Ologies with Alie Ward - Volitional Psychology (PROCRASTINATION) with Dr. Joseph R. Ferrari

Episode Date: February 25, 2020

“Everyone procrastinates, but not everyone is a procrastinator,” quoth Dr. Joe Ferrari, a charming, hilarious expert on the subject. The research psychologist, author and DePaul University professor sits down for a truly delightful exploration of why we procrastinate, how prevalent it is, when it becomes harmful, some myths about procrastination, why it’s similar to gambling, how decision-making can feel paralyzing, how to trust your own abilities, and most importantly -- what to do if you’re a chronic procrastinator. Also: how and why you should embrace failure. Oh and a weird ASMR pencil trick. Dr. Ferrari’s book “Still Procrastinating? The No Regrets Guide to Getting It Done” A donation went to: www.vasculitisfoundation.org Sponsor links: stitchfix.com/ologies; sakara.com/ologies (code: ologies); hellofresh.com/ologies10 (code: ologies10) California Academy of Sciences on March 5; Natural History Museum of LA County March 6; SXSW EDU on March 11 More links at alieward.com/ologies/procrastination Transcripts & bleeped episodes at: alieward.com/ologies-extras Become a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month: www.Patreon.com/ologies OlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes and STIIIICKERS! Follow twitter.com/ologies or instagram.com/ologies Follow twitter.com/AlieWard or instagram.com/AlieWard Sound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray Morris Theme song by Nick Thorburn Jarrett & Dr. Nick’s Sunday livestreams: mixer.com/mygoodbadbrainSupport the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

Oh, hey, it's your neighbor's cat who hangs out by the mailboxes and who should definitely be inside. But it's also very convincing when she asks for belly rubs. Alleyward, back with the most exciting episode of all that she's ever made. If you ask my subconscious brain and my thirsty heart, which you didn't, and I don't care. But this episode is about procrastination. It's not possible for me to be more ready for it. But before we dive in, I'm going to take a minute to let you know there are some live

things happening soon. Thursday, March 5th, I'll be at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. I'll be leading their Women in Science panel. And then the next night, March 6th, I'll be back in LA for the Natural History Museum's First Friday series. I'll be leading two chats called Secrets from the Vaults. And then I'll be at South by Southwest, EDU in Austin, giving a talk on March 11th. So if you want tickets for those, links are in the show notes.

Come say hi. Also, thank you to everyone on Patreon who supports the show and sends in their questions. Thanks to everyone wearing gear from oligiesmerch.com. There are t-shirts and sweatshirts and hats and socks. And thank you to everyone who has ever hit the five stars in iTunes or subscribed on all the platforms and, of course, who leaves reviews for me to just cradle in my palms like baby bird. And each week, I read you a newly hatched one, such as KC Mullins, 13, says, absolutely

love it. The journalist in me loves the little asides where you explain slash fact check something. And everything else in me loves everything else. Well, I think you're lovely, KC Mullins. So deal with that. OK, procrastinology. Let's get into it. OK, procrastinology, not a real word in the academic sense, bummer, but procrastination

has such a beautiful backstory. So pro means forward and crastiness means till next day. So to procrastinate in Latin means to forward things until tomorrow. It's like doing a chef's kiss while you're getting gut punched. Gorgeous. So volitional psychology comes from volition, which means intentional behavior, and that comes from the Latin meaning to wish. So this was a topic I could not explore soon enough as a people-pleasing human.

With a brain full of bees, I have the dirty secret of being a chronic procrastinator. The higher the stakes on something, the more terrified I am of starting it. If there are official government forms, I can't even look at them. I can't look at them until the day they're due, like big writing projects. I would rather clean a litter box belonging to an elderly tiger. Once while procrastinating, I googled procrastination and then I found out about a conference in Chicago run by the topic's most prominent research psychologist and a professor of general and community psychology at Chicago's DePaul University.

Thisologist got his bachelor's in psychology. Two masters in experimental and general psychology, a PhD in psychology, his list of published papers on the topic of procrastination is exhaustive. It is exhausting to fathom. This is the dude when it comes to the science of procrastination. So I reached out. He said yes, he would be interviewed, but if I made light of the suffering felt by chronic procrastinators, he would pull an Adam Driver on fresh air and he would walk right out of

the studio. I assured him I had the utmost compassion and also the ulterior motive of wanting to fix my own life. He said, okay, great then. We met up in a community radio station in a Chicago suburb, shout out to Elise of Ice Cream Media in Lyle. He was neatly dressed in a cashmere sweater and has a distinguished mustache, kind of like you would expect to find on a fire chief.

Time was ticking. We spoke as fast as we could and answered as many questions as we could possibly fit into this window. I had bought his book, So Procrastinating, The No Regrets Guide to Getting It Done, which explains that everyone procrastinates, but not everyone is a procrastinator. So who does what? And I prepared a list of questions that was mostly just an airplane napkin scrawled with the words why and how stop.

So we addressed both. So let's get this episode in your brains because no matter what your relationship to procrastination, this episode will change the way you look at yourself and your to-do list. So without further ado, absorb the wit and the wisdom of author, scientist, psychologist, and procrastination research legend, volitional psychologist, the Dr. Joseph R. Ferrari. A Ferrari is F-E-R-R-A-R-I, like the car. Okay, gotcha. You must have said that so many times in your life.

Many times. But you know what it means, Smith. It doesn't really? Mm-hmm. It means to blacksmith. Really? The iron maker. Ferros is Latin for iron.

There you go. So Ferrari, Ferrari, Ferrari, all means Smith. It's like Smith's might. I had no idea. It's nothing exotic. Okay. So you know Ferrari's rearing horse logo? I always thought that meant look how fast our cars go, like a really fast horse.

But then I was like, oh, maybe it's like a ferry or like a blacksmith that does horseshoes. And I just looked it up and Enzo Ferrari just borrowed the image of the prancing horse from a World War II fighter pilot's plane for good luck. Oh my God. Let's get back to procrastination. I am so sorry. So who procrastinates? What's the deal?

So they will not listen to anything that I say as to how to treat it. Yes. Because there's always a reason. These aren't stupid people. They're very smart. So doctor... I'm just going to move this away. Yeah, you can move that away.

I mean, when we're ready to start or you've started already. Oh. Yeah, we're already recording. Dr. Joseph Ferrari. Yes. You're a psychologist. I am. Is there a particular field of psychology that deals with procrastination?

I am trained as a social personality psychologist. That means a research psychologist. There are also clinical psychologists and counseling psychologists that have dealt with this topic of procrastination. But we're getting a little ahead if I may. Yeah. Okay. Because everybody procrastinates, but not everyone's a procrastinator.

