential psychology, personal stories, and lessons from artists, she shares practical ways to stop judging yourself, build creative stamina, and learn the two skills every successful artist develops: continuing and not quitting.

If you've ever found yourself cleaning the kitchen instead of writing, scrolling social media instead of creating, or abandoning projects just before they're finished, this episode will help you understand why—and how to move forward with more self-compassion and persistence.

Key Takeaways

• Why avoidance often feels worse than doing the work.
• The difference between pausing and quitting.
• How procrastination can become part of a healthy creative process.
• What existential guilt tells us about our values.
• Why persistence is a learnable skill—not a personality trait.
• The importance of maintaining momentum after reaching a major goal.
• How process-focused goals create more lasting motivation than destination goals.
• Why creative thoughts ("I'm not good enough") are just thoughts—not facts.
• Practical ways to reduce procrastination without relying on willpower.
• How imagination, community, and the right materials support creative work.

Memorable Quotes

"Artists don't get down to work until the pain of working is exceeded by the pain of not working.""The people who keep making art aren't necessarily more talented—they've learned how to continue.""Persistence and not quitting are two different skills.""I trust I had a good idea when I started.""The goal isn't to have a show. The goal is to be an artist.""Procrastination is part of my process. Judgment doesn't have to be.""The things we admire were often perilously close to never existing."

Discussion Topics

• Why procrastination is so common among creative people.
• Behavioral psychology and avoiding pain.
• Existential guilt and living according to your values.
• Creative identity versus achievement.
• Maintaining stamina after reaching a milestone.
• The "run past the finish line" mindset.
• Why artists abandon work near completion.
• Building a process-oriented creative life.
• Using imagination to stay engaged.
• Learning to tolerate uncertainty in creative work.

Practical Strategies Mentioned

• Allow yourself a limited "circling" period before beginning work.
• Set a 20-minute timer for procrastination or warm-up activities.
• Reduce judgment around your creative process.
• Keep reminders of why you started your project.
• Celebrate milestones without treating them as the finish.
• Stay connected to people who are a few steps ahead of you.
• Invest in tools and materials that support your work.
• Focus on becoming the kind of person who creates—not simply reaching one achievement.
• Practice tolerating uncertainty rather than waiting to feel confident.

Books & References

• Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles & Ted Orland
• Thomas Edison's persistence in developing the light bulb
• Leo Tolstoy's revisions of War and Peace
• Concepts from behavioral psychology
• Existential psychology and existential guilt

Call to Action

What are you avoiding right now? Is it really about procrastination—or is it something you deeply care about?

Reflect on a project you've completed successfully and ask yourself:

• What helped you keep going?
• How did you resist quitting?
• What practices helped you persist?

Share your thoughts with Dr. Amy Bakos on Instagram and continue the conversation about creativity, persistence, and the art of finishing what matters.

