Instant Genius - Procrastination, with Dr Fuschia Sirios

Episode Date: August 15, 2021

Dr Fuschia Sirios, well-being researcher from The University of Sheffield, unpacks the psychology of procrastination – from why we do it, to how to stop. Once you’ve mastered the basics with Instant Genius, dive deeper with Instant Genius Extra, where you’ll find longer, richer discussions about the most exciting ideas in the world of science and technology. Only available on Apple Podcasts. Produced by the team behind BBC Science Focus Magazine. Visit our website: sciencefocus.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Music just as the artist intended. Visit Name Audio, and welcome to learn more. And welcome to Instant Genius, a bite-sized masterclass in podcast form. Each week, you'll hear world-leading experts talking about the most fascinating ideas in science and technology today. I'm Thomas Ling, Starfighter, a BBC Science Focus magazine. Now, chances are in the past few days you procrastinated at some point.

But why does procrastination happen in the first place? And what can you do about it? Today, those are the questions I'm pursuing to Dr. Fuchsia Soroy. She's a wellbeing and procrastination researcher from the University of Sheffield. Hello, Fusha. Welcome to Instant Genius. Hi, Thomas. Thanks for inviting me. So, when it comes to procrastination, I think most people assume it's a problem with time management. But I understand you don't quite see it that way.

No, I don't see it that way because the research doesn't actually support that. myth. I think the issue is, you know, we see somebody who's procrastinating and if we observe their behavior, we see them, you know, putting things off to the last minute, right? They've got all this time and they don't do anything. And there they are, like, you know, 48 hours or 24 hours before they had done and they're rushing to get things done. And, you know, on the surface, it might be easy to assume that, well, this is just somebody who didn't manage their time properly. Because why else would somebody be doing something at the last minute, right? But in fact, Research that has looked at procrastination and some of its causes has confirmed that it has very little to do with poor time management.

What it actually does have to do with is poor mood management. So what exactly do you mean by mood management? So what we mean by mood management is that basically people who procrastinate are procrastinating as a way of managing their mood, of managing the emotions and especially the negative emotions they have around a task, right? So we don't procrastinate on things that are fun or exciting. We procrastinate on things that we find aversive that induce negative emotional states within us, everything from something that's boring, all the way up to something that's really outright, you know, heart throbbing, stressful, and anxiety-provoking.

And as when we talk about procrastination as a mood management strategy, it really is a way of coping with those negative emotions. Most of us will get on with the task. We'll find a mean to regulate our mood around the negative task that we're having to deal with. And that could be because we might look at the task differently and see it in a better light. But also that task may bring up feelings about our own insecurities that can make us feel uncomfortable or feel challenged. And we might find a way to reframe those or to manage those feelings. But if you're someone who's prone to procrastination, you have difficulty managing the mood around that negative task. So what do you do? You take the task. You put it aside and they're,

it's entertaining. Now you feel better. You've just managed your mood, right? But not in the best way, because you're still going to have all those negative feelings about that task and any insecurities it creates in you. You know, once you're reminded that you're behind the deadlines coming up and you have to work on it. So that's what we say it's about poor mood management. And how does a sort of cycle of procrastination or chronic procrastination arise then? It can be quite a vicious cycle, you know, because there's a few things that feed in. So you might start off not engaging in a task. Maybe you've got a report to write for your boss and your manager and you are not sure what they want.

You're worried that this, you know, your future promotion and career might write on this, how good this report is. You're unclear about exactly what they want from you. So you've got some anxiety and uncertainty around that. And you've just, you've got some self-doubts about your, you know, your ability to write good reports. All these sorts of negative feelings then, you put off the task. But then what we know from the research is too is that when people put off the task,

they feel that a momentary sort of boost and shift from a negative mood to a less negative mood, whether it's neutral or if they're doing something fun, they might feel better for momentarily. But once that's gone, then the task remains. And then that's when the guilt kicks in, right? Because one of the things we know is that people who procrastinate and when we procrastinate, and when we procrastinate, we feel guilty about it. And we might even feel ashamed it, too, especially if it's something that somebody else might be keeping track of us for. You know, we have these social norms around productivity, right? Like, it's good to be productive. You'll see

it in all the blogs out there, all these productivity hacks, right? How to get things done. It's like the whole thing, we've all got to be productive to be good people in society. And so these unspoken norms are there. And if you're a procrastinator and you put off something, you're not being productive, right? So how are you going to feel? You're not just going to feel guilty you didn't get things done. You're going to feel ashamed. You're going to be embarrassed. You're not going to want to tell anybody that you're procrastinating.

And so those negative feelings from the guilt and the shame now pile on to a task that you already felt bad about. And what's it going to do is that going to make you want to get on with it? No, it's going to make you want to run away from it again, right? And so you can get caught in that cycle. And then we know that you can remember past procrastination too. So you go to start another next time you have to write a report. You remember the last time you procrastinate.

