Hayden Finch PhD
Appearances
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
In general, probably. We know that humans are inclined towards procrastination and we have some evidence from researching other animals that they also are inclined towards procrastination. So there is something sort of like biologically driven about procrastination.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
By that we're talking about all of the things that influence that as a behavior. So we think of procrastination as a behavior, or in this case, like the absence of behavior. And when we're talking about psychology, we're not only talking about behavior, but we're also talking about the thoughts and feelings and even life experiences that influence that behavior.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
So all of that is part of the psychology of procrastination.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
That's definitely part of it, right? Like the language that we use to talk to ourselves about our behavior, it matters. It influences the behavior that ultimately we perform. And also it's not the whole story. You're right on that, that those are excuses or reasons that we give to justify a particular action or inaction, but it's not the complete story for sure.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
Right. Well, there's there's the emotional side of it, which my perspective is that there's this emotional side to it that we neglect. We think of, again, procrastination as a behavior, but we neglect this emotional side. So say you want to just fold your laundry. You've had it done. It's washed and dried, but it's not folded. And it's been something you've been putting off.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
There might be reasons for that. There might be legitimate reasons. There are other things that you've wanted to work on, other things you need to do, other things you want to do. But the other part of that story is that just like, I don't want to like that feeling that like I'd rather not. That feeling is a huge part of what ultimately motivates procrastination.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
There is some truth to that, that a certain group of people does work better under pressure. But by and large, almost everyone who believes that to be true about themselves is wrong. If we test that out in a research lab, we find that people actually perform poorer.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
They make more mistakes, for example, when they are under pressure versus when they have adequate time to really put some thought into it. So that is a false assumption that a lot of us are making about ourselves.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
Well, it's sort of not a problem unless it is a problem, right? And we might not be aware of the problems that it's causing, which is the trouble. Like we have evidence that procrastination affects loneliness. It affects economic difficulties. It affects depression and anxiety. And it sometimes is difficult to draw a straight line from my procrastination to my financial difficulties.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
Sometimes it's easy to draw that straight line and sometimes it's harder. And so that's the difficulty here is like it can be difficult to know all of the problems that are caused by your procrastination.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
And also sometimes the problems caused by your procrastination don't actually impact you so much, but maybe it's impacting your coworkers because you're always responding to emails at the last minute or you're The projects that you turn in aren't the highest quality and it doesn't really affect you all that much, but your coworkers or your boss cares more than you do.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
Yeah. One of the things that I've discovered in my career in the last few years is that even people who don't think of themselves as procrastinators, for example, I'm one of those. It's not something that I've personally ever really struggled with. I realized that even those people are procrastinating on something. And that's been a really interesting exercise for me professionally is to see,
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
Oh, me, right? Personally, I don't procrastinate on the typical things like work stuff or school stuff or even my chores, but I'm procrastinating on a whole lot of other things so that I can make sure that I get all of those things done in a timely manner.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
And when I look at procrastination through that lens, it seems like basically everybody I come into contact with is procrastinating somewhere in their lives to be able to make space for the other things that they're not procrastinating on.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
An interesting thing about procrastination is that people who procrastinate habitually tend to be pretty poor at estimating how much time a task will take, which is part of what influences procrastination. And that's related here because if I think I can squeeze it into an hour, And that would be like the right amount of time to really do a good job, but to not waste too much time.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
I could be off on my estimate. So I really have to start watching time in my life and getting pretty good at estimating what is the right amount of time to dedicate to a project.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
I think the second might be truer than the first. People who struggle with punctuality tend to also struggle with timeliness in other parts of their lives. It's just a difficulty with perceiving time in general. But people who are procrastinators don't necessarily struggle with punctuality necessarily. Their procrastination may show up with other things in life.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
There is definitely something to that. You would think that if I do something and I get a less than ideal outcome, that I would learn from that experience and change my behavior the next time. And that is true in some areas of life. For a certain group of people, and especially people who are habitual procrastinators, that tends to not follow.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
And so for people who just kind of like periodically procrastinate, yes, like that is probably what keeps them in that periodically procrastinating group of people. The folks who struggle with this habitually probably aren't learning from that experience. And my hypothesis is because they're actually learning something different.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
So rather than learning like, oh, like that was that didn't turn out well, I should do that next time. They're actually learning something different, like, well, at least I didn't have to deal with that for a month in prepping for this project or this performance. At least I just had to deal with that for a week or something.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
And so there's some other message that they're learning or some sort of like very strong emotional experience that's keeping that behavior pattern alive, even though it doesn't make good rational sense.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
Yeah, and that's probably because in your life, you've figured out how to manage yourself and your time in a way to keep those catastrophic consequences from being part of your life. Some people aren't able to manage the procrastination that well, and so they do end up with some pretty significant consequences. even catastrophic consequences in front of them. So you're right.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
It's a spectrum from people who really don't struggle with this at all to people who are struggling with it so much that they're filing for bankruptcy or they're losing their jobs or they're having other catastrophic consequences.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
Yeah, right.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
Yeah, it's a great question. And my thesis is that it's less about time management. and more about emotion management. So poor time management, to be clear, poor time management can certainly affect procrastination and improving those skills can definitely be helpful.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
So those are things like planners and setting priorities for the day and having some goals and getting organized, all of that, that can certainly be helpful. But ultimately, overcoming procrastination requires that you address the deeper emotional stuff that's going on.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
Well, for one, you have to identify it. So when you're looking at the kinds of things that you're procrastinating, you have to be honest with yourself about what's going on here. Why is it so hard for me to get my documentation done at work? Oh, for one, I just don't want to, right? That I don't want a feeling. documentation just isn't fun. And so I just put it off.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
But two, I also feel kind of ashamed that a lot of documentation has stacked up. And that doesn't feel good. I don't feel good about the job that I've done. I also feel really overwhelmed by how much has stacked up. And I feel scared because... Maybe you're a doctor, right? I don't get paid unless this documentation is submitted. And so I'm actually losing out on income for me, my staff.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
It's hard to pay my overhead. And so they're all of those emotions. And unless you address that anxiety and the overwhelm and these other emotions that I mentioned, you're going to have a really hard time sitting down and getting that documentation done because it's not as simple as just sitting down and doing it.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
It's like confronting the shame and it's confronting the anxiety and it's confronting like the real mass of the problem that is piled up in front of you.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
For sure. That's definitely going to be a key piece of it. Like, yes, yes. The task is not going to be done unless you engage with it. What we want to do is make it so that you can engage with it. What a lot of us do when we're dealing with procrastination is we have the idea like, oh, yeah, I need to sit down and go through the mail. Oh, yeah, I need to get my documents together for my taxes.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
We have that idea. And so we know that we need to do it. But what keeps us from getting from that idea?