I was going to ask if you have that tattooed anywhere on your body. No. That's my quote. I know. If you want to stole it and it's not right. What does that mean? How can you be? What the data shows is that 20% of adult men and women are chronic procrastinators.

What does that mean? They do it at home. They do it at schools. They do it at work. Relationships. You know they're going to show up late for events. They're not going to RSVP on time. They're never going to get that concert ticket because they never went or a sporting ticket

because they never went around and purchased the ticket. They missed doctor's appointments. They wait until the gauge goes on E before they get more gas. Wait for the third bill. 20%. Now you might say that's all. I know people that are higher. But that's higher than depression, higher than phobia, higher than alcoholism, higher

than panic attacks, higher than substance abuse and yet this is considered a funny topic. This is considered, procrastination is considered a non-serious disorder. I have had people get angry at me when they say, oh, I think May is mental health month. And I say yes and make sure we've put in procrastination. Oh, you're trivializing our other illnesses. No, this is more common than many of those other issues and yet people consider this a frivolous topic, 20% of adults. Okay.

Now we're getting right into it. So Dr. Ferrari says according to his studies and there are many, that figure tracks across all genders and nations, 20% of folks are chronic procrastinators and if you're listening to this, you either are one, you know one. Maybe someone sent you a link to this episode because working up to the last minute isn't queued anymore. Now college students, 70 to 75% of you procrastinate on assignments, but you do it less as you get older, which brings us back to Dr. Ferrari's motto.

Everybody procrastinates, but not everyone's a procrastinator. So everybody might put off a task. The college student might delay reading, studying, registering for a class, seeing the mentor. But if Izzo, is that her? Lizzo? I can't tell you that. If Lizzo gives a free concert to the first 50 people, they're there. If there's a kegabir for free in the dorm, they're there.

Well then they're not procrastinators. They procrastinate, but they're not procrastinators. So it's very important to the listeners, to people that do the research, that know that there's a difference between academic procrastination and global everyday procrastination or what I call chronic procrastination. They're two different animals. Every two years there's an international meeting on the study of procrastination. It was just held this past summer in Sheffield, England.

In 2017, I hosted it here in Chicago. That was the 10th biennial. So for 20 years, over 20 years, scholars have been getting together. What's interesting is that I'm pretty much the only US person, a lot in Canada, a lot in Europe. Now it's growing in Asia and other areas. But in the US, this topic is not considered a serious scientific topic. Right.

Why? I don't know. And every time we do these meetings, we tend to go back, because there's always new people coming to these meetings, to the notion of what's the difference between pondering and waiting and delay and dwelling and postponing and procrastination. Pausing, waiting, dawdling, that's the word, pausing, waiting, I want you to cut that out. I would not do him dirty like that. Anyway.

Pausing, waiting are all forms of delaying, but they're not the same as procrastination. The continuum goes worse. The question is, what's the tipping point? We don't know. But we should not consider delaying itself as the same. It's not that these people are lazy. Chronic procrastinators are very hardworking. That's something else.

That's something they shouldn't be doing. They're postponing what they're supposed to do for something else, and they've got good reasons. They'll tell you, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. They're very smart to keep coming up with plausible, believable reasons, and so you listen to them and you go, oh, oh, okay, that's why you can't do it now. And then next time, oh, oh, that's why, oh, oh, that's it. It's never taking ownership.

And as someone who struggles with this, I can say each of these excuses feels very real to the procrastinator. So it's not that we're lying to you. It's just that we're lying to ourselves, perhaps. And Dr. Furrier says that there's a tipping point between pondering and delaying and true chronic procrastination. That tipping point, I find, is usually my face tipping into a keyboard at 4 a.m. the night before something is due.

Pondering is a more cognitive variable or something about thinking. So indecision being indecisive is what we call in the field decisional procrastination. So I break them out as sort of separate. And again, there's a difference. What do you do if you have a person who's indecisive? Well, first thing to do, and I know you want to talk about treatment later, is you don't take them to a place where they have lots of options. I can't have a nightmare.

Yes. Out here in the western suburbs of Chicago, there's a movie theater in Aurora that has 31 movies. You don't take the indecisive to 31 movies. Why? Because you stand there and you say, so what do you want to see? And what will they say? I don't know.

What do you want to see? And you go, I know. But what do you want to see? What do they say? Whatever. Okay. And you look at your watch. It's 7 o'clock and they're all starting at 7.15.

We really got to decide. What do you want to see? What do they say? They have you pick and then they don't like that one. Brilliant people. So they make you choose, you see? And so it's never their fault. Yep.

Am I going to? No, no, no. I'm just making sure we're recording this because it's my favorite episode ever. Okay. Yeah, it's absolutely. So if I never choose, it's never my fault. You don't want to make a decision, that's okay. Your choice.

You have that right. But then, as we say in New York, shut up, okay? If you let me make the choice, you got to live with that, you see? So again, going back to the movie metaphor. So they see the movie. If the movie is good, we leave, we say that was great, that was wonderful. What suppose it's a dud, a stinker, a horrible movie? What do they say at the end?

This movie sucks. You want to know how to treat it? You don't bring the indecisive, a place where they have so many options because they can't handle it. All right? And again, they're not bad people. It's just that... It's difficult.

It is so hard. Absolutely. But if you do the wrong thing, what if you do it wrong? That's the hardest. So, so, so, so. Life is full of... Look, when God made us, she gave us knees. Yeah, you have to feel it.

Okay? All right? She gave us knees to bend. We're going to fall. The question in life isn't, are you going to fail? The question is, when will you fail? You see, people think I don't want to fail. I can't make mistakes.

No, no, no, no, no, no. You will make mistakes in life. Life is full of failure. The question is, those knees get you down, but those knees get you up. That's the question. How do you get back up? Like the phoenix, how do you rise out of the ashes of the failure? So, you're going to fail in life.

Yes, life is full of failure. The question is, did you learn? Did you grow? Did you move on beyond the failure? And that's what people need to understand. Clinical psychologists say 80% is great, not 100%. People want to be perfect. And if I'm not perfect, I'm garbage.

No, you're human. And that's, no one's there, you're human. And that means you're going to make mistakes. All right, so the clinician says, if you can reach 80% of your goal, 80% of what is out there, you're a success. Now, a recent study found, actually supported this, that happiness, you're most content, you're most healthy with 85% success and 15% failure. Really?

Yes. 100%. We need failure in life. No, but some failure makes us most adjusted. Don't let Beyonce fool you. When it comes to being flawless, it's never going to happen. That's a good thing. Salvador Dali once famously said, have no fear of perfection.

