#2244 Procrastination - Dr. Fuschia Sorois

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Speaker 1: Oh, g'day, team.
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Speaker 2: It's a new project. Of course, it is Craig Anthony Harper reporting in for duty. Ah, episode three for the day. It's been a big day. Lots of recording, lots of awesome people. Tonight, well, tonight for me, as I record, it's 7.12. No, it's not. It's 7.02. I need to put on my specs. In the thriving metropolis of Melbourne, down the bottom of Australia, I'm being joined by someone originally from Canada who now finds herself in.
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Speaker 1: bloody old England in Durham. Hi, Prof. Welcome to the show. How are you?
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Speaker 3: I'm okay. Hi, Craig. Thanks for inviting me to be here.
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Speaker 2: Now, let me just give the boring little bio and then you add to that whatever you want to add. And I know that we could do a three-hour bio on you, but the brief is Dr. Fuchsia Sirawa is a psychologist and internationally recognized researcher specializing in procrastination. Did you hear that, folks? Procrastination, self-regulation, motivation, stress and well-being. She's a professor of social and health psychology at Durham University in the UK, a million other things, but we'll leave it for there. At the minute, what fascinated you originally with studying humans? Because that seems like a big undertaking.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, and I actually didn't start out my academic career with that intent. So, Well, I sort of did. I started off with in looking at I wanted to be a nutritionist, actually. And then I know somehow I end up moving. And the only way I could do nutrition degree was to do biochemistry. But I didn't like working with animals and the sacrificing. So I think I decided to turn back to looking at humans. And I think for me, it was about how do I is there something I can do to help people feel better and be better to contribute to their wellness?
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Speaker 1: So many variables around that, right? Physical, mental, emotional, social, you know.
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Speaker 3: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: I mean, it's such a, I mean, we are two and a half thousand episodes into this show, right? And we talk, so nine years, two and a half thousand episodes. So if you could just wrap it all up today, this would be the last episode.
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Speaker 1: That'd be great.
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Speaker 2: Like trying to understand humans, why we do the things we do, why we don't do the things we don't do, why we avoid, why we procrastinate, which we're going to dive into.
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Speaker 1: And also like....
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Speaker 2: You and I have a not totally different journey. I started in exercise physiology. So I started with an exercise science degree, did a PhD in psychology. So I'm just interested all round in just the human experience. I'm really interested in fascinated by human potential and how much we use and how much we waste and even understanding our own possibilities and potential and fascinates me and having worked with elite athlete and blokes in prisons and the general public and, and then, you know, it's like, I'm not particularly talented and, but I've found a way to do things with my not overwhelming talent or brilliant genetics or brilliant brain. I've just found a way to do things. And so that's, I think for me, it's like, being.
00:03:17
Speaker 1: What's the word? This is probably not the.
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Speaker 2: Right word, but somewhat average has almost been my superpower because I realized I wasn't special. So if I was going to do special stuff, I'd have to optimize what I have to work with. What do you think, we'll jump into procrastination, but in terms of the kind of existence that people create for themselves, irrespective of situation or circumstance, what are the things that fascinate you with how we think and subjective reality and how we create our experiences and make things hard or.
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Speaker 3: Easy yeah and i mean that's that's a big one i think i i mean you know going sort of back to interest in people i mean observing people i'm trying to understand why people do things in that and and i'm totally on board with your idea of potentials and strengths and obviously positive psychology is a huge area for me as well too and i try and leverage a lot of the positive psychology stuff to deal with some of the weaknesses, you know, that we all have as humans, such as procrastination, perfectionism, other things. But one thing that sort of fascinated me is that, like you said, it's interesting to hear you talk as you're saying about averages. And that's kind of like taking the mean across the board of everything you do. But I don't believe that anybody is average. I believe that a lot of us are average in some things, we're weak in some things, and we're strong in other things. And I think understanding people and sort of looking at how people function and trying to help them to sort of flourish and be their best. For me, it's taking the perspective, that perspective that everyone has some strengths. And often when we go astray and when we're struggling and we want to help people, I think it's good to look at. what that strength is. And sometimes that strength is manifesting in the wrong way, or it's being directed towards the wrong area of that person's life or to the wrong domain. And yet, if you take that same strength that maybe, you know, maybe it's an addiction or an obsession with something, for example, that might be a super focus and ability to deep dive into something and really put full attention. but it's being redirected into an area that's not particularly healthy or adaptive. But recognizing what those strengths are and being able to sort of help the individual to identify those and then maybe redirect them to something where they can become a superpower rather than a weakness because they're being used in a way that's not exactly adaptive or healthy. And again, that may be just at that particular moment in time for that individual too. So I think we're we're time restricted to sometimes on some of our abilities. What might be a weakness at one time might be a strength at another time in our lives, you know? And so, like you said, there's a lot of different variables there at play, but I think understanding that, you know, we all have these strengths and they may not always be, we're not, may not always be using them in the best way possible or recognizing them. And once we find that niche where they actually can become that, that superpower. And when you mean superpower, not where you're like, Oh, look at me. I'm super fulfilled where you feel like this is my purpose. This is me. This is that flow. I do this easily. And I know that it's, it's not just benefiting me, but it's also, I feel like I'm connected to the world and it's benefiting others. That's what I mean by superpowers.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: I love it. I love it.
