The Real Reason You Procrastinate – Podcast Notes of WorkLife with Adam Grant

Procrastination as a tale that meanders through everyone’s life (even highly successful people): Margaret Atwood

• Claims herself as a ‘world expert on procrastination’.

• Despite this, she doesn’t turn in manuscripts late – the power of deadlines.
• Without a deadline, we are at the mercy of what life throws us, the process becomes muddled and the likelihood of finishing what we want is thus compromised

Procrastination throughout life

• It all starts at school
• between 80%-95% os students procastinate;
• half of them do it systematically.

• It doesn’t get better:
• 15-20% of adults are chronic procrastinators.

• The host considers himself a ‘Precrastinator’ – always wanting to finish ahead of schedule
• the opposite side of the procrastination spectrum also not so positive
• he jokes that even that can be annoying to colleagues because of him getting late to meetings when finishing things ahead of time

• Example of extremes: Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
• Sitting at a bath for hours at a time waiting for ideas

Aren’t procrastinators just really lazy?

• Writers are amazing procrastinators
• Margaret Atwood: “I see myself as lazy”
• Dr Fuschia Sirois considers this a myth:
• The root cause of procrastination is not about avoiding work, but about avoiding feeling negative emotions
• lack of confidence, incompetency, insecurity , anxiety
• thus, it acts a mood regulation mechanism
• a lot of the tasks we use to avoid “work”, still take a lot of work
• Even Dr Fuschia Sirois procrastinates sometimes
• But she adverts that chronic procrastinators are usually people who gradually start to:
• feel higher stress levels
• experience sleep problems
• do less exercise and eat junk food
• express depression and anxiety (eventually, even procrastinate looking for help)

Procrastination Under the Microscope: what promotes and what ameliorates procrastination

• ‘Procrastinagenic’ environment – a surrounding with stimuli that promote procrastination

• ‘Procrastinagenic’ tasks → writing as example.
• These are usually tasks characterized by:
• having a lack of autonomy
• having a lack structure
• being ambiguous
• being filled with doubts and uncertainty of outcome

• ‘be a little kinder to yourself’ → self-compassion
• accepting that its part of the human condition to procrastinate
• the next time you will be better

• neurotic perfectionists are more prone to it
• stop judging before you even produced your work

• Margaret Atwood and the ‘wise paper basket’:
• CREATE → evaluate → discard if not good enough
• notice that evaluation comes AFTER creation so that fear over outcomes when writing don’t block the process
• the author identified this shortcoming in her writing routine years ago where the morning would be wasted with worrying and by about 3pm when she starter writing, she would experience anxiety
• SOLUTION: double identity – ‘Peggy does the laundry, Margaret writes’
• the ‘want-self’ vs the ‘should-self’- the former is all about emotions, the latter is about reason
• the want-self: avoids pain and brings pleasure – Margaret while procrastinating by watching Captain Underpants
• the should-self is smarter and we can make your lives easier by
• planning and removing temptation ahead of time – taking willpower out equation
• scheduling work sessions – time and timing management
• creating To-Do and To-Don’t Lists

Societal and Organizational Impact

• What can organizations do about it?
• Start by redefining what “feels like work” vs real productivity
• Establish productivity as using time to accomplish things of value
• Nowadays, Netherlands has the shortest working week with an elevated productivity per hour

• Being busy motivates us to finish tasks faster
• as the saying goes: “if you want something done, give it to a busy person”
• Parkinson’s law – work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

• Productivity as a matter of Volume VS Value. Examples:
• Finland’s Prime Minister goal of a 6-hour and 4-day workweek

• The case with the authorship of The handmaid’s tale

• If gonna do the task eventually, you might spare yourself the agony and start it sooner.

References

• Attributions of Responsibility and Blame for Procrastination Behavior.

• Negotiating with Yourself and Losing: Making Decisions with Competing Internal Preferences

• How being busy can increase motivation and reduce task completion time.

• The Paradox of Family Structure and Plans after Work: Why Single Childless Employees May Be the Least Absorbed at Work

• Contingency management in writing and the appearance of creative ideas: Implications for the treatment of writing blocks