You'll never reach it. So lowering the expectations for yourself is just like undoing the top button of your pants at Thanksgiving. But for your soul. It feels so good. And probably no one will notice the difference. You're talking about chronic procrastinators. Which is enough about me.

Let's talk a little bit about you. So now. I am not a chronic procrastinator. No, I know. So how did you get into this field? What land did you get? I can only really get it's Valentine's Day, so I'll give you the public reason, not the private reason.

Oh, okay. I know. Everybody wants the private reason. What is Valentine's Day? My wife will be angry. Oh, I think I just understood exactly what the problem is. But I didn't outer. Okay.

Well, sure. I'll give you the history. Okay. I think it's 1987, 88. I'm in my doctoral program at Adelphi University in Garden City, Long Island. Because I know you go national. So I'm in my doctoral program. And I'm taking a class, and this is the 80s, before computers, taking a class on self-defeating

behavior. The instructor was a social psychologist retooling to become a clinician. So she was very interested in understanding, choosing to suffer. People, this is a religious show, the people will shock themselves. They think, I deserve to be this, masochism, sadomasochism. She was into all that stuff. And one of the topics was self-handicapping. When will people sabotage their behavior?

So we're in this class, she's covering a small seminar, I raise my hand and I say, I mean, but this sounds like it could be procrastination. And she says, well, yeah, sure. I said, okay, I raise my hand again. I get, okay, but what is the research show? She says, I don't know. But I'm sure someone's done the study. Again, this is the 80s.

So what do I do? I open my notebook and I write the word procrastination. And after class, I go to the library, because this is what people used to do. And I go look it up. And I find practically nothing on the topic of procrastination, nothing, about 200 conferences and papers. But a lot of it was on writer's block, career indecision, but from a social personality psychology point of view, trying to understand what are the causes?

What are the consequences? Nothing. So in graduate school, we heard us graduate students, you could either do research and this is good for your listeners to hear, particularly those who may be studying something. You could do something that everybody else does and you'll be a body of literature and you follow along or you can go off into something that no one else has done. And then you carve the path and your name becomes synonymous. Now I'm a little...

And here, Dr. Ferrari mouth's a word. And I like that idea. So in the beginning, everything I wrote on procrastination was publishable. So much so that I remember one journal, they came back and said, we'll accept it, but you have to change the introduction when you talk about the literature because you just keep citing Ferrari. Ferrari for... And I go back, well, that's because I'm the only person.

So yes, Dr. Ferrari is one of the leading experts in this, having been an author of the seminal 1995 textbook, Procrastination and Task Avoidance, Theory, Research and Treatment. And his less academic and more, hey, I'm screwing up my life with this and want to understand and fix it book, Still Procrastinating, The No Regrets Guide to Get a Get Done. Now the threateningly inquisitive Still Procrastinating came about because of the horse pucky he often sees on the topic. So the title is called Still Procrastinating because I got tired of so many people following to this time management myth that it was, and these techniques that just weren't science-based.

So it really wasn't hard for me to write because I knew the literature. You know, some people say it takes a long time to write. No, I sat there in a couple of months, but I mean, edited it, tweeted it and all that. But the typing it up was, okay, I just knew what to say. And then I looked for interventions because I really am more interested in the causes and the consequences, but everybody wants the cures, fix me. So you decided to write this book. So I wrote this book and came out in 2010 because I got tired of all the other stuff

that was out there that really was not based on the science, based on what people were saying. He mentioned some well-worn advice about eating raw frogs first thing in the morning. And this is metaphorical, it's not a Silicon Valley biohack. But I've had some luck with time blocking, which is giving myself specific times to do certain tasks. But Ferrari says, these tactics don't always get to the heart of the problem. If you have a list of things to do, put them in order. And you know, I grew up, that's called prioritizing.

That ain't procrastination. Clearly, if I have a dozen things to do, 10, 11 and 12 got to wait, want to do that. All right? So I'm working on that. But that's not procrastinating. The true procrastination has that list of 12 and then maybe does one, maybe does two, then rewrites the list, makes a copy of the list, shuffles things around. Oh no.

Am I right? Oh, why are you saying into my soul? No, and I'm just saying that so structured. Or another person talks about active procrastination. Now listen to those words. Active procrastination. How can I actively not do something? Inertia is inertia.

Dr. Ferrari says he hates to see people taking advantage of the agony procrastinators feel and offering them non-effective or non-scientific solutions. I mean, can you blame him? This man has spent his adult life hunkered over data sets doing serious science on the topic. But there are a lot of people out there that are trying to cash in on a real problem seriously. That's a problem for people in their life. Oh, it's the worst problem in my life.

And I am a super high achiever, great grades, super perfectionist. Everyone always commends how hard I work and it's this shameful secret that I take the most important things and I do them last because failing at them is devastating. So fear of failure, it's clearly a major motor. But even fear of success can cause people to procrastinate because if I succeed, what happens? Oh, then it's just more work. So I'm the lawyer who never finishes the brief on time so the firm doesn't give me an additional

stuff to do. I am not finishing the reports on him because prox, now it is getting. What did he call them? Us? And so a prox... Okay, prox, I call them prox, short because again, I'm from New York and everything's got to be fast. Yeah.

Crastination takes too long. So call them prox. Prox think the world is about themselves. I don't like it. I can't do it. I don't want to fail. I don't look good. World is not about me.

Life is about we. If I don't do my task on time, then you can't do your task on time, which doesn't let the next person do it. So life is not about me. Life is about we. We live in unity, common unity, community. And sometimes we're so afraid of letting the community down that we let the community down.

Sorry, I didn't mean to do it. What are the mechanisms underlying that? And I know that this is a whole book's worth, but if someone is just... Social esteem protection. Okay. What does that mean? What does that mean? Yeah.

Okay. You know what self esteem is. Yes. That's how I feel about myself. Yeah. Prox are very concerned about what other people think of them, hence social esteem. I want you to like me. I don't want to fail.

I don't want to do poorly. I want you to really like me. See, but if I never finish, you will then say I lack effort, not lack ability. Yeah. Wow. That hurt. Lacking ability is much more stable. Much more...

It doesn't matter how much effort. It's much more consistent. Lacking effort means maybe I could do it. I just didn't have enough time. This would be much better if I had more time. I could really show you then. See, it's not my fault. It's time got away from me.

Time don't do nothing. Times are constant, which is why you can't manage time. Yeah. Time manager, can I go there? Yes. I know that time management is something that... Is a myth. Is a myth.

And I have tried that so many times. Like, what do you feel? The Pomodoro method and the Pomodoro method is the kitchen timer, 25 minutes on, five minutes off. Oh, okay. Not the fruit that you eat. No. It's the pomegranate.