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Speaker 2: What about the relationship do you think between the opinion we have about, you know, our, our, self-belief, like how we see ourselves, which I think for many people is very self-limiting, even self-sabotaging, you know, versus just objectively what they actually could do if they got out of the fear and the overthinking and the rumination and the self-doubt and the self-loathing and the shitty environment and turning down the external noise and the internal noise. But if it was just how do we get people to operationalize this capacity despite the inner monologue of you are crap?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a tough one. I think this is where I think self-compassion comes into play a lot, at least from my perspective. We all do this, right? We have at certain points in time that negative inter-dialogue and sometimes it might reflect that tension being human which is always wanting beyond our reach right which is always wanting to be more and recognizing that we're not there and so kind of beating up on ourselves so you've got this drive to for improvement to better ourselves but then when it isn't operating fully in a way that's supporting that flourishing and that thriving it turns into that negative voice that becomes the overwhelming voice instead of it being more balanced and saying yeah i want to improve but I'm not going to get there by beating myself up on this. Like if I just focus on what I'm doing wrong, you know, that's not going to promote or support the improvement that I'm seeking or that I'm aiming for. So I think to a certain extent, we're never going to get rid of that critical voice. It's part of being human. But it can also lead to a lot of our own suffering if it's not reined in and if it's not managed, it's not seen for what it is, which is a drive to improve, a drive to be better.
00:08:57
Speaker 1: Oh, so many things I want to ask you.
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Speaker 2: All right.
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Speaker 1: So you said, you know, we always want to be more. And I agree.
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Speaker 2: It's it seems like wherever we are, whatever we have, whatever we've achieved is we're not content or we're not satisfied. It's like, it's not like, Oh, I'm here now. It's like, we get to the top of the mountain.
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Speaker 1: We go, Oh, wrong mountain. It's that mountain.
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Speaker 2: Like, it's like, it doesn't seem to matter what we do be create or achieve. there's always this, or there seems to be some kind of void self-created or other. And we always have a story about why I can't be content or satisfied now. Like, why does it always need to be more?
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Speaker 1: What is that?
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Speaker 2: Why do I always need to have something else or something bigger or better? Or why can't I just be where I am and go, this is awesome.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 3: I mean, that's, that's the, you know, the big question in, in, in many ways. And, and, I'm a big science fiction fan because I like science fiction because it sort of not only brings in what could be, but it also brings in different perspectives, perspectives from outside of the human race, for example, looking in on us and saying, this is what we are, this is what our foibles are, but this is also what about us is endearing and positive. And I think, you know, we're often characterized as human beings as, as always wanting more like that is part of being human. I don't think we're going to get rid of that anytime soon. And that drives, you know, that's driven many of the advances and also some of the most horrific things that's also happened in human history. But I think there, again, there's that balance.
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Speaker 1: You're right.
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Speaker 3: We need to, you know, the savoring, the gratitude for what we have.
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Speaker 1: Yes.
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Speaker 3: That also has to be brought into balance. And I think that's where we struggle a lot because that overwhelming drive to keep going and pushing and pushing. And it's and it's it's also driven by situational factors and by society.
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Speaker 2: Right.
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Speaker 3: Like the constant advances in society. We're surrounded by it. Unless you're living off alone on an island away from all technology and all news of what's going on in the world. I think it's very difficult to not get into a mindset where it's going to be more and better all the time, which tells us a lot about, you know, some of the weaknesses of being so independent. socially connected which is also part of part of being human and the and the need and desire to to be connected um with others and also how we um pathologize uh people who don't want to have connection with others right and we you know our definitions of what's ill health and and what's um well-being hinge on you know our socialization and our our wanting to be connected to others and, and be concerned about others. And if we just think about ourselves and want to be isolated, we see that as not particularly healthy yet at the same time, if we were to do that, we would probably be, you know, spared some of that outward external pressure that drives that constant need. So I've got to improve. I've got to do more.
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Speaker 1: Um, Yeah.
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Speaker 3: So, I mean, it's, I know there's no simple answers there, but I think that is something we have to accept. But at the same time, this is all the more reason why we need to more of a positive psychological approaches to promote savoring, to promote gratitude, to promote compassion and self-compassion and just acceptance that, yeah, we have the strive, but it doesn't need to be the overwhelming be all and end all of our existence. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Well, I think.
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Speaker 2: Prof, that world-famous philosopher slash musician, Mick Jagger, put it best when he said, I can't get no satisfaction.
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Speaker 3: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: It's like that might be the title of the show. I feel like, tell me what you think about this, that sometimes like with stuff, I want to own that, drive that, earn that. get that, have this brand, this identity or this amount of followers or listeners on the bloody podcast, whatever it is, I feel like that's almost what we think is going to be a conduit to filling some kind of internal void. Like if I could just, and me coming from a background of working with athletes and even models and actors, it's like if I could just look this way or if I could weigh this weight or if my muscles could be that big, they would correlate that essentially with a state of happiness or nirvana or like, and then they get there.
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Speaker 1: And I did the same thing.
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Speaker 2: I mean, I was just this insecure fat kid who grew up to be an insecure bodybuilder, right? And it didn't matter how big my muscles got or how lean I got or how many businesses I opened. I opened a few and did, you know, that same stuff, that same intrinsic thing. you know, self-doubt, you know, imposter syndrome, all the things, didn't matter what my situational context, bank balance, like all my stuff was still there. And even now, you know, not to the same volume, I've turned it down a bit, but still there. Yeah.
