Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | The Truth About Procrastination And How To Overcome It | Dr Ramani Durvasula #403

Episode Date: November 17, 2023

Procrastination is a common form of self-sabotage, resulting in many of us feeling stuck. Feel Better Live More Bitesize is my weekly podcast for your mind, body, and heart. Each week I’ll be featuring inspirational stories and practical tips from some of my former guests. Today’s clip is from episode 332 of the podcast with clinical psychologist, Dr Ramani Durvasula. In this clip, Dr Ramani explains how procrastination can be linked to anxiety and she share some practical ways to help overcome it. Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Show notes and the full podcast are available at drchatterjee.com/332 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk   DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

Today's Bite Size episode is brought to you by AG1, a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It includes vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important at this time of year. It also contains prebiotics and digestive enzymes that help support your gut health. It's really tasty and has been in my own life for over five years. Until the end of January, AG1 are giving a limited time offer. Usually they offer my listeners a one-year supply of vitamin D and K2 and five free travel packs with their first order. But until the end of January, they are doubling the five free travel

packs to 10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 332 of the podcast with clinical psychologist Dr. Romani. Procrastination is a common form of self-sabotage, resulting in many of us feeling stuck. In this clip, Dr. Romani explains how procrastination can be linked to anxiety, and she shares some practical ways to help overcome it. shares some practical ways to help overcome it. Getting to the core of self-sabotage is so essential. It's not like somebody wakes up one morning and says, I'm going to ruin everything

I did today. It's very subtle. And so what we sort of classically see in the self-sabotage universe is stuff like procrastination, social comparison, taking on too much. It's behaviors that almost set a person up to not be able to succeed. There's sort of different issues around self-sabotage, which is sort of what is the core of it, what might be driving it. Then there are the sort of foreshadowing behaviors like procrastination, social comparison. A great example would be going on social media. That actually is a form of self-sabotage. A person will, I'll give you an example, Rangan. A person will want to lose weight. Okay. And they'll go on social media ostensibly for inspiration and look at these people who have these dramatic weight loss stories. Even their friends who are getting up every morning and doing some CrossFit,

and then they're showing their smoothie they made for breakfast. And then this person simply isn't able to do that for whatever their reasons are. They may be very real practical reasons, but as they see their friend's success on social media at weight loss or even parenting is another great example. A person might be a parent of young children and feel like I'm failing at this every day. And yet they see their friend with their perfectly coiffed children and saying, I'm a failure. And so looking at that will make a person say, I don't even know why I should try. That's another example of self-sabotage. So, and then there's obviously the self-sabotage behaviors of not doing procrastinating because a person feels too overwhelmed. So it's a complicated behavior. You mentioned procrastination. This is something I think everyone, I think, at some point has experienced. So a bit of procrastination, at some point has experienced. So a bit of procrastination, I think we all do at certain times. But for some people, it's really quite paralyzing, isn't it? This inability to make a decision is keeping them stuck in their lives. So what are some things we can think about if

we're suffering from procrastination? So procrastination is a big one, right? Because it links very much to anxiety, okay? It links to another self-sabotaging pattern of perfectionism, which is a huge self-sabotage issue, right? And it is also, again, the taking on of too much. So when a person procrastinates, what you have to remember is we as human beings rarely do something unless it's rewarding.

That's how people are. We are ultimately really, really smart and angsty rats in a maze. We do things that feel good or feel right or feel better. And to that end, human beings, pretty much like all life forms, avoid pain. So procrastination is a form of avoiding pain. Now you might say, what pain is someone avoiding by putting something off? Because that task, that task may bring up feelings of inferiority. That task may bring up feelings of incompetence, of insecurity, of having to face down an uncomfortable truth, any number of things that that task, that thing that needs to get done represents. So what better way to avoid the pain than to not engage in the task? Okay. So now the task isn't getting done. For the moment,

you're relieved, right? I'm going to give you the tiniest, simplest example, because it happened to me an hour ago. I set my alarm for 5.45 this morning. So I'd be able to get up, take a shower, put my face on, be in front of you. But I had worked late last night. And when I woke up and it's still dark, right? So I was like, oh, I want to get out of bed. So I procrastinate 15 minutes, 15 minutes more. Now it's 6.25, reading the news, reading a book, anything to get out. It's very cold for LA here. So I get out of bed at 6.25.

Now I have 20 minutes to get ready, right? Scrambling into the shower, throwing on a face. My bathroom's a mess. The cat's food is everywhere, right? And I was like, oh, I want to be really prepared for this. And ultimately, yes, I was at 659 setting up my Zoom, but that's not how I wanted to show up. Now that's a small example, but why didn't I get out of bed? Not because I wanted to ruin talking to you today, but because

it felt good to stay in that bed. It was warm. It was, do you see what I'm saying? I was avoiding the pain. That's simple. Now take that to anything else, studying, cooking, meal prep, exercising. So I always will tell people that the most important thing to do is take a task and chop it up. Chop it up into manageable chunks. One way to do that is time. I'll tell people, set an alarm. You have to do whatever this thing is for 15 minutes. In 15 minutes, that alarm is going to go off and you can stop doing the task. In a majority of cases, a person's like, okay, 15 minutes, I can do it. I would say probably 60, 70% of people will keep going. They're like, okay, well, I'm doing it now.