Don't get in the way. No, no. But it comes from Italian for Pomodoro because the guy who invented it had a kitchen timer that looked like a tomato. Okay. Yeah. So you set an egg timer for 25 minutes, you work, and then five minutes off like... Or bullet journaling.

For the 80% where it's time management problem, the procrastination, these things will work. They talk about the five-minute plan that you can break things down. Yeah, absolutely. The five-minute plan, by the by, I just looked this up, is where you take a dreaded task, a loathsome assignment, and you tell yourself, you will do it for five minutes, and then you're out of there. And usually in that five minutes, you're like, oh, okay, this isn't like hell on earth because we tend to anticipate a task being so much worse than it actually is.

So no harm in trying that tactic. But if you're the 20%, if you're listening to this and you say, yeah, but for me, okay, this is entertaining, however, in my case, this is not going to work. You need cognitive behavior therapy, aka, also known as CBT, because we need to change the way you think and the way you act. Because again, it's this lack of... I don't want to show a lackability because we're so concerned with that. And yet life is full of failure.

Life is full of you're going to make mistakes, and actually you're going to be healthier if you're going to make mistakes. And happier. And happier. Yeah. They'd rather have them look as lacking of effort. Mm-hmm. Now, there are three myths.

Should I go there first? Yes. Okay. Oh, debunking flimflam is one of my favorite segments. What? Who said? Oh, flimflam is not myth. Okay.

Yes, it's debunks of flimflam. All right. Dr. Ferrari. Okay, all right, I call them myths. Okay. Made out tomorrow. What people say is, technology makes it so much easier. To procrastinate.

Yeah, with my phone and everything else, I got to answer that with a story. Okay. In 2006, a reporter from Connecticut phones me and says, Dr. Ferrari, what do you think about the snooze button on alarm clocks? Oh, I don't ever thought of a snooze. It goes, oh yeah, that's the first technology for procrastination, and it's 50 years old. It was first available in 1956. Oh, wow.

Yes, I didn't know that. I didn't know that either. Yeah. So we've had a lot of time. And he's right. You gain nine minutes. Now, there's nothing wrong with gaining nine minutes. The problem is, you keep pressing it.

You keep pressing it. That's the problem. So then I started thinking about that. Okay. So the technology back in 56 allowed us to do, what about the telephone, 1885 or anything? Okay. There was a time you had to write your letter out, make sure it got to the person, give them five days, give them time to come back.

Now I could wait. Hello? Hello? Give me a swingy. Okay. And you could do this at the last minute, the automobile earlier than the phone. There was a time I had to get my horse and my buggy together and feed it and get it all together.

Now I could just go in my car. So there's always been technology. Don't give me this poo poo that it's technology makes it easier. Okay. Myth number two. Myth number two is, oh, but Ferrari, you don't understand. Our lives are so much busier today. We have so much going on.

I just can't manage it all. It's too much. What an insult to our ancestors to get up who are farmers, get up in the morning and make sure the field was plowed, fix the roof, get the pump working, can the goods feed the animal. They didn't have a lot to do. There's 168 hours a week, 24 times seven. No more?

No less. Don't tell me we're busier. We're different. Oh, absolutely. Yes. It's not the same. But it's not busier. Don't give me that excuse.

Don't insult our ancestors. You cannot manage time. You only manage yourself. There is an expression. We cannot control the wind, but we can adjust our sales. We can adjust how we deal with this. And the Japanese say, and if there's no wind, row. Get yourself going.

Absolutely. And then what about myth three? And myth number, am I taking too long? No, I love this. I love this. Okay. So I tell you, I can talk forever. Myth number three, oh, oh, oh, okay.

All right, Ferrari. So technology has been there and time has always been the same. But you know, I just work best under pressure. Yes. Oh. So that last minute Ferrari, it gets me going, it gets the juices moving, and I always seem to succeed when I work a second. Yeah.

Yeah. You've read my journal. Okay. But what juices are those? Exactly. Well, they're stress hormones. And if you need them to get a job done, congratulations. You are an arousal procrastinator as opposed to the avoidance procrastinators who just

feel like their success or failure at any given task is a huge indicator of their worth on the planet. So a Tasmanian devil, arousal versus an armadillo avoidance, if you will, I'm a little bit of both. And as you can imagine by putting those animals together, it's not attractive. So what happens? Do we get so scared? Oh, no.

So yes. So I brought them in the lab, did experiments, a lot of people think the research on procrastination that I and others do are just surveys. Absolutely not. I have done a lot of experiments, meaning you bring procrastinators in the lab and non-procrastinators and you have them do tasks. So in a series of tasks, they made more errors at the last minute. They took longer, but they thought they did better at the last minute.

So there's this perception I do better. And if you talk procrastinators, prox, they will tell you, oh, Ferrari, I remember the time when I waited and this thing happened. And you go, well, I remember that too. That was like what? 18 years ago? You told them? That was like 31 years ago?

And they go, yeah, yeah. What about all the failure since? So they will harp on, they will remember the times when it works because life is a very, as we say in the trade, a variable schedule of reinforcement. Yeah. You don't always fail, you don't always succeed. And so this is the time it's going to happen. Side note, a variable schedule of reinforcement was not a term that rolled off my tongue.

So I had to look it up. And it means you never know when something will pay off, kind of like Lotto Scratchers or playing a slot machine or swiping right on someone who might not like you back. I myself, not a Vegas gambler. I get no thrills from feeding money into a video game owned by money pigs. So to put that in perspective, let's look at procrastination as a gamble. So the notion that the high stakes danger of doing something last minute would lead to some jackpot of genius is of course foolish.

I mean, Dr. Ferrari says that your odds of doing a good job on something are way higher and more predictably so by just doing things earlier, whether that's writing your book of short stories or buying plane tickets. So procrastination is a huge crapshoot. And remember, the house always wins. I read in your book that people who procrastinate on in terms of personality psychology and I have an episode on that tend to have lower conscientiousness and higher neuroticism. And they tend to worry about the future.

And neuroticism is not as much as people thought. It's clearly conscientiousness. Now what is it? What are we talking about here? People don't understand that personality researchers have said that there's really five, we call them the big five, personality variables that all comes down to five and actually there's a six and I can talk about that in a minute, but anyway, there's the big five. And the easiest way to remember, think of the word ocean and that will give you an acronym

the openness to experience conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. Spell the word ocean. And that's how I teach students to remember. So the big one, interestingly enough, there's very little research on conscientiousness. But procrastination seems to be the strong opposite. So again, when I get pushed back from colleagues as to this is not a real topic, I say study the opposite of conscientiousness, study procrastination. It's correlated negatively.