Transcript

Artists don't get down to work until the pain of working is exceeded by the pain of not working. This quote from DeStaebler has really reassured me in my procrastination these last few weeks, and I've talked about procrastination before. Many of you can relate, and I've been hearing from a lot of women about their struggles to sit down, take action, and the temptations of social media that are interfering with what they truly want to do, which is create and be adventurous and enjoy the company of their loved one. Today we're talking about how to use pleasure and enjoyment as a motivator and as human beings, we're always trying to avoid pain, but then we struggle when we spend a lot of time trying to avoid that pain. So let's get into it. Let's get this started. Welcome into the Modern Creative Woman podcast. I'm Doctor Amy Backos, I am your hostess, and we are here to talk about the art and science of creativity. Specifically today, we are talking about how avoidance makes us feel so bad, and it can often start to mess with our self-concept and how we feel about ourselves if we're avoiding the things that are truly important. Psychology has a lot to say about these issues. From the perspective of behaviorism, there are rewards and punishments and things that we do because we're going to get something or things we do or don't do because we're trying to avoid pain or consequence. Existential psychology also writes a lot about the avoidance as a struggle. Existential guilt shows up when we realize we're not taking action on the things that are most important. If we're neglecting a relationship, if we are avoiding putting ourselves out there, whatever it is, avoiding what is important leads to existential guilt. And we feel so terrible, we take it personally that we're not doing something. All of these things are pieces of information that can guide us towards what we truly want to do. The difference between people who continue to make art, and those who struggle to make art or abandon their projects. It looks the same on the outside. Everyone begins a project and some of us drop off. Some of us stay. Those who continue to make art are usually the people who learned how to continue, and specifically they learned how to not quit two different skill sets. I participated in a business mastermind a number of years ago, and the one thing that stuck out to me as so important that I think about almost every day is don't quit. And this idea of persisting in spite of how bad it feels, in spite of beginning something that seems impossible, is we have to persist. Thomas Edison, with the thousands and thousands of light bulb prototypes before one actually worked, is this very extreme example. However, you can look around you and see people who are successful in whatever they do, in their education, in their job. They've stuck with the job for a long period of time. They've accomplished personal goals. They all have this thing in common where they did two things. They continued, and they chose not to quit. I have a note that I keep by my desk that says I trust. I had a good idea when I started, and this was what got me through graduate school when it became so extremely difficult. And for me, the difficult was losing sight of what I was doing and trying to do. Getting wrapped up in statistical procedures made me forget why I was going to school. I want to help people and I it was difficult to see how this was going to help. Ultimately, of course it does. However, when it seemed like I wanted to let go because it would be so much easier to be able to enjoy my life and have a full time job instead of a part time job. All of these things seemed way more attractive than going to school, when I had lost sight of why I was there. However, this one statement kept me going. I trust I had a good idea when I started. And this is the basis of persisting or rather not quitting. When you're starting a project, you're making art, you're building a business, you're engaged in an important relationship or a job that you care about. All of these things require one not quitting and two, persistence. You've heard me on Instagram talk about my struggles with procrastination this year, and I am excited to write. It is interesting to me. I'm delighted that my publisher deems my ideas worthy of publication, and that people will be able to benefit from the art therapy toolkit. And yet I would find myself procrastinating. Social media time increased, puttering around the house increase this sort of this unnecessary moving things around or tidying. I rearranged my bulletin board so many times. Today I cleaned out my bottom drawer in one of my kitchen cabinets where my vitamins are. I took everything out. I moved all the baskets and cleaned them. This is severe procrastination for reading through some edits today. However, I keep reminding myself that procrastination is part of my process. That circling before I land is part of my experience to sit down and write. And it doesn't mean I don't judge it. Like, I wish I could have started earlier on my editing that I want to do today. However, I judge it less than I used to and for me that feels like a big win. Have you read the book Art and fear? I've mentioned it multiple times. Its subtitle is observing on the Perils and rewards of Art making. And they write extensively about how this kind of thinking can get in our way. Where we procrastinate, we suddenly run out of it, um, writer's block, so to speak. But the artists block and quitting is different than stopping, right? We can take a break and then quitting happens one time. We never pick it up again. But pausing, taking a break, circling and procrastination is all part of the process. And the more I can see it as just part of my process, the better off I am, the less judgmental I am. There is a universal struggle that artists have. According to the authors Bayliss and Orlin about art and fear, and they talk about when the work is done. We can sometimes lose our motivation and they give examples of people who have one goal and it's their only goal. And when they reach it, they they give up, they quit, they're done. And their identity has been tied to it. So someone who has a goal to have a solo show at a gallery over decades, they finally achieve it and stop painting altogether because it's a bit of a depression, an anti-climactic experience. I know this to be true for students. Ray. Before I graduated college, my dad said, it's okay if you get a little depressed and you just want to sit on the couch and don't want to make art. Don't want to read. It's okay. You're allowed to have a rest. I always remind my graduate students of the same thing. When you accomplish something that you've been so focused on. It can just feel anticlimactic. I know I've done it multiple times in my life. I used to ski, and then I skied in the Alps in Switzerland, and I never skied again. I kind of reached the pinnacle of what I imagined