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Speaker 3: And I don't, like I said, I don't think that's necessarily going to go away, but I think the trick is to balance that. So when you get that thing, you savor it, you enjoy it, you go, actually, Why did I want this? Oh, I wanted this because it makes me feel this way. So allow yourself to feel that way. It makes me feel more confident. Like, for example, you know, weight has an issue around people get obsessed with weight and how they look in that. And, you know, sometimes it can be to fill a void, but sometimes it can be where they say, yeah, this is me. When I look in the mirror, I see that that's me and I accept me. So what you achieve those things is the self-acceptance that needs to come into place. to sort of cement that and hold it in place where you kind of go, yes, I can savor this now. I did it. There may be other things I want to achieve, but I feel more like myself now. Right. And then take that feeling, you know, whatever has triggered that, you know, or you thought would make you feel more like yourself and own that and say, yeah, okay, I feel more like myself. So what does myself feel like? And then do the deep dive inside and say, right, myself feels like this and this and this. And you might identify a few other things you need to work on internally to, you know, even feel more authentic. But I think that personal authenticity, as you said, it's not going to come from the external things, but the external things can be a scaffolding to finally let yourself sometimes accept the fact that you need to go inside and you need to just sort of say, yeah, what is it about myself that I like? The external made me feel a little bit more comfortable and less insecure in the eyes of others, but I am not defined by the eyes of others. I'm defined by my own eyes. And so what do my own eyes see about myself that I like and that I don't like? And I think part of self-acceptance is accepting what you don't like and being comfortable with it. And that's where I go back to that stance of, those so-called weaknesses that you don't like, are they actually weaknesses? Maybe they're strengths, but you're just not using them in a way that fully supports your sense of, of authenticity.
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Speaker 1: How much do you think out? I'm opening the philosophical door. Um, why?
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Speaker 2: And by the way, everyone, none of, none of this is instructional or prescriptive.
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Speaker 1: This is just a chat, right?
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Speaker 2: Um, Where does our understanding of ourself come from, like understanding the self and how I see me? How much of that do you think is just innate or genetic or how much do you think of the way that we see ourselves is formed or shaped or informed by situation, circumstance, environment, family, culture? You know, because I grew up thinking, I mean, I grew up in a paradigm that taught me, Craig, success is about stuff. The more stuff you have, the more successful you are. So when I get more stuff, I will be a successful person, right? I never came up with that concept.
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Speaker 1: I was just programmed with that concept.
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Speaker 2: Where does our sense of self, and I know there's no single answer to this, but for you, where does our sense of self come from?
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Speaker 3: No, I mean, that's, yeah, that is... The big question, as you said, there's neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists and lots of people working on this issue in the sense of consciousness or is consciousness self, is our going back to Descartes and mind-body divide. So is our self just our mind? Is our self, our body and mind connected? Are we able to experience that? You know, the whole, and it hinges on the whole nature-nurture thing. And I'm also a personality psychologist, so the self-perceptions if you like, is another way of looking at personality. I think it's both. So you say in your situation, you were told this, but somebody with other innate abilities may have reacted quite differently to that message and may have rejected that message, right? And so this is where we go back to this idea of really roughly all the studies you look at, it's roughly about 50% nurture and 50 nature right there are some things that that are kind of carried down genetically predispositions our tolerance for negative emotions um our our drive for curiosity um you know our our drive for relationships or for wanting to connect with nature or what have you you know um aesthetics all these things we want to bring it down to the big five you know 50 is that but then we bring that profile and replaced within an environment when we're born. And that environment will help facilitate the expression of some of those traits more than others. And that same profile put in a different environment, you know, when they've looked at a lot of this behavioral genetic studies, right. And sort of twins raised apart and raised together. And fascinatingly, they find that, people's personalities which we would might say is sort of a proxy for sense of self if we objectively measure it um aren't striking similarities like two completely different environments right they would have thought they'd be two completely different people but no you know they're right down to some very core aspects of them so i don't think we could deny that they're that the biological side of ourself um is somewhat set by parental genes and grand parental genes and going back generations and if you sort of start you know looking at inherited traits the same way as you do eye color and hair color that comes through in the sense of self but you know it's an interesting um and fascinating sort of kaleidoscopic profile that we each have, but then we learn to express it a certain way. So, and this goes back to how much we can kind of change those self-perceptions too. We have a range in which we can, we can change. So, you know, the age old question, can your personality, that sense of self change?
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Speaker 2: Yes.
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Speaker 3: But, within restricted parameters you're not going to become a completely different person which again speaks to the fact that it's not completely your your environment that's driving things um yeah so it is if you have that range then it's knowing understanding what your range is and your limitations like you know if you're completely introverted and sort of you know wanting your own space you're never going to become a complete extroverted but you become extroverted person but you can become functionally extroverted for example you because you need to because you do public speaking for example yeah yeah.
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Speaker 2: Got it yeah that's interesting i've actually worked with quite a my my main job in inverted commas other than this is um corporate speaking and um you have.
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Speaker 1: Worked with lots of people who you would call them introverts.
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Speaker 2: And because they had a job that required them to speak to groups not necessarily to get on stage and be a corporate speaker but to talk to teams and work with people who've gone from being, you know, pretty much paralyzed with fear to being surprisingly confident and comfortable and skillful, you know, just with, you know, just with.
00:21:41
Speaker 1: Repetition and practice and a few strategies.
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Speaker 2: And so, yeah, we can kind of alter how we think and kind of show up. All right, let's talk about, Your book. So the prof, Professor Fuchsia, has written a book called.
00:21:58
Speaker 1: Procrastination. What is it?
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Speaker 2: She's written a few books. More of them lately have been academic. So let's talk about the one we can understand. Procrastination, what is it? Oh, sorry, what it is, why it's a problem, and what you can do about it. You know, in all the time we've spoken about procrastination on the show, but I don't think we've ever done a standalone episode about it or chat about it. So firstly, is there a, I think we all have an understanding of what it is or we think we do. What is your definition? What is the working definition that you use to explain to us what procrastination is? Because maybe we're not right.