I have not done that research. I'm not a big fiver, we call them. And in fact, I like there's a newer model called the hexaco that adds in the H and that would be on humility and honesty. What these researchers have found is the five works, but you're missing something. People who are honest and humility, well, I tell people, it's hard to be humble when you're great. You don't even know it.

And so this is and well, that also brings back to social, social esteem. I mean, that seems like procrastination is not a problem that you struggle with, but you do have people in your life that you're might be sure, I'll just say that in a general sense and not read or work with people out of this, my parish, you may have dedicated the book to someone very close to buy the book and find out exactly. Now, that's the book. What book are we talking about? We're talking about still procrastinating the no regrets guide to getting it done, of

course, which there will be a link in the show notes. OK. Now, so when you're when you're studying this, do your relationships with people close to you who struggle with procrastination? Do they inform your research? Yes, they inform. But remember, they're good, these procrastinators are good excuse makers. Right.

And so whenever they hear anything I'm talking about or any podcast or any interview that I'll do on the phone, they afterwards they get very annoyed and they say, well, that's old, they come over, excuse, you have old research, you have you only looking at one thing. Mm hmm. Yeah. So an excuse making, but you don't understand in my situation, blah, blah, blah, blah. Do you have a do you have a gushy empathetic heart for the anxious struggles of the procrastinator?

Absolutely. Don't think I'm being cold. Yes. I'm not going to let them get away with it because it doesn't help. No, it doesn't help. You're not going to enable them. Because I'm not going to enable them because life is not about them. Right.

It's about us. Right. Life is about all of us. And that and all I'd be doing is do I feel bad for them? Yes. And sympathetic yes. And I try to, you know, advise. I get calls all the time, emails all the time.

I've struggled all my life. What can I do? And I empathetic and I say, yes, I understand. I'm not a clinical psychologist. However, I give them just a few tidbits and they go, oh, that's me. Oh, well, you know, very much they can relate to it. So I don't think I'm off the mark. No, no.

You're right on the money. Yeah. Just what's so painful and wonderful about it. So in one of Dr. Ferreri's approximately one billion studies, he looked at different types of artists to see if procrastination is actually an important part of their process. Is it the secret sauce on their chicken burger? So I wondered, are these creative procrastinators savoring, that's why they're trying or they're ruminating about failure.

Bottom line. What do you think? Ruminating about failure. Ruminating about failure. No, what about perfectionism? Okay. Perfectionism is also related to procrastination, but it's a separate concept. These two overlap, but there's different.

There's a body of literature on perfectionism, but there is a crossover with procrastination. Non-procrastinators are perfectionistic and so are procrastinators, perfectionism. But what's the difference between them? Long story short, the procrastinator is perfectionistic for a motive, a desire to get along. The non-procrastinator is perfectionistic to get ahead. Oh, wow. Do you understand the difference? Yes, yes.

One is, I want to do the best job to get ahead. The other is, I want you to like me. Yeah. You say, don't you see I work hard? Yeah. Oh, isn't it good? I really worked hard, didn't I? Yes.

Okay. Yes, that was Dr. Ferrari mimicking a desperate puppy in case you're feeling scathingly understood right now, as am I. And where does that come from? Does that come from? Oh, where's the origin of perfection? You've read some of the stuff. You already have your questions in your head.

Okay. That's a great question. Okay. First of all, there's no gene for procrastination. There's no genetic gene. Every two years is an international meeting on the study of procrastination. Didn't I say that already? Yeah, yeah.

Yes, when I did it in 2017, there were researchers from Denver area who came in and followed up an earlier study of mine on genetics, and they found with identical twins, they found that procrastination was less than 50% explained by genes. So it's not genetic. I had shown earlier in the 90s, when I was pumping this stuff out, that it was parenting style. It's a learn tendency. You learn to become a procrastinator.

Okay. And that means you can unlearn it. Yes. You can teach old dogs new tricks, I tell people. You just use a different bone, and you take longer. Okay. All right. But can you teach them?

Absolutely. It's just going to be harder. Mm-hmm. So what I found was a certain parenting style that elicited, that caused kids to become procrastinators. And what style is that? That's the cold, demanding parenting style. As long as you live under this roof, you don't, I don't want to hear any lip, I said you

do this. Well, that causes a child who can't revolt to what, just take their time, which would make the parent want, even more angry, so you wait for the big one, and then you get on. Yeah. So it's like a little bit of, it's a little control they can take over this kind of thing. And we found particularly, let me ask you the question, who do you think you find this more common, and who do you think causes kids to become procrastinators, moms or dads?

Ooh, you know, I just keep thinking about my perfectionist grandparents. And so, I had grandparents who demanded perfection when they'd come over. Our rooms had to be spotless, you know, things like that. Well, they would look to see if there's any dust. Literally. And they would give you a roll of coins, and then they would take one away for every indiscretion. Ooh, they were a lot of fun. And so, yeah, like I got nickels, my older sister got quarters, which was so annoying,

because I was like, what? So, but yes. She's older. Yeah. So, I still have to, my tiny hands had to make the bed. But yeah, so, but I would guess that it would be like a demanding father figure, probably. It was the fathers. Yeah.

Usually we blame everything on mom, mom caused it. Mom, I'm sorry. In this case, we are finding it's dad. And they have, they report procrastinators, a shallower relationship with dad, more conflict with dad, less support finding from dad. Interesting. So, giving that profile and everything, yes. So, it's a learned tendency, that's where it comes from, to answer your question.

And it tends to begin in the home, and this is the way the person has learned to adjust. And our culture rewards us for procrastinating. Let me go there for a minute, okay? Taxes are coming up. April 15th. Yeah. So, for all money, there's absolutely no reason why you should file earlier. I mean, that's stupid, all right?

The government's got it wrong. I'm a fan of, and this is another one of my lines, is don't punish for being late, procrastinating. Reward for being early. Oh, wow. And the government needs to do that. So, you can't file in January, because you're getting all your papers. The government should say, if you can send this stuff in by February 15th, we'll let you save 5%.

Yeah. So, if the government gets it too much earlier, you save some money, is your reinforcement. March 15th, 3%, April 15th, you pay it all. That will not work with the 20% chronic, but it'll work with the 80%. Our culture is punitive. Our culture punishes you. We don't give the early bird the worm. Let's reward the person who does it earlier.

