Psychiatry & Psychotherapy Podcast - The Psychology of Procrastination

Episode Date: July 3, 2018

What is procrastination? Procrastination is the act of avoiding something through delay or postponement. You might be procrastinating when: There is a gap between your intention and action You feel like avoiding something You find yourself easily distracted You feel overwhelmed by tasks at the last minute You always feel rushed to complete a project You're hesitant to truthfully update someone on your progress It usually brings about feelings of: Shame Guilty Anxiety Regret Anger Inauthenticity Why do we procrastinate? We procrastinate because our brains receive a reward for avoidance. Avoidance brings immediate relief from the distress associated with the task. Although we may experience discomfort in the final moments before a task is due, we rarely think about the past or future when procrastinating. This creates a problematic cycle, one that erodes at our self-confidence. It also causes us to keep up a steady stream of "I should be…" in our subconscious minds. The ingredients for procrastination Personal & System Based Factors of Procrastination There are fixed factors related to procrastination, things that are innate to each of our different psychological experiences. For example, someone with ADHD is more likely to procrastinate. The fixed personal factors are: Higher Impulsivity Lower conscientiousness—lower drive to be organized and accomplish. Limited attention-span Boredom / Low Interest The variable personal factors are: Willpower Distress tolerance Willingness to ask for help Task-focused vs value-focused Self-consciousness & anxiety The variable task or system-based factors are: Unclear goals & expectations Unrealistic goals & expectations Distractions Lack of accountability or mentors By listening to this episode, you can earn 0.75 Psychiatry CME Credits. Link to blog. Link to YouTube video. Join David on Instagram: dr.davidpuder Twitter: @DavidPuder Facebook: DrDavidPuder

Welcome to the Psychiatry and Psychotherapy Podcast, the podcast to help you in your journey towards becoming a wise, empathic, genuine, and connected mental health professional. I'm your host, Dr. David Puter, a psychiatrist who splits his time practicing psychopharmacology, individual and group psychotherapy, medical director of a day treatment program, medical education research, and teaching, residents, and medical students. Welcome back to the podcast. I am joined today with Dr. Jackson Brammer, PGII 3, 30-year resident at Kaiser Fontana.

Jackson, welcome to the show. Thanks, David. And we have to admit that we have put off doing this podcast. I don't know, how many times do we have to cancel and restart? We've canceled twice at this point. Twice at this point. One was you and one was me. Yep.

And it's a podcast on procrastination. Yeah. And I think this podcast is important for a number of reasons. One is because, you know, a lot of the people, patience that we will deal with are procrastinating their goals in life. They're procrastinating their dreams, their ambitions, their desires. And let's be real. We do it too. Oh, yeah. I know that I've procrastinated starting this podcast a couple years. And maybe you can pick my brain on that. And yeah, so tell me, what is procrastination to you and why do you, why are you

passionate about this topic? Well, first of all, I'm passionate about it. I consider myself an expert procrastinator. I've done it my whole life. It's like really bad, David. And I finally just got sick of it and wanted to figure out a little more about it so I could maybe stop. Okay. So I was actually, okay, how it totally started, and we could talk about this another time, but I was looking into imposter syndrome, which I don't know if it's come up on the podcast or not,

but it's a thing. It's kind of a hot topic. You'll see like BuzzFeed articles about it and stuff. but it's definitely something I struggle with. And in trying to battle that, I had this thought that maybe fighting procrastination would help with that. So I dove into the procrastination stuff. So define what you mean by you feeling like an imposter. Okay, so imposter syndrome stuff being like thinking you don't actually belong in the credentials position.

power whatever that you have, that secretly, if anybody actually knew, right, if anybody actually knew who I was and what I did with my time and all this stuff, they wouldn't respect me the same, they wouldn't trust me, they wouldn't actually give me the responsibilities that I currently have, all that stuff. And what I found is, it seems like that's pretty darn common, especially in medicine. It's very common. Yeah. It's very common.

Yeah. Yeah. I think actually it was mentioned a little bit in Darcy Trankel's talk. And I mentioned how, yeah, I definitely had that, especially starting out in residency. Yeah, so you had that. You had those feelings. Yeah. And those, was that like during medical school and residency or dating before that?

Oh, definitely before that. Yeah. I didn't have a name for it until probably, I didn't notice it until medical school and I didn't have a name for it until like the past year maybe. Okay. Yeah. Um, and what I figured out is I was having trouble like proving to myself that it wasn't an imposter because I had all this quote unquote data that like, well, you do waste a bunch of time, right? You do put all these things off.

So I had all this like negative kind of support, I guess, for my argument that I'm an imposter. And I was having trouble battling those cognitive distortions. And so I was like, heck, let's just try and get some good data, right? Some good data that I've actually done things and actually followed through on TAS. And so I just tackle the procrastination issue. And it's helped a lot. Wait, so were they cognitive distortions? What aspect of it was?

Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's a, it's sort of like a discounting of the positives for sure. Okay. Over generalizing. So saying, I always do this, right? Maybe that's not necessarily true, right? Yeah.