You start feeling bad again. right? And so this can continue and maintain a habit or a cycle of procrastination quite easily, especially for people who are prone to managing their negative moods around a task by, you know, disengaging from that task. Is it true that one of the reasons why people might procrastinate is a kind of failure to imagine how their future self is going to feel? It's, I would say it's a contributing factor. It definitely plays into it. So we know that there's a temporal aspect to procrastination, right?

So right from the get-go, when you procrastinate, you're making a decision. You have a temporal dilemma, right? Do I put the mood of my present self above what my future self is going to experience if I put this task off and it's going to be the stress of that? And so what we say happens is that you favor that immediate move because it's more real to you. You're feeling bad now. That's more real to you than how bad your future self is going to be. feel when they're running up against a deadline and stress out of their mind, right? And so there is that disconnect from that future self at play when we procrastinate because

our future self is very abstract, right? Other researchers have actually looked at the areas of the brain that are activated when people think about their future selves. And one of the kind of general findings from that research is that they, if they show, you know, ask people to think about their, say, six-month future self and then ask them to think about, you know, a movie star, you know, somebody that you kind of just know abstractly, right? So, you know, Emma Stone or Brad Pitt or somebody like that, right? The brain lights up the same way, right? So the areas of the brain that are activated are the same way. In other words, that future self is no more familiar to you than

these distant movie stars that are just sort of these abstract figures out there. But what they do show, though, is too, is that for those individuals, and there are some individuals that have an easier time of connecting and feeling close to their future selves. As they see those future selves, be more tangible, more real, there is a different activation pattern when they look at the functional magnetic resonance imaging scans of activation that shows that it's more like a friend or a close friendly member. So there's something very real going on in the way we think about our future selves. And if you're someone who's prone to procrastination, you are going to be tend is to see that future self as being more like a distant stranger, which then leads into

actually thinking about, well, if that future self is distant and abstract, well, maybe they can be better than I am right now. So, you know, how many times we do something, we say, well, I'm just too tired to write the reporter. I've got writers flock or, you know, I'll have better ideas tomorrow. Future me will be, you know, have much more willpower, much more self-discipline, be in a much healthier state. Future me is going to be all these wonderful things that I can't be right now. And it's really easy to make those kinds of, draw those sorts of conclusions if we think a future self as being something abstract.

And we make them, you know, a future you to be out like a superhero, right? It's going to just save the day and do all these things that we can't do right now. But the fact the matter is of that future you is a week from now, right? That future you a week from now and now there's not going to be that much change. you're not suddenly going to have all this inspiration or willpower or any of those things that you feel that you're lacking right now to get on with your task. So we can get caught in that trap of sort of making our future self our beast of burden, really, and just passing along all the things that we can't do right now. You've sort of mentioned a few times about people being

more prone to procrastination. What makes somebody more prone to procrastination? Is it genetics? I think there's a variety of different factors. There has been some very, very, interesting behavioral genetics research, you know, looking at twins raised together in a part and their propensity for procrastination. And what that research suggests is at least what they call the phenotypic level, which is at the behavioral level. So what we see is the expression of the genes, that there is, by some estimates, 46% heritability of this tendency to procrastinate, which sounds like a lot. But actually, I think a lot of, if you think of procrastination is a tendency or as a trait, I mean, this is, it's similar to a lot of other traits that are out there as well, too. And of course, we know that procrastination is linked to some of these big five-factor traits like low levels of conscientiousness and high levels of neuroticism, for example. So it sounds like a big number, but a lot of traits have that type of phenotypical, you know, underpinning at the genetic level. It doesn't mean that you're, that's it. It's in my genes, right? It's not an excuse, right?

It just means that there's some of the ingredients that go into procrastinating, such as difficulties in emotion regulation, for example. And then you have that difficulty in emotion regulation. And if you add in a dash of impulsivity, you're going to impulsively take the easiest route to manage those emotions and then disengage. That's where the impulsivity piece comes in. But it's a difficulty with the emotion regulation first and self-control and these types of things. So there's a lot of different factors that come in play,

but these are also things that people can, you know, work on, though, too. Like, there's things you can set up in your environment to help reduce those tendencies that might be there. And there's, you know, it is really just about learning a new set of habits in many ways. What are the help drawbacks of chronic procrastination? So that's an area that I'm quite familiar with. That's something I've been studying for over 20 years. And it seems when I tell people that,

procrastination can be bad for your health. They often kind of look at me a bit strange, like, really? It's just not being very productive, right? You're just not getting your stuff done. But, I mean, there's a lot of correlates to go along with it, especially if we get back to this sort of, you know, mood regulation view of procrastination. So if you're not managing your mood and your emotions and the stress around that and you're feeling guilty and you're feeling stress because you're running up against, you know,