Incentivizing it. Well, and this, I have so many, I have so many questions, but I want to get to Patreon But of course, before your questions, each week, we donate to a charity of theologist choosing. And this week, the cause of autoimmune vasculitis research is meaningful to Dr. Ferrari and his family. So, we donated to vasculitisfoundation.org in honor of him and his love, Sharon Ferrari. And I looked for an additional charity to send some cash, one that helps people afflicted

with procrastination. And I spent, honestly, like an hour Googling, Googling, Googling. Nothing until the line between doing research and just wasting time was so blurred. So I could not find a procrastination charity. I don't think they exist. So vasculitisfoundation.org is this week's recipient and let that be an indicator of just how little people recognize the impact of procrastination on physical and mental health and on industry.

Anyway, that donation was made possible by sponsors of the show who you may hear me talk about now. Okay, back to your questions. And honestly, there were so many people with this question. I'm going to list just first names for brevity and also anonymity, but I see you, my pod children. Ethan, Kat, Andrea, Anna, Leah, Nicole, Julie, Nick, Maddie and first time question askers Maria, Ethan and someone by the name of I'm not your llama.

But the biggest question I got, and I can't even list how many people asked this was just Dr. Ferrari, world expert of procrastination. What do I do? Right. Okay. Well, again, if you're part of the 20% where this is your male, I'm honest, I have to tell you the truth, maladaptive lifestyle that it seems to be pervasive and you've been doing it all your life and you're doing it in all these settings, then you need therapy.

Not to serve it. You need cognitive behavior therapy. I don't want to diss any of my colleagues, but I'm saying find a good clinical psychologist who's trained not in time management, who's going to help you change the way you think and the way you act. But suppose you're part of the 20%. Many of your respondents might have been people who say, I only procrastinate is one thing or this area of my life.

Okay. Because they're so concerned about social esteem, what are the think publicly post what you have to do? Put it on Facebook or Instagram, whatever you use. Okay. And say, friends, this is what I got to do. Contact me in three days. Let me know.

They're very concerned about what we're doing. This will think about it. Yeah. Now, that's not a new technique. You see, we talk about how technology, public posting goes back to God, when I was in college in the 70s and I remember reading in the 60s that literature on public posting, you're more likely to do something if it's publicly posted than if you don't. So with technology, we can use that again, but it's not a new concept.

Surround yourself with doers. Now with people who are going to slack, people who are going to get things done, I didn't finish more about the procrastination and perfectionism. Yeah, yeah. Can I just jump back there for a minute? Okay. I had a one-year visiting position in the CUNY system, City University of New York. And while I was there, I had business in Baruch College, well-known, excellent school

for business. I had a lot of business majors, MBAs and psychology students starting to be business. So I had them go out and collect data on their jobs. And I said, let's take a vignette, a little story, about a guy we called him Mr. Nolan. He was a company auditor. He worked really hard, but he never got things in on time, happily married, fine, everything's financially stable. And whenever you asked, I'm working on it.

At the end of that vignette, for one third, he calls himself a procrastinator. For another third, he calls himself a perfectionist. And another third, no label. So they had people at their workplace, because I like to use adults, I don't use just college students and my data, because I think it's easy to generalize to non-university populations. So we had the people read all that, and then they filled in measures on whether they were procrastinators or not. So we compared procrastinators and non-procrastinators on how they evaluate another procrastinator.

Because my question really was, as I listen to these business people, if I'm a procrastinator and my boss is a procrastinator, when I come up for my annual review at the end of the year, is she going to be easier on me, because after all, we're doing the same, or is she going to be harder? So what did we find? Wow. It didn't matter if they called themselves a perfectionist or a procrastinator, but the procrastinators, more than the non-procrastinators, wanted to fire him.

They said he's the cause of the problem. He's terrible, horrible. So what's the takeaway? If you're a procrastinator, and even if you call yourself a perfectionist, people are not going to like you. Other procrastinators, they want to distance themselves from you. Again, they're very concerned about that social image. Going back to how to treat it, so don't surround yourself with other procrastinators.

They're not going to like you, that you surround yourself with non-procrastinators. Okay. Okay. So my fellow procrastinators, the ones who are afraid of doing a bad job and having people mad at you, I have good news, and I have bad news. They're mad at us anyway. Everyone hates us for taking too long. We're just screwing ourselves.

There's no need to delay it. People can only like us more. This is a revelation. In social psychology, another study we did, there's a concept called social loafing. Have you heard of that? Social loafing? Oh yeah. That's an oldie.

I've never heard of that. You've got to have me as a wreck. I know. I know. Once a month, come on, let's talk to Ferrari. Okay. But yeah, that social loafing, that when people are in a group setting, and the individual performance is not evaluated, but it's not like in a classroom setting or job, I want

one report from the group, you will get social loafing. Okay. People will not do it. Prox are notorious for that. In his book, Still Procrastinating, the No Regrets Guide to Getting it Done, Dr. Ferrari defines a social loafer as someone, say, on a group project who just coasts, like hangs back, lets y'all figure a project out, and maybe you think that they are smoking a doobie and playing bongos in the parking lot, but actually they're wringing their hands in the

bathroom worried they're just going to let everyone down. So in one study we had Procrastinating read other, you know, evaluate other people in this scenario who were loafing, oh, they were the hell on living hell. They were public enemy. Public enemy. Right? So even with your socially loaf, they're not going to give you, right? Why?

Why? When they're just like me. That because, again, I want to distance myself. This is not a socially acceptable concept, and I have to tell you, I have seen in the last 15, 20 years a lot more media, a lot more on procrastination out there than it ever was when I started 40 years ago, 30, oh god, 40 years ago, whatever it was. There was nothing. Now it's a very common thing.

So back to what you can do, surround yourself with doers, publicly post. Don't let people let you get away with it. Hold you accountable. Okay. And then there's lots of other time, time management, and I really hesitate as you can hear it in my voice, saying time management because you don't manage time, but break the task down into small little chunks. You ever hear the expression, don't miss the forest for the trees?

Yes. In other words, don't miss the big picture because you're caught up with all the little parts. Yeah. That's not the procrastination problem. They see the forest, they forget that it's what, made of trees. Yeah. They just see one big tariff.

Oh my god, I have to do this thing. Holy cow. I can't. This is a man. I'd never do it. I can't do it. Right? They see the forest.

They see the forest. So you teach them. Cut one tree. You can't cut one tree. Give me three branches. Can't give three branches. Take a handful of leaves because what's the commercial? A body in motion stays in motion.

It's a law of physics. Okay? Stopping a train is very hard once it's moving. So get going. Just do it now. Not Nancy Reagan's, just say no. Just say now. Okay.

So this next question was asked by so many people on patreon.com slash oligies. I'm going to say your first names. I'm going to do it quickly. Margaret, Shock, Anna, Beatrice, Ryan, Margaret, Alyssa, Jamie, Noah, Elizabeth, Nicuia, Sandro, Moses, Ali, Zoltan, Annie, Sophie, Mike, and my first time question asking BBs. Tracy, Andrea, Solomia, Angela, Deborah, Maria, Kelly, Elliot, and Xavier or Xavier. I'm not sure how French you are. And now what about things comorbidities like ADHD say or generalized anxiety disorder?