Do it sometimes. Those sorts of things. Yeah. And I think a lot of people who are professional who are very driven, like, feel a little guilty when they're doing anything fun. Like when they're playing video games or, you know, whatever. Whatever. Like, that's not. Or just sitting and not even doing anything.

Would you consider doing music like one of those sort of things? It can be. I would say if I have something in the back of my mind that I am avoiding and I'm doing music, then that doesn't feel great, right? Right. It's kind of that guilty, regretful procrastination feeling that just kind of sits in the gut of your stomach. While you're doing the fun thing, kind of ruins the fun thing a little bit. So procrastination and kind of the feeling of guilt comes along with it? Oh yeah. Yeah. So like... And so you don't really enjoy what you're doing.

Yeah. Or you get really good at just shoving that guilt so deep and you become a professional procrastinating. like I was. And then it like comes out in other ways. And you're just like stressed all the time. And you, you don't necessarily have the guilt while you're procrastinating, but overall things are not going well. So,

okay, define professional procrastinator. I'm talking like, like I need to give a presentation. And people talk about, oh, I only started at two nights ahead of time. Or like everyone's awesome, we'll be brave and say,

they started at, you know, the night before. And I'm like typing content into my slides while people are getting food to, listen, like to eat while they're listening to me give the talk. Okay.

And, you know, that's like the worst example I can think of. So like, okay, how much of your presentation is done the night before? The night before, as far as content on the slides, sometimes zero. As far as the mental processing of, you know, the material, there's actually quite a bit. But as far as like the product that needs to be created, zero. Yeah. So I'll like just slam through my. like, you know, whatever I've got to do that morning.

And then, you know, just go into like hyper-focus mode and just crank it out. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's real bad. Yeah. Yeah. And it really puts the pressure on that morning stuff. Oh, totally.

And you get that stuff done fast. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not good. How do you get through medical school like this? Dude, I have no idea. And that's, that's right there as part of the imposter syndrome.

It's like, like, gosh, if people only knew, right? I don't know. How, like, okay. studying for step one. Did you really procrastinate for that? Dude. Like tell me, how many, how many, like, what does that look like, procrastinating for step one?

Procrastinating for step one. I didn't use you, I didn't use what's it called first aid at all. Okay. Didn't crack it. And there's a certain number of questions on You World, which is like the question bank that a lot of people use. Yeah. And a lot of people talk about, oh, I went through it three times versus two times.

And I think I did a little over 50% of the questions once. Okay. And that's how I studied. I mean, obviously, I studied for my classes and stuff, like as the year went on. But when it came to, like, knuckling down and studying for step one, it was such a terrifying task that I just kind of didn't. I actually even delayed step one a single time, which I would not do in retrospect. because the delay did not really get me to study anymore.

It was just kind of more terrifying. So some people can't study unless the pressure is high enough, like people with ADHD. Sure. Have you ever thought about like ADHD or other types of things like that? I mean, in full disclosure, a lot of people know this, but I do have ADHD. So that was actually diagnosed at medical school. Okay. And that helped a lot, right, getting that diagnosed and treated. but I still think that there's a component of like procrastination,

like exactly what procrastination is in my case, in a lot of people's cases. So there's the behavioral stuff, right, for ADHD. Right. There's a ton of behavioral stuff. I noticed that, and that's why I think this episode will be important because I have a lot of ADHD patients.

And you get them on meds and they can focus. But what they focus on is not necessarily the good stuff all the time. So just because you're on a medication doesn't mean all of a sudden your behavior's changed. Absolutely. And your ability to schedule your time has changed. Especially if, like, in my case, you've had ADHD untreated your entire life. And then as a young adult, sure, you get it treated, but you've built these patterns, these behavioral patterns.

You're a smart guy. If anyone knows Jackson Brammer, you know he's a smart guy. And I think people who are smart, they can get away with it. for a long time, right? They can get away with procrastinating until the last night. Yeah, I think, I mean, I appreciate the compliment. I think you're correct in that, like, well, it definitely hits people at different times. People notice, like, when they're falling behind at different times, and I think I got away

with it a little longer than maybe I would like to have. I almost wish I had caught it a little earlier. But anyway. Sorry, lots of self-disclosure. No, no, I'm fine with self-disclosure. I'm totally fine with that. I think it's important in these conversations because it humanizes people and lets people realize they're not the only one, which I think is one of the most important things for people to realize that they're not. Like, that's why I'm okay saying I'm typing content into slides like right before.

Because people will come to me and act like, So if you only knew, right, what I do in secret, you'd think I was crazy or like an idiot or whatever. Oh, yeah. A lot of negative stuff. Oh, yeah. And I'm like, dude, like, trust me. Like, I can beat you. As far as procrastination, I can probably beat you on the story.

But as you're saying that, though, I'm also thinking there's a generality of that. So a lot of people just have shame. You know, I'm pretty sure that every patient I've had experience of shame during the first session in some way. because they're disclosing a lot of information about themselves, and they are fearful that someone is going to judge them for it, and they're surprised, and actually it's a good feeling when they realize that I really am not judging them for those idiosyncrasies.