00:22:43
Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 3: Well, I'm glad you brought this up because it's a great starting point because often we just sort of go right into, you know, the other issues about why it's a problem, et cetera.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 3: You know, people often, when you say, oh, do you procrastinate? They go, oh yeah, all the time. And then you talk to them a little bit more and they sort of probe and you're actually, you're not as much of a procrastinator as you think you are. And the opposite can happen as well too. So yeah, we understand procrastination is a form of delay, but it's not your garden variety form of delay. There's lots of reasons why we might delay things. And so procrastination as sort of within the field of researchers who work in this area, we've come to this agreement that, For procrastination, for delay to be actually procrastination, it has to have a couple of things going on with it. It has to be a particular type of delay. So it has to be unnecessary delay. OK, so it's not because an emergency came up and you had to put that task aside.
00:23:36
Speaker 2: Right.
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Speaker 3: Which is reasonable and insane. And it has to be involuntary delay. So you chose that delay. It's not like your manager or your partner said, please, can you put that aside and help me with this instead?
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Speaker 1: OK. Yeah.
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Speaker 3: You chose that was completely voluntary for you to put that task aside. And two other key things. It has to be an intended task. So it's a task you either directly or indirectly said you would do. And I add that in because we had a, we do these biannual research network meetings amongst people studying procrastination. And we've had ones with a lot of times philosophers get involved within this topic. And the last one, which is in 2025 in Utrecht, the big issue was, well, How conscious is it that you know that you intended this task? And how aware are you of the negative consequences of the procrastination? So I'll step away from that for a moment and go back to the definition. So it's intended, you said you were going to do it, or you implied to others that you were going to do it. It's an important task. It's not something trivial. Like, oh, yeah, I want to go reorganize my closet, right?
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 3: Well, how important is that? You've got other more important tasks, right? So we prioritize our tasks all the time. So this would be a task that would be more, you know, looming in terms of its importance in your life. And so we do this, you know, voluntary, intentional, unnecessary delay of this task that has some importance for us. Despite knowing that is going to have negative consequences for ourself or others. And again, this is this knowing from that philosophical stance. Do we actually know what the harms are? Have we consciously made a clear, concrete vision of those harms for ourself or others? Or do we just kind of have a sense that it's not going to be good? And I think it's just having that more unconscious, that culpableness of the harm. So we know on some level that it's not right to do this. That's enough to make it procrastination. So that is the working definition that we use. Anything that doesn't meet all those criteria arguably could not be considered procrastination.
00:26:12
Speaker 2: I would think especially with my background, I would think one of the biggest areas of procrastination would be health, where people are always talking about, I'm going to do this and I'm going to change that and I'm going to start this and I'm going to eat less of this and more of that and do that and lift that. I don't know how accurate this figure is anymore, Prof, but a decade or so ago in Australia, the average active gym membership was about 15%. And what that means is for every hundred current paid up members, 85 of them didn't go.
00:26:52
Speaker 1: Yeah. So they had a gym membership. They had a reason for the gym membership.
00:26:58
Speaker 2: That is they weren't in shape and they wanted to be, um, So they had access to the resources that, you know, they had a program, they had somebody there to answer questions and advise, all those things. But nonetheless, and again, this, I'm not trying to shame anyone, but this is just what happens. In fact, I owned four gyms, right? And back in the day, in the old days, but people could, gym owners could rely on the fact that people would buy memberships that they either would hardly ever use or use sometimes right but they could weigh out so they could sell memberships that the gym couldn't really accommodate knowing that the majority wouldn't come anyway so it's okay right it's like that that's and so here's my theory which may be wildly flawed right my theory on why people procrastinate is I think underlying for a lot of people it's fear, but it's like we also love being comfortable and often the things that we need to do to create the results we want are uncomfortable. And that's a very simplistic snapshot. It's like, yeah, I know I need to do that, but that's hard or that hurts or that's scary or that's uncertain or uncomfortable or unfamiliar, and I hate all that stuff, so I'm going to start Monday. Mm-hmm.
00:28:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you're right, sort of on target there and, you know, and talking about some of the specifics in that situation with the gym memberships and we've seen similar stats here in the UK as well. But yeah, from my perspective and Tim Pitchell, who's a person who got me into this field back when I was a PhD student back in the day in Canada at Carleton University, you know, back in 2013, we put together sort of a model, a working model, I guess, if you like, of why people procrastinate that went against all the behavioral economics, you know, it's all about lack of motivation or it's discounting temporal discounting. So you're discounting future rewards and you were doing this rational weighing. Well, those discounts, those rewards in the future that I'll get from using your gym example from being, you know, more fit are, you know, they're outweighed by the rewards I get right now from being more comfortable. So this is rational choice. But we said, no, there's some problems with that because on the surface, procrastination is irrational. It's not something that anyone would rationally choose to do. So when you apply rational formulaic ways of thinking about procrastination, you're always going to come up short in terms. of fully explaining it. And so what we propose and what you kind of described there is that actually emotions are ground zero for procrastination. We procrastinate not the task, but the difficult or challenging or uncomfortable emotions that that we associate with the task. And this can be what we anticipate. So a bit of effective forecasting, anticipating that it's going to be difficult going to the gym. It's going to be hard. I'm not going to like it. You know, we base these, you know, our past experiences or what we've heard from others or just similar types of tasks. And because I don't want to experience that, I want to avoid those negative states, I will Put that task aside. And that gives me an immediate mood relief. And so it's a form, it's a maladaptive form of mood regulation, short-term mood regulation at the expense of achieving our long-term goals. And yeah, the gym and the health stuff, it fits perfectly with that. And in fact, there was a study conducted a few years back in Israel with the general population, and they looked at the tasks that people procrastinate the most on, and health came up as number one.