Like what other factors can someone maybe attack that might be a component of their procrastination? Yeah. In this book, I actually have on chapter 12 looking at procrastination and personality styles and some of these negative consequences. I hesitate to say this because sometimes people get very annoyed with my comment, but there's only been one study that looked at procrastination and ADHD and I did it and I found practically no relationship. Really?

Yes. Again, people say that's not true. Bored and prone is different, thrill seeking different, easily distractible, yes, but not ADHD. So there are different measures we use in psychology and thrill seeking is a measure of the Zuckerman, Martin Zuckerman, Zuckerman from... I can just put it in the side, yeah. Okay.

Yes. I looked this up and the late Marvin Zuckerman's work focused on sensation seeking. There's even a sensation seeking scale and yeah, yeah, I found it online and I took it. I answered this 19 point academic quiz and at the end it said, if you checked 11 or more of the items, you're probably a sensation seeker. If you checked seven or fewer of the items, you're probably not a sensation seeker. My score, you ready for this? Six, just off the charts, risk averse, my friends, but if you would agree with statements

like, I prefer friends who are unpredictable or I often wish I were a mountain climber or I would like to try some of the new drugs that produce hallucinations, you might seek thrills. P.S., this quiz was written in the late 1960s, it's a groovy time. Zuckerman's thrill seeking measure shows that are you easily distracted? Are you bored and prone? There are people and so while it sounds like ADHD, it's a different concept. That's true but and it's only one study so I'm not willing to say there isn't a relationship

although when I say that, people in the field get very angry, you don't say that. It's a hard concept to wrap around procrastinating because it's sometimes the outcome and sometimes it's the cause. You see, I think with ADHD, it's an outcome, it's procrastinating from that. But then there's also, which is my interest, the cause that where it starts. So there's two different, you know, which way you look at it. But if nothing else from today's show, I hope your listeners realize that everybody procrastinates all right and that doesn't make you a procrastinator.

You told me you had lots of people asking questions. I would bet if we looked closer for many of these people, they're just delaying a task or two and that's okay. You know, look, if I'm a manager, I want to delay. Why? Because I want information from my employees. Give me before, not just jump into a decision. That's not good effective, good decision making.

You need some time to think, sure. But the question is if you have another focus group and another focus group and let's do another one now again, that's the problem. That's excessive. Elliot Alder, first time question asker, awesome question. Great name. I know, right? How do you tell the difference between procrastination and not having enough spoons for the task

at that moment? Like how do you know whether or not you really are overloaded or whether or not you're procrastinating? Think of this as a continuum. And so there could be a moment where you have many spoons, a lot of irons in the fire as they say. There could be a lot going on. But the question is, are there always irons in the fire? You ask about treatment.

One simple way to delegate, give the task to somebody else. But if you have too much to do, trust that someone else can do this for you, that you've mentored along or that's skilled enough. Will they fail? Maybe. But if they succeed, 8 out of 10, 80% out of the time, be happy with that. Don't harp on the fact that they fail twice, but they succeeded eight. So if you have too many irons in the fire, too many spoons that you have to feed and do

that, consider what you have to do. And again, prioritizing is fine. That's not the same as procrastinating. You're not structuring your procrastination. You are simply learning to prioritize. Procrastinating is a very bad at judging time. They either underestimate or overestimate. They're very good.

So another technique is to help them learn to practice time. Not to read or watch. Of course they can do that. But we're telling them, practice how much time something's going to take. More or less. Again, this person might be saying, I have lots of spoons to use. Well, do you always find that? Are you good at judging the time?

Life is full of peak periods in times. We need to reward people for me. There's another suggestion. We need to reward people who meet the deadlines. So again, if you're a manager and you have a department, 20 people, 30 people, you say, I need this report done. We need to get the Snyder report done by March 15th. But if you get into me to look at it on March 1st, everybody gets that Friday off.

Got it. See, an incentive again. Now, this next question or a variation of it was asked by Julie Baer, Eva, and Janessa about whether or not it's better to dangle a reward in front of your own face or to swat your butt mercilessly. So it's the carrot and not the stick as they say. Oh, absolutely. We do too much punishing.

We don't do enough reward. Kendra Niederkorn asks a first-time question, Jessica, how come when I'm procrastinating, other tasks I don't want to do seem more appealing, like cleaning my kitchen when I should be doing my taxes? What's happening? Is it like a dope response? Sure. No, no, we're turning the bio again.

Not necessary. We don't know. And if it is bio, it's much more correlational than causal. They correlate and it doesn't mean one's causing the other. Very common mistake people make is they take correlation and they make it causal. So yes, of course, you're doing something that's more fun than something that's not fun. But on the other hand, you may be doing a task that both need to be done.

You've got to do the taxes. You've got to do the dishes. So it's logical. It's not illogical. Sure, I need to do that. But at some point, there's a deadline where the taxes have to be done and you need to pull that together and work it together. Dr. Ferrari then produced a small weekly calendar, the days filled up with harried notes and

tasks. Each task scratched off deeply in the tight zigzags of Ballpoint, Inc. I'm old fashioned. This is going to blow you away. I'll write them down. Look at that. And some weeks away. So I write that in pencil.

Work on the taxes. So I think I have that done on Saturday. Work on taxes next Sunday. So I put that on a few times so I can do that. But sometimes it's even crazier. I prefer this much better than putting it down digitally because I can get to much more things that are done this way. Nice.

And I love that when you're crossing things off, you're not just crossing it off. You're obliterating it. Perhaps. Your landmarks are like, is there something that's rewarding about like, yes, I got it done. Like, scratch it off. Like it's out of there. There's a new body of literature called pre-crassination.

People who like to do things ahead of the time. And I may fall more under that. You might be one of those. Yes. Because I only don't write it here. I have a calendar in my office and in my work office, there's a calendar by the desk and when I turn around, there's another calendar so I make sure I have it in both. But that's great because the reward is you get to cross it off.

I get to cross it off each time. Yes. Yes. I mean, sometimes people put things on there to do what they already did just so they can cross it off. That feels amazing. That's kind of so. What else do we have?

Last questions, I always ask everyone. The crappiest thing about your job, the thing you hate about procrastination, the most thing you hate about your work, the thing that just irks you, the worst thing about what you do. Or the thing you hate the most about procrastination. Yeah. The thing I hate about procrastination is people not taking this as a serious problem. You asked me earlier, do I have empathy for the people who are chronic procrastinators? And the answer is yes.