deadlines. So certainly we know what the health effects are of stress, especially if this is a pattern now that's chronic stress, right? So that can certainly create some issues. And so some of the early research that was done and that I did as well too, found that, for example, in student procrastinators, they had higher levels of stress. They also tended to report a lot more sort of acute health problems

that you would expect to see related to stress, right? So headaches, flus and colds, or which are a sign of a suppressed immune system, which of course comes from being exposed to stressors, even muscle aches and strange, you know, tensions in the body and that type of thing. But also, we also looked at that time at health behaviors too, because if you're putting off things that are unpleasant, well, you know, going to the gym or, you know, getting out there and exercising or giving up your sweets or your crisps are going to be unpleasant for some people. So these are the sorts of things that you might be prone to avoid doing too

and therefore not follow through on your health behaviors. And that's, so over the years, we found consistent evidence that people prone to procrastination have higher levels of stress. They have more acute health problems. And they put off important health behaviors. And this didn't, in our early studies, it didn't make a big difference for the students. But what we found is when we started looking at adults

around middle age or so, those of in one particular study, we found that those who were prone to poor heart health, so they had hypertension or diagnosis of cardiovascular disease, actually scored higher on the scale measuring chronic procrastination compared to healthy controls, which suggests that, you know, years of stress and putting off health behaviors might have contributed, because we know that stress and health behaviors are two contributors to the development of poor heart health. And in this analysis, I controlled for pretty much everything else. I even controlled for big five factors that are known to predict, you know,

the occurrence and development of heart disease. And actually having a propensity to procrastinate or sort of trait procrastination was the strongest personality predictor of poor heart health in this particular sample. And we compare it, I think it was 182 people with poor heart health to a sample of 500 healthy controls. I guess that makes the next question very important. and it's probably a question that people really want to know the answer to. How do I stop procrastinating? To say if someone was listening to this podcast right now instead of doing their work, what should they do?

There's a few things you can do. First of all, and it sounds kind of counterintuitive is don't be hard on yourself. And people, what? You should be hard on yourself, right? This is terrible. You're procrastinating. And again, that goes back to those social norms I mentioned, right? So we naturally, procrastinators feel bad. They feel bad when they procrastinate. And we all, we just naturally do. We know we're, we haven't been, you know, followed through in our commitments and we know the impact it can have. But don't add to those negative feelings by beating yourself up about it. So, you know, try to be sort of forgiving and understanding and compassionate. That's the first thing you have to do, because the more you kind of crack the whip on yourself about it, you'll actually, it can work against you,

especially if you are in someone who's more prone to procrastination. So the key there really is, first of all, not adding to those negative feelings anymore than what you already have, because that's what drives the procrastination in the first place, so you don't want to do that. But you also want to shift those feelings too, right? Shift them to something that's positive and potentially to something that's meaningful. So even if it's a really boring task or a task you're really fearful of because you're worried about what other people are going to think can say, you know, or maybe you won't be able to get it just right, right? Because we know perfectionism plays into procrastination, right? Then, you know, take that task and see,

is there something meaningful? Is there something positive? Like, what does this task, this boring or this, you know, really unpleasant task mean in the larger scheme of things in terms of my goals and the things that I want to do? And that can be enough to generate positive feelings and actually get you to stop procrastinating. And one of my PhD students, CeC Yang, she actually ran a study to test this idea. She ran a really nice experiment. And she gave, she had three different groups, had a control condition where, you know, they all had goals that they were working on that, you know, that over the next couple of days they had to make some progress with. And she, in the one group, she asked them to just think

some happy thoughts about the goal, you know, just some positive thoughts about it. in the control group, it was just writing some facts down about the goal, nothing to get any emotion involved. But in the meaning-making group, she asked them to think about something that was meaningful and then finish the sentence. So this task is meaningful for my larger goals because, you know, these sorts of statements. So she had them complete these statements that were sort of directing them to think a little bit

about the meaningfulness of that task. And then she got them to check in with her a couple of days later. and they actually had to record, sort of in time block intervals, what they were doing in that time and whether or not they were procrastinating. And added that all up, and what she found was that those who use the meaning-making sort of way of looking at their task and trying to find something more meaningful, procrastinated significantly less. You know, everyone puts stuff a little bit of time anyways when they're working on something. But it was a huge drop in the amount of time that they spent procrastinate compared to the control group. and even to the positive group too. Do you need to make a task just meaningful for yourself or just thinking about other people help?