00:30:54
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:30:55
Speaker 1: Yes.
00:30:57
Speaker 2: And what's interesting is like over the years when I would talk to people just generally about why they don't use their gym membership or, and again, just curious, just conversation, no judgment or shaming, but the number one reason, I don't know what it is now, but the number one reason that people would give.
00:31:16
Speaker 1: Back in the day was time, like a time availability.
00:31:23
Speaker 2: And You know, and this is in a country where even 20 years ago, the average Aussie watched 20, 25 hours of television a week. It's different now because it's all phones and iPads and computers, right? But when I would say to people, well, you know, there's 168 hours in a week. You could exercise three times a week for 30 minutes, 1.5 hours out of 168, less than 1% or whatever. And, you know, get pretty good results if you're doing the right thing the right way. But it's hard to take responsibility, I guess, and to say, well, I just don't want to do it, or it's just uncomfortable, or it's not important enough to me at this point in time. I'm more interested in comfort and convenience, which is obviously nobody articulates that, but that's kind of what's going on. And I'm the same with other– I'm fine with health and fitness, but there are other things that I avoid.
00:32:20
Speaker 1: That I shouldn't avoid. Mm-hmm. Because I just hate it.
00:32:24
Speaker 2: And I'm like, yeah, just, I'm the same as them, but with another issue.
00:32:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's the avoidance of managing those emotions. And I think This is where, you know, difficulties in regulating one's emotions come into play. And there's been research on this, too. So when you teach people better, healthier, more adaptive emotion regulation strategies instead of procrastination. So we could look at procrastination as a maladaptive emotion regulation strategy. We could also look at it as a maladaptive coping strategy.
00:32:53
Speaker 1: Right.
00:32:55
Speaker 3: But when you give people a better toolkit of ways of handling their emotions and not surprisingly their tendency to procrastinate tasks goes down because you know we're using that as an external way of managing those emotions that task that nasty task that threatens our self-esteem or fear of failure or it's just plain boring or it's stressful or anxiety provoking whatever it is it's blooming is staring us in the face we take it we put it aside and Immediate relief. We feel great. And the problem with that is it's reinforcing. Yeah. We've just rewarded ourselves, right, by removing those negative emotions from thinking about that task by putting it aside. The problem, though, comes in is it. It becomes a vicious cycle because we know we put it off. We can only put it off for a certain amount of time. And sometimes we might go do something pleasant. So just to be clear here, people often think of procrastination as just you do other things that are more pleasant. You choose and you value those more pleasant activities than that task. That's not the case at all. Okay. Because often, often when people procrastinate, they clean their house. They alphabetize their, you know, their spice rack. They do ridiculous tasks that take enormous amounts of effort and work and are not fun and are not pleasant. Just so they feel like they're doing something because they know they're not doing that task that they should. So it's not about the distractions. This is why distractions, social media do not cause procrastination. They just make it easier to procrastinate. Right. So we cover up those things. potential feelings that have come back to bite us by maybe engaging these other pleasant tasks. But eventually, and there's been tons of studies to show this, we realize we put that task off. And then what do we feel? We feel ashamed. We feel guilty. We start becoming more self-critical. And so what does that do? That has another layer of negative emotions on top of a task that we're already feeling really bad about, which is why we put it off in the first place. So go round and round and round. And this is why guilt and, you know, getting on somebody's case when they're procrastinating does not work.
00:35:02
Speaker 1: Right.
00:35:03
Speaker 3: Right.
00:35:04
Speaker 1: What about You know what's interesting?
00:35:06
Speaker 2: I was just thinking about, so my background is working one-on-one with people in gyms with my stuff, but with personal training. So back in the old days when personal trainers didn't exist, I and a few others started personal training 100 years ago.
00:35:22
Speaker 1: And I think that.
00:35:26
Speaker 2: Like a lot of the people that I worked with, because they had structure, they had a process, they had accountability, they had an appointment time, they didn't want to let me down, they were investing money. So a lot of people who were procrastinators with exercise actually became quite committed because that emotional part to an extent was removed because now they had bought into a process of and there were negative consequences of not showing up and.
00:35:58
Speaker 1: All of that.
00:35:59
Speaker 2: So I think, you know, so if when we, you know, something that we're avoiding or procrastinating about, if we set a goal, create a timeline, create structure, I don't know if these things are part of it or not, but all of that strategic, logical, practical stuff around the emotional, does that help or no?
00:36:23
Speaker 1: It can.