And I think our society by not taking it seriously, cheapens it, makes it less of a serious kind of thing. And I think that's not fair. I think it was Al Green who came up with a line. There's a song, Sexual Healing. If you listen to the very last, as the song fades off, it says, don't procrastinate. And it's the only time I ever heard that word used. Then there was a singer, I forget her name, after my generation, who has a song called

procrastination. Lizzo? No, not Lizzo. No, she killed herself. Oh, Amy Winehouse? Yes. I think she had a song called Procrastination. Oh my gosh, I'll look it up.

So this leaked song is titled Procrastination. It's on YouTube. It's said to be about Amy Winehouse's trouble writing songs after her debut album. And apparently, she titled the song Procrastinate. And it, along with about a dozen other tracks, are to remain in the vault. She wanted them unreleased in the event of her death. Also the official cause of death was accidental alcohol overdose, which is tragic and gutting. And for more on addiction, see the Addictionology episode.

Also as long as we're clarifying things, Sexual Healing is a Marvin Gaye song. And I know that you were just furious, some of you, thinking, I'm just going to leave that hanging out there. But I know when you get that feeling, you need factual dealings. Anyway, Procrastination is in the hearts and on the lips of so many artists. But it's not Procrastination. Yeah. But I just love that.

That's not Procrastination, Sexual Healing. So what do I hate? I hate that after all these years that I've been talking about this in the media, the conference presentations, that people will put me at the end of conferences when I talk because you're on Procrastination, yes, that we don't take it seriously as a culture. It's more than a time management issue. It's a maladaptive lifestyle for 20% of people, more than depression and not dissent depression.

That's a very serious issue. Substance abuse and alcoholism, very serious. We treat those very seriously as we should, and we should really treat the chronic Procrastination. Be careful. So I don't like that. I think people still think it's time management issues because it's a socially acceptable kind of thing. Yeah.

But that's great. I mean, when we were writing back and forth, you were like, don't make light of this. And I was like, oh, no, this is literally... And then you had it self-disclosed, which is not looking for yourself to sort of... No, I didn't care. This is... I'm very open. Because I watched your videos and I saw kind of comical, funny things, and I thought,

I mean, she's going to set me up for something funny, and this is not a funny thing. So I'm like, this is literally the thing in my life. I have a list of things that I want to accomplish in my life. Not even a little bit joking. 100% true. The goal, conquer procrastination, is at the top of that list. And I want to scratch it off so hard that the pen rips the paper. And so should procrastinators have a little bit more self-compassion?

A little bit more like, hey, don't be so hard on yourself? Another good topic for you to interview. There's a researcher. I forgot her book. There's a great book, a self-help book. Look this up. And he's talking about self-compassion expert, an Austin-based psychology professor, Dr. Kristen Neff.

I felt so stupid because I got her confused with shame expert, Brené Brown. And then I went to Dr. Neff's website, self-compassion.org, did a little poking around. And I was like, you know what? Hey, Ward, it's okay. You got those two researchers confused? You are a fleshy vessel of meat and matter. You're not an information kiosk at Barnes & Noble. No thanks, Dr. Kristen Neff.

And she weaves a lot of social personality psychology in it. People need to forgive themselves. It's much easier for us to forgive other people than it is ourselves. And that's a tendency people have. Last question I always ask. Last question, what's your favorite thing about your job? The exciting part of being an academic, a faculty member, is you can ask questions and get answers.

And I love, this is making me think now, I love working with my students. The joy, bringing them to a conference and having them present can't tell you the joy of that. You just said, that's the job. It's not the money. Well, that's nice. But it's not the money. It's not the time.

It's not the schedule. It's seeing the next generation rise. That's just euphoric. And just think of all the people that are going to be studying this and that are interested in this because of you. I hope so. Yeah, I hope that your listeners contact me if they're interested. Read your book first.

What's the name of that book? It's called Still Progress, Anything to No Regrets, and Getting It Done by Dr. Joseph R. Ferrari, PhD. Yes, great book. Okay. Do you want us to take a picture of any of these? Yes, of course. Thank you so much for doing this.

You're amazing. You need your own television show. Can you get your own television show, please? It's fine with me. So ask experts and smart people stupid questions and know that there are actually not stupid questions. That is an ironic statement. Also have compassion for yourself, celebrate your own curiosity, and as Dr. Ferrari inscribed

in my now doggiered copy of Still Procrastinating, The No Regrets Guide to Getting It Done, just do it now. So that book is available wherever you get books, and I'll put a link in the show notes as well as links to a lot of the things that we discussed in this episode up at alleyward.com slash ologies slash procrastination because volitional psychology is too hard to spell. The last thing you need is a harder time getting to those resources. So we're at ologies on Instagram and Twitter. I'm at alleyward with one L on both.

Come say hi, be friends. Shirts and hats and beanies and totes are available at ologiesmerch.com or up at alleyward.com. Thank you, Shannon Feltis and the recently engaged Bonnie Dutch. Congrats, Joe, of the podcast You Are That for a Managing Merch. Aaron Telbert admins the ologies podcast Facebook group and huge thanks to Emily White and all the transcribers making transcripts available. They are blazing through them. There are so many up and they are so helpful.

And I'm going to put a link in the show notes where you can get those for free. They're on my website at alleyward.com. Thank you to Jarrett Sleeper of the Mental Health Podcast, my good bad brain for assistant editing. Also, if you liked the Traumatology episode with Dr. Nick Barr, he and Jarrett are now doing free weekly mental health livestreams on Sundays at 10 a.m. Pacific Time. I live tweeted it last week at the ologies Twitter and it's on mixer.com slash my good bad brain.

And I'm going to put a link in the show notes for that too because it was really great and I think you might like it. Also, thanks, of course, as always, to Stephen Ray Morris of the podcast See Jurassic Right and the Percast for putting these together each week with me and bearing with my fears of just not being enough. He is a saint and I'm working on being faster for my sake and for his. He's the best. Nick Thorburn wrote and performed the theme music.

And if you listen until the end of the episode, you know, I tell you secret. And this week is that I just realized I was in a sound booth doing some voiceover stuff. And yes, if you heard me on a grocery store ad, that is me. And I realized in between takes that if you take a regular pencil like one of those Dixon Ticonderogas, you know, that has like the non-rolly sides and you rub it between your palms. Ready? I'm going to do it.

This is Hella ASMR. Okay. Ready? If you do this. Sounds like a cat purring. I'm more of a dog person, but if you ever missed your cat or you need to be soothed, you can try that. That weird.

It's just a pencil. Okay. So that's fun. You're welcome. Bye-bye. Bye.