And they'll turn off the alarm and they'll keep going. There is a subset that'll say, okay, the 15 is done. I'm out of this task. But most people will see it through further. It can also be taking it and breaking it into component pieces. I'm just going to chop the carrots first, and then I'm going to take a break. Whatever it may be, I'm not going to go and run 5K the first day I work out. The first day, I might do 10 minutes on a treadmill. What we're doing is trying to create habit versus taking on these enormous tasks. And I think the enormity of the task is also part of the issue. Is that, okay, a person saying, I have to study for the exam. Well, what does that mean? Does that mean you have to read this chapter, make an outline,

take a sample test, break down the big amorphous goal or task into its component processes? But that's practical. On the other side of this is the management of the anxiety. And that's a deeper dive. Now, ideally, if a person's in therapy, they could talk with a therapist about what they're actually anxious about. For a person's not in therapy, and this is not causing them significant distress, they can sit down and ask themselves a question. You're procrastinating. What are you afraid of? Okay.

What is the pain that's being brought out by this task? Because you're avoiding it and you're avoiding this because it's uncomfortable. And to really do a deep dive into what that discomfort is and to start to sort of take apart some of those beliefs, because in understanding that, the procrastination can lose some of its power. That avoidance piece, which is the core of anxiety, what are you trying to avoid? Because all of anxiety is about avoidance piece, which is the core of anxiety. What are you trying to avoid? Because all of anxiety is about avoidance. Nobody wants to feel uncomfortable. Why aren't you making that

phone call? Why aren't you answering that email? Why haven't you returned that text message? I was working with somebody recently who really struggles with social anxiety. And one of their biggest struggles was returning text messages and emails in a timely manner. And it was causing problems for this person, right? It was resulting in disrupted social events. It was leaving this person's social, people on this person's social network were starting to sort of split away from them.

They were screwing up job opportunities by not returning emails and even paying bills late. So there's a lot of things happening. And when we came to the core of it, what happened was this person then recognized, I actually don't know what to say. I feel like I'm hogging up people's time. It was, again, it was a very classically socially anxious sort of framework. it was a very classically socially anxious sort of framework. And then in not answering these messages for so long, this person actually did actually have a true mess on their hands now. It wasn't a mess two months before. It was a mess now when we were working on it. And so then it

became that slow burn of once an hour returning a text. And then once the person started doing one, they returned others. It wasn't easy because some people said, you know, we were hurt. You didn't respond to our messages. But when this person understood and was able to see in some ways that kind of the distortion of their belief that, you know, that they were using a people's time, they reached out to you. Why wouldn't they want to hear back from you? But that went to, again, a deeper core insecurity this person had. And that ended up becoming the work of therapy yeah i really love this it's really trying to dig into the root cause what's

really going on here let's not overly focus on the procrastination necessarily it's like what does that tell us what is that teaching us about what's really going on so i think that's a that's a really great example. For anyone who feels a little bit lost in their life, a little bit stuck, maybe they're procrastinating and they can't seem to make any changes. Have you got any final words of inspiration

or wisdom for them? I'd say this. I think a lot of, because so many of us work on computers, not all of us, but many of us do, lift your not all of us, but many of us do, lift your eyes. And that lift your eyes is a metaphor, not just even lifting your eyes off a computer,

but lifting your eyes out of your life for a minute, right? Get a different view, change things up, step outside. Even if it's wintertime, sometimes that whoosh of cold air can sort of change your perspective. The other thing I'm going to say is break things down, really break them down. Cause I think the more you say like, I am never going to get this house clean. I'll say, start with a drawer, just clean one drawer out. And if you want to keep going, keep going. But if not, you got one thing done, whether you break things down by time, by task, I'll say to people, do the easiest thing first because that builds efficacy. Like, oh, okay, look at that. I paid those three bills. Okay, let's go on to the next thing. Like

start with the easier thing, develop that sense of like, oh, I'm getting some things done and go from there. Also, the other thing I'd suggest to people is there was actually an interesting article in the New York Times about how messiness, like having a messy environment, is actually associated with mental health issues. And I think it's also associated with procrastination. Now, I understand some people say, well, actually clean to procrastinate. I do get that. And that's a subset of folks. But there's something about a messy space that can make it hard to get going. And cleaning something up is often a little bit easier than some of the other things we need to do. So maybe take that on and say, okay, this is the area I'm going to work in. So let me make this tidy so I can work in this

space. That could be another thing that you do. And then have some clear rewards. Say if I work for two hours, one hour, three hours, whatever, 15 minutes. At the end of that, I'm going to allow myself to whatever that to is. I'm going to take of that, I'm going to allow myself to whatever that to is. I'm going to take a walk. I'm going to allow myself to play one game on my phone. I'm going to play with my dog. I'm going to call a friend. Give yourself little meaningful rewards that actually feel good so that, again, like I said, we are existential rats in a maze. We always need some cheese to be hunting for. So figure out what your cheese is. Give yourself those rewards.

Because I think that that can also feel like, okay, I did this and now I'm doing this other thing and this is my reward. And so I'm going to keep going. You associate getting things done with a meaningful reward. Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. Hope you have a wonderful weekend. And I'll be back next week with

my long-form conversational Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.