00:36:24
Speaker 3: It really depends on the extent to which that emotion and or avoidance of that emotion is driving. So often the intensity of that emotion plays a role. So I like to sort of recently I've been thinking about this more in terms of, say, you know, a task has what I would call an aversiveness quotient. So if it has a low aversiveness quotient, but it's enough to make you procrastinate, say it's like a three or a four. some of the scaffolding with structure and all that. And we know from the research from decades ago that tasks that are ambiguous, that are unstructured, not clear, tend to be procrastinate for the same sort of reasons you were just mentioning. Um, so, but so if the emotion there is a lower level intensity, whatever flavor it is, right. From boredom to stress, um, then that can help. But I would argue that that's still not going to, that's going to create a pathway is going to create a, you know, uh, sort of a route for you to be able to achieve that goal and sort of focus on things but the one piece that's in there is still emotional that it would help you overcome and this is meaningfulness because if you invest money if you're not wanting to let you down if you've got all these other things what you've now highlighted is why this task is important to you why the task is meaningful and so when something's meaningful we're okay with putting up with a bit of discomfort because the meaningfulness is what's important we understand that meaning sometimes takes a little bit of pain to get some gain right yes um and you know i had a phd student a couple years back who tested this very hypothesis and she had people who were procrastinating they came into the study yeah i got this task i'm procrastinating on She put them in three different groups, right? So we used typical experimental design that we use in psychology. And one group, they didn't do anything, just wrote about stuff. Another group, she could think about something positive about this goal, right? So she wanted to test the fact that it's not just meaningfulness, it's not just feeling positive, right? She wanted to test against that. So write something positive about your goal. In the meaning-making group, she got them to fill out three simple sentences. This task is important to me because... This task will add to my personal growth because this task is important to other people because three sentences that they completed. And then when she followed up with them 48 hours later, the people who filled out those three sentences procrastinated less. So they had that a way of tracking how much time they spent procrastinating over those 48 hours. The ones in the positive group, they procrastinate a little bit less as well, but It still wasn't as much as the meaningfulness and there was definitely distinction. Obviously, those who did nothing just kept procrastinating. It's something about creating meaning for that task. Linking and meaning is about connectedness, right? It's looking not just at, oh, I want to go to the gym. I want to build more muscle. I want to lose more weight. Why do you want to do that? Because I want to live a long, healthy life. Because I want to be free to travel the world. I want to be around for my grandchildren. so these are the higher overarching meaningful goals the things that are really important to us but sometimes these smaller goals which can seem really uncomfortable and difficult at the time like going to the gym regularly for example we lose track of why we're doing that and we once we reconnect them to that meaning structure in our life now it's like okay right that's why i'm doing this You know, and yeah, it's going to be a little uncomfortable, but that's okay because I'm going to get that big goal. And this can reignite the motivation that people sometimes need to sort of push through those difficult emotions and achieve their tasks.
00:40:03
Speaker 2: I'm just thinking as you're talking about, I don't know if this is the right term, but I'm going to use it, psychological leverage where somebody who's a bit like, yeah, I'll get to it. you know, a guy, let's use a guy, 50 year old guy. He's like, yeah, I want to lose a bit of weight and I want to cut back on the booze and I want to, you know, whatever, all the things. And then he goes to the doctor and the doctor tells him, well, you're actually diabetic. And these are some of the potential consequences. You're type two diabetic. And this is what's likely to happen to you over the next five years, 10 years. by the way, your life is probably gonna be shorter, your health span will be shorter, all these things. Then all of a sudden this guy's mindset shifts. So he's still the same guy with the same genetics and the same resources and the same hours in a day. But now there's been this psychological kind of awakening or curtain being pulled back. And then he goes out and theoretically turns around his life. Like the only thing that changed was he got some new information. Is that a possibility?
00:41:09
Speaker 1: Does that?
00:41:10
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:41:10
Speaker 3: So within classic behavior change models, such as the health belief model and theory of planned behavior, often what is a triggering point, it would call sort of a call to action, right? You get a diagnosis, a relative, you know, dies from or gets very critically ill from a condition related to, you know, the behavior that you're wanting to change. And these sorts of moments can be the times where, like you said, people see what's happening, but that I would still put that in the meaning framework because now those changes have meaning for you, right? Like now it's because you want to, like that goal of wanting to live a long, healthy life is being.
00:41:48
Speaker 1: Threatened, right?
00:41:50
Speaker 3: And so, you know, the meaningfulness of getting fit becomes that much more salient for you. And that is, again, you've activated the meaning. So I think a lot of what we do and don't do You know, especially when it's mundane tasks that we put off, they're really uncomfortable and unpleasant. Once we realize, you know, why am I doing this? Oh, right. That's why. OK, now it's important. And now you see all your tasks and things that you have to do and you connect them together in a network of meaningfulness that can fuel your motivation and your perseverance and your tolerance of the inevitable and negative states you're going to experience as you go forward on your journey towards achieving this meaningful goal.
00:42:35
Speaker 2: What about, I'm sure you have an opinion about this, what about perfectionism? What role does that play?
00:42:41
Speaker 3: It plays a huge role. But just to be clear, though, too, there are different forms of perfectionism. You know, we tend to lump them together, but what decades of research has shown us is we have these two types of ways. In the research field, we call it perfectionistic concerns and perfectionistic strivings. So a lot of us know about strivings, right? It's that perfectionism where I want to be better. It's like we were talking about before. I want to improve. I want to be the best athlete I can. I want to be the best student I can. I want to be the best business person I can. And so it's apparently, I say apparently because we're always influenced by society's norms and influences. But apparently the standards you're trying to reach are your own. You said, I've set the standard. I want to do this. No one else is telling me to do this. I'm driving this. I wouldn't totally agree with that. And the research suggests as well, too, that it is somewhat influenced by external factors and other people's perceptions of who we should be and what we should achieve. So that's the one form, professional strivings. And we associate that with academic achievement, you know, The other form is perfectionistic concerns. And this is a form of perfectionism that has much more to do with other people's standards of success, society's standards of success. My parents say I should become a doctor. Society says I should have made so much money by the time I'm 50. You know, social media says I should look like this, right?
00:44:23
Speaker 1: Yes.
00:44:24
Speaker 3: So it's those external influences on who we should be and what our goal should be. That form in particular, we found in a, we did a meta-analysis, which is really just basically saying we look at all the studies ever done, looking at procrastination and perfectionism, and we look at to what degree that they are related. And so we looked at about 44 studies. It was over 10,000 people across these studies. And what we found was that it was this more self-critical, socially prescribed type of perfectionism that was related strongly to procrastination, whereas this personal strivings part wasn't really significantly associated. So that tells us again that when we're feeling the external pressure, right, to be more productive, right, to be healthier, to look a certain way, that type of external pressure driving our own, what we think are our standards for how we should be relates to very strongly to procrastination. And part of it is because we're forming goals based on what other people think, not our own understanding of what we're capable of, what makes sense for us, what, you know, taking into account our limitations. So if you, part of the process of deciding whether you're going to do something is you go, okay, here's what I want to do. Okay. And then before you even take action, you do kind of, you know, almost unconscious, you get a sense, can I do this? Do I have the capacity to reach that goal?