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
to actually doing it is typically emotional something else comes up that we'd rather do something comes up that seems more important we like something comes up emotionally that kind of takes us off course and that's where we have to kind of put that under a microscope to figure out what happened between the thought i should get my tax documents together and then like the decision to not do it right now and that's where a lot of good work happens
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
Yeah, so we call this productive procrastination, right? So I'm procrastinating with something else that also needs to get done, is also important. It's just maybe not the highest priority right now or not really where I should be putting my time and energy. And that's a really interesting thing. So what happens is, say what I really need to be doing is getting my tax documents together.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
But instead, what I end up doing is organizing my closet. When I think about doing my tax documents, there's probably some sort of emotion that comes up in that, like probably they're just like, oh, that feels like a lot of work or I don't really want to do that. So some kind of emotion comes up in there and then I make a decision.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
Well, I'm going to do my tax documents anyways, even though I have that feeling or I'm going to go organize the closet right now. I'll come back to this later. And that decision point is really important because if I make the decision to, you know what, I'll come back to this later. I'll just go do the closet right now. That I just don't want a feeling goes away.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
And you feel this relief because that feeling disappears. And then even if that second behavior that I chose, in this case, cleaning the closet, even if that's not particularly exciting or fun, even if it's just like a little bit better than doing the taxes, that might be enough for our brains to prefer that. Because it doesn't have to be fun or have to be really that much better.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
It just has to be like a tiny bit less bad than what we were starting with. Because that relief that you feel in choosing that other option is kind of what keeps this cycle going.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
Yeah, that's a great tip. And it doesn't have to be 20 minutes, right? If you feel like all you can stand of this task because it's particularly aversive is one minute or five minutes, then that's a place to start. But the reason that is helpful is because having a guaranteed time that the pain is going to end helps us persist through pain.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
Just like if you were to take a cold shower and you know, I only have to be in here for three minutes. You can persist for that three minutes versus just having no idea when it's going to end. And it's kind of playing on that same thing. Having an end to the pain helps us persist through it.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
Yeah, it's one of those irrational things about human psychology. You would think that reminding yourself of how good this is going to feel at the back end would help us overcome that initial aversiveness. And in some cases it can. And I do think that's a useful strategy to deliberately take the time to remind ourselves that it's going to feel good.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
When you finish this workout, you're going to feel so good. That is a helpful strategy. And ultimately engaging in the task helps requires that we push through the difficult starting part more so than just kind of relying on knowing that it's going to feel good at the end.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
Right. And that's the emotional thing, right? Once you can get started, then the emotions are going to kind of take a backseat. The emotions are there to try to keep you from getting started. And they're really effective at that for a lot of people. But once you can get past that, then the emotions will go to the side and then it's a lot easier to continue engaging with it past that.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
one thing to keep in mind is that we can't rely on motivation as an antidote to procrastination that is one of the things that keeps procrastination going is this belief that oh i'll do it when you know when i'm motivated or i'll do it when i feel like or i don't feel like it right now so i'm just not going to do it right now so some version of i just don't feel like it right now i'll do it when when i do that will keep us stuck in procrastination
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
Indefinitely. We have to be able to find a strategy to do an activity even when we're not motivated. So motivation can't come before action. You have to reverse that. So take action first and then count on motivation to maybe come down the road, maybe. But we kind of want to just remove that from the equation altogether.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
Yeah, thanks, Mike. This has been a really fun interview. Thanks for the opportunity to share more about procrastination with your audience.
Something You Should Know
Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice
There is some truth to that. A certain group of people does work better under pressure. But by and large, almost everyone who believes that to be true about themselves is wrong if we test that out in a research lab. So that is a false assumption that a lot of us are making about ourselves.