skiing would do. Same thing with surfing. It's just very casual. But then I went surfing in Costa Rica and I didn't want to do it anymore. I think I was skiing and surfing in places really beyond my limit, but it also was the end. I'd I'd done kind of this apex experience in my mind, and I didn't feel motivated to do it again. I do not want that to happen again in other places. I certainly don't want it to happen in writing. And a very wise mentor advised me that as soon as you're done with your first book, get started on your second one. Otherwise you'll pit her out. It will be that point of quitting. Just like the examples I've given you, and the one from the book about the artist who quit just did not pick up again. So that was really good advice to continue doing the thing. I think of how in races we're taught to run past the finish line. I'm talking about literal, you know, a five K or a half marathon. You see the finish line and you don't imagine your stop yourself stopping at the finish line. You pick a further distance in your mind's eye. You put an image of you running fast past the finish line, and that's so you don't slow down at the end. You want to keep going as fast as you can across the finish line and a little further. That metaphor of shooting past the finish line when I've participated in running races helped me so much in maintaining my stamina for long project. So celebrating each time I finish something related to what I'm writing, celebrating when I send it to my editor. Celebrating when I send it to my publisher. Also, knowing that the publisher will have comments as they fact check, they'll need me to research a citation a little further. Something like this I know it's not done, but in the past I've put out the book. They finally arrive and I'm so exhausted I've done nothing to promote them. A couple of book talks at academic settings, presentations at conferences. Those were all set up long before the book came out. But after the book came out, I was psychologically done. So this time I'm really going to maintain stamina so I can take this book on the road or onto other podcasts and help present it to the world instead of just being exhausted. I know myself in accomplishing things. I need to have stamina. This metaphor of running past the finish line also worked really well as my son was applying for college. It is such a long process. The applications, the letters, the essays, and each one that he mailed in, we celebrated and I just kept reminding him, you know, maintain stamina. It's not over. We celebrate here and we keep going. So he's doing a lot of work long past when all the acceptance letters came in, ending in AP scores and transcripts and applying for dorm, all these details that require a little bit of attention. We have to maintain stamina. There's a large number of art students who, after graduation, end up losing their stamina for art making. They don't have a detailed, specific purpose for making art. They're not really visualizing the future and what it would look like to make art in this next phase of their life. So it would be a real crisis if other professions had a similar kind of dropout rate. What we end up doing, though, is holding ourselves back because we didn't reserve a little stamina, preparation, and willingness to engage with the unknown. Knowing that if you keep making art, something will happen. I think there's several ways that you can kind of combat this. One is to make friends with people and know people who are persisting in whatever it is that you're persisting in. If the struggle is the laundry pile, the perpetual laundry pile. You can read some jokes by Erma Bombeck, or get on threads and see what moms are saying about the laundry and the amount of laundry that we have to just keep doing. Being friends with people who are starting their business, but who are also successful in their business. So it's important to know people who are a few steps ahead of you. People that have persisted in whatever it is that they're doing. And the other way to experience this in a different way is thinking about process, that the end goal is not necessarily the point of art or business or relationships. The end a goal in a relationship is not having a wedding. There is no end goal. The goal is to be in relationship, to enjoy the process of relationship. So that end goal doesn't exist in relationship and it hardly exists in art. Either you might have a specific goal to submit a piece of art, or to finish a project to give as a gift. Yet the whole point of making art really is to make art. To experience herself making art to understand more about you and others and your community. The practice is really a process goal. I want to continue making art or you can apply it to your work. I want to continue being in relationship with my work. And for me, I absolutely want to continue being in relationship with my work, helping women develop their creative and artistic side so that they can solve problems in any area of their life. Being a creative thinker is so essential to all of the aspects of our daily life. When we think about our goal as process being present for our art making, well, someone will want to look at your art. Eventually, the goal is not to be in a show. The goal is to be an artist where many of the women I work with struggle is in doubts, so thoughts will get in the way of really amazing values and committed actions towards what's important. It's the thinking that causes problems for us. Things like, I'm not an artist, I'm a phony. I have nothing worthwhile or sane. I don't know what's going on. No one's going to want this, I'm no good, etc. these are just thoughts. They're not facts. They're not commands. So what's the solution? Thinking of all of us procrastinating, scrolling on our phones, puttering around the house, cleaning things that don't really need to be cleaned, making relationships about the details and the minutia instead of being in relationship. Well, one way to experience this differently is to think about your vision. What is it that you most want? What are your values? Why are they important? How will you take action on them? Your vision for how you want things to be really matters, and focusing on that can be very clarifying. So many women who come to me in the beginning of our work are not sure what they want, or they pick one of those destination kinds of goals. Another way that we can get more focused on what matters to us is by using our imagination. Imagination is in charge. When you begin something and you begin painting, when you begin decorating your home. Imagination is at work when you open your closet door and decide to get trapped. Building your business is a creative process. However, by the time you have a policies and procedures manual, it no longer can feel like creativity. However, you can reinsert that creativity at every point, no matter what you're doing. You purchase some interesting