00:45:56
Speaker 2: Right.
00:45:57
Speaker 3: And, and then, you know, do I think I'll be successful in reaching this goal, which is partly based on whether you think you've got what it takes to actually follow through. Now, if those goals are externally set, they're probably not going to have a lot to do with your own internal abilities. And so most often you're going to go, I don't think I can do this. So you never start, right?
00:46:20
Speaker 2: Whereas if there's... That self-belief and that lack of confidence and the.
00:46:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, because they're not your goals.
00:46:29
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:46:30
Speaker 1: Yes. Yes.
00:46:31
Speaker 3: They're unrealistically high goals that are beyond your capacities and the limits of what you can do. So it makes sense to not do them, but at the same time, you're thinking you should do them and you've set an intention. And so technically you were procrastinating.
00:46:49
Speaker 2: What is the question that you want me to ask you that I haven't asked you?
00:46:54
Speaker 3: Um, Oh, I don't know.
00:47:01
Speaker 2: Is there a question that I should ask that I'm not asking?
00:47:07
Speaker 1: I guess....
00:47:09
Speaker 3: I mean, there's two, but you can choose.
00:47:12
Speaker 2: I don't want to make you do all the work, but you might as well host and be the guest. So what's the question that I'm like, I'm sitting here, I'm thinking, I bet there's an obvious question I'm not asking about this. And I'm sure my listeners are like, ask her this. What is that question, Puff?
00:47:34
Speaker 3: OK, so if I take from the lens of what the listeners would probably want. So how do you how do you deal with that? How do you help people who are struggling with procrastination? Is there a way to solve it? Is there a way to reduce it? I think that's a big question everybody wants to know. Okay. But the other one, okay, the other one I would say is probably so you don't get your stuff done. What's the big deal? Why is procrastination? Why it's a problem, right? The second part of the title of my book, why it's a problem.
00:48:05
Speaker 1: Yes. All right.
00:48:08
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk about, and I know there's no blanket solution or fix or solve, But if somebody is listening to, well, I would say there's thousands of people listening going, I am a procrastinator, if not all the time, sometimes, and it impacts my life somewhere between one and 10 on the scale. Is there a starting point? Is acknowledgement the starting point where I'm avoiding this or I'm not dealing with that and understanding the source of the procrastination?
00:48:46
Speaker 1: Is that a starting point?
00:48:49
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I would say not the source of procrastination because we know what the source of procrastination is. It's emotions. So what a difficult, challenging, unpleasant emotion. So What are the negative emotions associated with that task? And you have to you've got to surface those because so often, like you said, we put like the example you gave is, you know, what people do. I don't have time. No, no, no, no. That's not what's driving your procrastination or I've got too many distractions in my life. No, that's not what's driving your procrastination. There's an emotion that you're avoiding as a way of. managing that emotion. And so procrastination is your avoidant response to that. So surfacing those emotions. And then understanding where those emotions are coming from. And often they're driven by the thoughts we have. It can be driven by perfectionistic thoughts, for example, right? I'll never get this as perfect as I want it to be. So why bother starting? Other people won't like what I do when I finish this. So there's no point in me even starting. This is going to be so difficult. It's going to take so much time. I'm going to be so stressed and so frustrated. I really don't want to put myself through that right now. So I'm not even going to start. That's the effect of forecasting.
00:49:57
Speaker 1: Um, or you know what?
00:49:59
Speaker 3: I should be more productive. Look at society, look at all everyone around me, you know, get more done in a day and everyone's so productive and I'm not what's wrong with me. So I'm not even going to start. I'm not even going to tell anybody I'm procrastinating. I'm even going to avoid giving the appearance procrastination because I'm people will think worse of me for that. And there's, again, a lot of shame around procrastination because of those societal norms as hyperproductive, uberproductive kind of norms that we have that everyone should be doing the most. Everyone should be doing their maximal. Everyone should be becoming their best self. You know, it's a lot.
00:50:32
Speaker 2: Just take a stroll on Instagram and we realize how amazing everyone else is and how pathetic I am. Yeah. Yeah.
00:50:42
Speaker 3: And so those norms feed into the shame and the hiding. And unfortunately, people don't get support for that. So you're right. There's not any one, you know, way of solving. And I think the first step, though, is surfacing those emotions and then showing yourself some compassion. Because if you start beating yourself up about your procrastination, there are studies or scientific studies that show when you do this, you will procrastinate more. OK, this is a fact.