It can't be for other people too. So for example, if you hate buying gifts, you know, you hate going out and shopping and buying gifts for people because you're worried whether it's not going to be the right thing and all that sort of thing, you know, you might never enjoy going out shopping or buying gifts. But if you think about the other person and the smile it might put on their face, you see, then that can be enough to be. bring that positive thing in. Now you're focusing on something positive with the task. And I think that's really the shift, is just reframing that task and reappraising it in a way where you're not

focused on the negative and those negative feelings that are evoking it, but looking at it in terms of the meaning and seeing the broader implications of that. And that appears, at least from our evidence, to make a difference in whether or not someone's going to procrastinate on that task or the extent to which they will. Do you have any other kind of practical tips to help? procrastinator? So I think there's a couple of different things. I think we talked about the future self there. There's been some research to suggest too that you know imagining your future self is somebody that's real. Right. So if you've got a deadline in a week and you feel like you're about to procrastinate on getting on with things, imagine sitting down and actually imagining your

future self a week from now, handing in that report, doing things right, or stress out of their mind trying to try to get it done, right? And anything to close that gap. We've actually done a bit of the preliminary research. It doesn't matter whether you imagine your future self failing or succeeding. The fact is that you can connect with that future self will make it more real that deadline and make it more real for you that, yeah, I actually, you know, this is important to me. So in some ways, that can create a sense of meaning because you can see yourself actually finishing the task and what that means to you. So there has some connection there. So there has been some research suggesting these sorts of imagery and connecting with the future self can reduce

procrastination. And as I sort of mentioned at the beginning too, just, you know, being more self-compassionate, too, right? Just recognizing that, you know, you're not the first person to procrastinate, nor will you be the last, right? There's nothing special about you. It's a very human problem. Everyone has done it at some point or another. There's probably very few people on the planet. They've never procrastinated, but most of us have. So, you know, it doesn't make it okay. It just means that you don't need to, you know, berate yourself to such an extent that it's, you know,

you can't get on with things. Fine. You need to step back from it and just say, okay, right, I'm not happy that I procrastinated, but I can get going with things right now and I can make a difference, you know. The easiest way to reduce task uncertainty is to get the information you need before you start. And that can certainly, in a lot of instances, just bring down that level of anxiety enough to where you can go, right, okay, I can get on with this now.

Why can people, well, why do they procrastinate over the small list of tasks? Ah, yes. It doesn't have to be a big task, does it? It can be a small one. I think sometimes, you know, there is that small tasks and sometimes it can be representative of something larger. So sometimes it's the meaning we put into that small task. If I don't do this one little thing, If I don't answer that email just the right way, I'll make the wrong impression, right? Or I'll say the wrong thing and get in trouble. So we can read a lot more into these small tasks than, you know, what is necessary there. We can make sort of the mountains out of the mole hills, and then we can get, we can kind of

overthink them and get a lot of anxiety around them. The problem is that our ability to use that emotional crystal ball is actually quite poor, right? So a lot of studies have shown this that we overamplify. We actually think that we're going to feel a lot worse about things or that people are going to react a lot worse towards us on things than what they actually do. And then we also think that those feelings that will have, you know, in that situation, say we're having to deliver bad news or something are going to last longer, right? It's called a durability bias that there's going to be, those negative feelings are going to persist or that person isn't going to like us for a while or is going to be angry with us or will be angry with ourselves. And none of these things are actually true because when we imagine our feelings into the future, we don't take into account the coping strategies that we have.

Finally, what's the worst common piece of advice that you hear about fighting procrastination? The worst advice. Oh, my gosh. I go back to the myths there. I think a lot of people think that it's just about laziness, right? Like if you're procrastinated, you're lazy, and that is so self-damaging. so if you're telling yourself that, you're actually just setting yourself up to procrastinate more.

And if you're telling somebody else that they're lazy when they're procrastinating, you're kind of going to guarantee that they're going to continue to do it. So I think those sorts of advice, anything that feeds into negative feelings around the procrastination, you're lazy, you don't know how to manage your time. You know, time management, it's not good. You can manage all your time, but you get, really good at procrastinating, right, filling out a detailed diary of what you're going to do

every day. And that can actually be another form of procrastination in the end as well, too. Yeah, so I think just any sort of negative, you know, thoughts or criticisms that you'd have of yourself of other people for procrastinating is going to be bad advice. It's actually going to feed the problem rather than solve it. Well, brilliant. Well, thank you very much for all. All the good advice you've given us about procrastination, and hopefully we'll speak to you again soon. Okay, well, thanks. It was great chatting with you. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius. That was Dr. Fuchsia Soroy.

If you want to hear more from her speaking about the science of self-compassion, head over to the Instant Genius Extra podcast right now. If you've enjoyed this episode, please do leave a review whatever you're listening. This podcast is sponsored by Name, Audio and Focal. The texture and emotional depth of music can be lost through digital sources or poor signal. Name Audio believes you can have digital precision with analog warmth. Alongside French acoustic specialist vocal, Name creates high-end audio systems, combining innovation with craftsmanship, so you can listen to music, just as the artist intended.

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