clothes, but pretty soon you're just wearing the same old, same old. So re writing creativity in your closet, trying a new art technique re emulating what's happening in your business. These are the creative acts that inspire us to keep going, and so not allowing things to become mundane, rote and boring is a huge help when we're trying to step away from procrastination in running statistics in school, I learned that once you place one number one point of data, you're starting to lose control over the data set. There is something that's already there. Until you enter that first point of data, you get to be curious and wonder and exploring. Consider. And then after that, it's really technique takes over and you figure out the appropriate statistic and you run it. The same holds true with almost everything that we do. We can start with a blank canvas, a couple of interesting brushstrokes, and suddenly we can be left feeling uncreative. Something is down on the canvas already, and so we end up having less creative choices because there's already something there. Another area you might consider are the material that you're using, and having the right materials for the job is essential. You need the right olive oil for cooking. You want a certain kind of olive oil for your salad dressing or to dip your bread in, and you can get not the right kind that tastes best to you. You can get a different kind and it feels way less exciting. So having the right materials for cooking includes the appropriate spatula or with. It works for art. If you are wanting to paint and all you have is the Crayola paint set from target, you can paint, but maybe it's not going to be exactly what you want it to be. You might need to go to a craft store or an art store and see about finding something much more saturated in terms of watercolor. Investing in the right materials doesn't have to be, you know, this very expensive thing. You can find incredible things at garage sales, at scrap. It's a place where artists can trade their materials here in San Francisco for donation, in exchange for being able to take something yourself. Not about money. It's about investment. It could be time. It could be money. But investing in the right materials, similar to a wardrobe, making sure that you have the appropriate kind of basics, that will kind of free up a logjam in your closet. Having the right shelves, if you've got a lot of cardigans, can free up a lot of things. That metaphor extends in so many ways. If you have the right materials, the right mentor or coach or therapist, you can go so much farther, so much faster. Finally, tolerating uncertainty is an essential. Being willing to proceed even when you don't know what the final result will be. Even when you're not sure that it's going to be good. Even when you're having thoughts. If you're willing to tolerate what feels uncomfortable, you have what it takes to avoid quitting, and you have what it takes to persist in your activity. So here's what I'm doing about procrastination these days. I'm allowing myself to do it. I've set my timer so that my circling doesn't last longer than 20 minutes. I spent way too much time in the kitchen this morning cleaning out this jar. Had I set a timer, that would have been better for me. So using a timer and allowing myself to have that procrastination is critical for me. I need to eliminate the judgment about circling and when it's time limited, I feel way better about it. I consider it like a warm up. Do a little warm up before you work out. Do a little warm up before you start painting. That kind of experience that I can come to appreciate. I'm going to do it anyway. I might as well eliminate the judgment about how I circle before I work. I also remember that this is a human struggle. Zero women I've worked with have said they have no problem with procrastination or avoidance, or that dreaded coming close to the end of a project and then abandoning it at the very end. I worked with people who would write their thesis, and it's done. Everything's done. They just have to finalize things together in conclusion, and they abandon it and start over. The intensity of their inner stress caused them to abandon what was pretty good. Now they're actually in good company. Tolstoy famously wrote and rewrote War and Peace eight times, and he was still revising when his publisher said, it's time to put it to the press. There are many examples of what happens when we write and rewrite. It might be that we're struggling with letting letting it be. If we keep redoing a thing, we keep repainting. We keep going over and over it, or we keep struggling with a problem at work over and over and over. Sometimes it makes it great. Sometimes it makes it just the same. However, I think as we come to the end of the project, it serves us to remember that so many things that we admire, art or books or installations of art in San Francisco are incredible. All of these things have perhaps also come into being very perilously close to not existing. There is something about that writer, or that artist or the installation artist who kept going. They did not quit, and they persisted. Even at the end when momentum was lagging. When that fear shows up, when the urge to rewrite, to destroy a piece of art and redo it, when that comes up, just know that those things that we admire, all of those people probably have gone through the same thing. There's a photographer, Jerry Olson, when he decided to give a slide presentation where he showed every photo that he had taken in the span of one year. So there were over 100 pieces that he had created, and he judged all of them except for ten to be completely insufficient, and he destroyed them before ever showing them. So the idea that there is so much work that gets produced but is not seen, that gets destroyed. The photographer persisted. And so we have those ten images. You are not alone in struggling to persist. You are not alone in the urge to quit or the urge to procrastinate. And so knowing that, like all the things you admire were so close to not being here, I hope that gives you a feeling of encouragement. Do let me know what you think about this. The areas where you struggle with procrastination. What is it that you're putting off doing? What are your rituals and procedures for circling? Before you finish something and look at the things that you've completed. I think it's not so helpful to look at the things that you've abandoned, but rather the things that you have completed, that you've followed through it. And ask yourself, how did you do that? What happened that you decided you would continue, that you would avoid quitting and you decided you would persist? You can message me in the show notes. You can find me on Instagram @dramybackos. And I would love, love, love to hear how you're dealing with your own procrastination. Have a wonderful rest of your day and I look forward to speaking with you in the next episode.