00:51:10
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:51:10
Speaker 3: OK, because you are layering on more negative emotions. That's why. And this is exactly what this one study that did this following students over a two week period. And they found that those who felt guilty about it beat themselves up more about it, procrastinate more because they felt worse. Another study found that in similar situation with students, we obviously we study students a lot because they are high procrastinators. They're in a high pressure environment. They've got a lot of time, limited tasks to deal with. Students who forgave themselves for the procrastinating. right procrastinate less but also those who are self-compassionate who say you know what yeah i'm not happy about the fact that i'm procrastinating but beating myself up about isn't going to you know solve anything and in fact i can i've made some good progress i can just need to continue and it's going to help me achieve those goals so that can help the meaningfulness can help um Recently, I've tried to... I mean, this has been a big issue for me. I have someone researching in this field for over 25 years now. What do you do to help people? This is great, got all this academic scientific knowledge, but how does it get translated? So the book was one step towards that. But I think... If you're a procrastinator and things are difficult, reading a long book sometimes can be a challenge. You have to be really committed to read that book. So we tried to distill what was in the book and sort of other recent developments into a toolkit. And so I have put together a free toolkit for people. to use that walks right through. Here's the harms and we've made it as short and concise as possible. We've also made it neurodiverse friendly. So specifically for people with ADHD, where we do see higher rates of procrastination because of the difficulty that group of individuals has with emotion regulation. It's not attention control, it's emotion regulation. But anyways, this toolkit then walks you through what procrastination is, why it's harmful. how to surface those emotions. And there's got interactive elements. It's basically an interactive PDF document you download. And then there's like a suite of strategies, depending on the source of your emotions. And you find the ones, oh, yeah, it's because I'm a perfectionist. So what do I do here? Or it's because, you know, I lack meaning in this task, or it's because I'm worried that it's going to be too difficult. So I'm not even going to start. And so there's a suite of strategies in there that people can use as needed when they're struggling with procrastination to help them get on board with finding better ways to manage those emotions so they don't use procrastination to do it.
00:53:58
Speaker 1: That's awesome. Where do people access that, Professor?
00:54:02
Speaker 3: So it's called the tempo toolkit. So you can just Google tempo toolkit and it should come up pretty, pretty quickly. We've got, we've got web pages that tell about its development and everything you have to register to use it. That's just so, because it is a free resource, we have to track who's using it. We don't want people to take it and go off and try and make money off of it either. But, but it is there. We've had almost 3000 people download it so far. I'm getting really positive feedback. So, Yeah, it's there. It's there to help, but it's trying to translate the science into something that's accessible and can be applied to people's everyday lives.
00:54:41
Speaker 2: Well, you do a great job of making the science user-friendly.
00:54:49
Speaker 1: You know, that's the thing. Thank you. It's interesting.
00:54:53
Speaker 2: I'm not very academic, although I just finished my doctorate at the.
00:54:58
Speaker 1: Ripe old age of me.
00:54:59
Speaker 3: Oh, cool. Congrats.
00:55:03
Speaker 1: Thank you.
00:55:03
Speaker 2: Me just going into that space where I call myself a pracademic in a very academic environment and all of a sudden you're doing PhD research and running studies and getting participants and ethical approval and reading volumes of not particularly exciting, you know, articles and then, you know, learning to write at the level and all of that stuff, that it's such a culture and it's such a way of thinking and being, then to be able to take what you learn and then just chat with people who live in a different world to the academics and to academia and share your thoughts and ideas and knowledge and understanding and discoveries in a way which is actually just helpful to the ordinary person. I mean that respectfully to everyone. You know, that's a gift like that is a skill that a lot of people who come from research don't have. And it's trying to be on a podcast or write a book for the general public, which is readable and relatable and helpful.
00:56:12
Speaker 1: You know, was that a challenge for you?
00:56:14
Speaker 2: Because I know you've written a lot of academic stuff, but, but going on, how do I share these thoughts and ideas without using a certain language?
00:56:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, no, definitely a challenge. I mean, I have more of a non-traditional academic path myself. So I had a career before I went into academia. I didn't go in right out of, you know, um, high school and that, but, um, it still was a challenge because you're being even in academia trains you to write and think a certain way and to be precise and to be detailed and to use terminology. And so it has, you know, it's, it's taken me, you know, over a decade to, to learn that skill and a lot of it from doing a lot of public talks. So we started back when I was in Canada with, there was a local community center where they were, trying to bring in different, have different courses for adult learners. And they wanted a course that would take some of the science and psychology, psychology of wellbeing in particular, and make it available to their students because this was a big demand. So we put together a few of us in the psychology department and other departments at that time talks, and we had to challenge ourselves to put it together as not giving a lecture to undergraduate students, but These were intelligent. adults, some of them had degrees, but in other fields, so you couldn't, you know, and some of them were just your average single mother, you know, and we had to find a way to start communicating. And, you know, you start communicating, then you get questions, what do you mean by this? And so that feedback, that conversation with the people who you're trying to communicate with helps inform a lot. So I did a lot of that, did a lot of these public talks and get a talking at this level. I need to bring it in a way that's not talking down, but communicating clearly. and in a way that is relevant for people's lives. So that, yeah, it's probably over a decade of skill development. It's not something that I just woke up one day and did. It takes a while to do this, but I enjoy it because you get the insights from people who are applying this in their daily life. You kind of go, yeah, of course, that makes sense. And they will often inspire me to go on and do other research projects. So I love doing that type of science communication.
00:58:37
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, it's been fun for me and I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with our audience and to be on the You Project. Everyone, the book is called Procrastination, what it is, why it's a problem and what you can do about it. And before you go, Fuchsia, where else can people connect with you or find you or follow you if you want to share that?
00:59:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I have a website and that's probably the best landing page to find out anything new that's going on. We have a lot of animations we make that go kind of short explainer animation. about procrastination. And that's fuchsiasirwa.com. F-U-S-C-H-I-A. Sirwa, S-I-R-O-I-S dot com. And that website got pretty much everything on there. I've got a TED talk on there as well, too. And I will have a new book coming out next, maybe later next year on the psychology of procrastination. So that's sort of an updated, different sort of slant on it for those of you who are interested in doing more of a deep dive on the psychological aspects, but from a non-psychology expert perspective.
00:59:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it. I love it.
00:59:48
Speaker 2: We'll say goodbye off air, but officially while we're on air, thanks so much for being part of the project and good luck with everything moving forward.
00:59:57
Speaker 3: Okay, thanks. It was great talking with you today, Craig.