Super important. And I think people feel that. I don't feel judgment in my mind, although sometimes there's some things that I would say are hard for me not to judge. Um, especially like child abuse, if someone's disclosing that that happened when they were on drugs or something like that. That's really hard. Anyways, getting back to procrastination. So tell me more about, um, how people procrastinate or how you procrastinate. Yeah. Um, so I kind of think of it, there are a lot of lies we tell ourselves when we procrastinate. So, like, the definition of procrastination is basically like, you're intending to do something and you're, you're, you delay it.

Which is why I would, I would argue that in the case, and like, obviously there's exceptions, right, to everything. So in our cases where, okay, my flight got moved the first time and you had a thing that was like actually important to delay, right? Yeah. So not all delay is procrastination, first of all. But procrastination is a subcategory or a form of delay, if that makes sense. But where you'll notice your self procrastinating is when you start.

telling yourself the lie of like, oh, I work better under pressure, right? When in my mind, it might just be more of a pattern that you only work under pressure. Doesn't necessarily mean you work better. Like the actual content you produce is not of a higher quality because you did it under pressure. And that could, it could be. But I think in the case of the extreme procrastinator, I never get to that end point where I need to be cranking out. slides. I'm never sitting there glad that I'm doing it under pressure. Like, oh, thank goodness, I can make such a great presentation because I waited until the last minute. Yeah. That's never the thought. Okay. So I think, honestly, if you can realize that you don't actually work better under

pressure, that can help. There's also this notion that we have to feel like doing something to do it. Um, like when you're approaching a task and you want to put it off, you might say, I just don't feel like it right now. You're kind of telling yourself this lie that like, maybe you're going to feel like it later, but the task isn't about to change with time. So you're going to be faced with the exact same decision. You know, let's say you delay it until tomorrow. The same decision tomorrow is like, well, I still don't feel like it.

It's not like anything changed about the task to make it more enjoyable or more approachable. so I think we have to get over this this delusion that we're going to feel like it later because we're not necessarily yeah that's a good one that's a good one I think all this applies to creative types especially as they try to do their art yeah you know writers I have a lot of sort of these sort of resistances is another way of thinking about resistance to do art to do good work to do things that would be in alignment with your goals, with your desires. Values. With your values.

Yeah. Yeah. Another lie that I know people tell themselves. These are all things I've definitely told myself. So nobody's alone if you're, if like these are sounding a little too familiar. But another one is the kind of self-handicapping that we do where, okay, so let's say I've got a presentation to do, right? And if I put a bunch of effort into it and it doesn't go well, then I feel like, well, I'm not good, right? And obviously this is a cognitive, like, very distorted,

right? But the way the thought goes is you put a bunch of effort in, doesn't go well, I'm not good, right? If you don't try and you fail, it's not as harmful to the self. Yeah. And also if you don't try and you succeed, it's like kind of bonus, right? It's like, oh, wow, I didn't even try and I actually did pretty good. So it's another pattern that you can find where after you've done something, it's like, well, they didn't go as bad as I thought it would. Or I didn't try anyway, so whatever. Are other patterns that kind of reinforce the pattern of procrastination.

Yeah, that one I can really appreciate. I think it's part tied into the ego and how we try to protect our ego. And I think that the whole, you know, if you don't really try that hard and you fail, it's almost like not as big of a wound to your ego. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like a, it's like a fragile sense of self that you're protecting by not trying.

Right. So you don't expose it. Right. Yeah. another couple things that I see in myself at least is and I think we talked about this when we initially talked about doing this podcast you helped me realize this pattern it's like months ago but the pattern of devaluation where I'll just decide some task is stupid like oh I think this is stupid but really what's going on is there's probably some underlying negative emotion

that I don't really want to admit that I feel towards a task. Let's say, I'm trying to think of an example. Okay, let's just stick with doing a presentation one, right? I think this, you know, journal club's stupid, right? But really, I'm devaluing the task of journal club because I don't want to admit to myself that I'm actually kind of scared to do journal club or some sort of negative emotion. I think continues case conference is kind of like that.

Yeah. For, I don't know if you do that in your residency, but in our residency, we watch videos of the third and fourth years doing psychotherapy. And we watch it as a group. And it's really intimidating to have your video up there. And it does something to you psychologically. Yeah. You know, fear, shame, you know, potential shame, potential fear, you know, or fearing potential shame. And so you're saying that those emotions tied into the experience.

does what? You end up basically acting like, oh, I actually just don't care about this. You devalue the experience or task or whatever it might be that you're actually afraid of or shameful of. Okay. Yeah, that's interesting. I like that. It's almost like a, somehow it feels more safe to say, I actually don't care about that. I don't find value in that.

But really do find, but underneath. Underneath, you put a lot of value in it and it's kind of crippling. I would like to believe all the residents who don't enjoy doing psychotherapy that much actually. Actually, actually value it. Actually value it and are just using that defense. Yeah. Hey, yeah. I mean, at least for me, it's a pattern I've seen.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So any others? Yeah, there was one more. Oh, yeah. The pitfall of, if you Google like how to stop procrastinating, you'll see like, you know, split the task up into, you know, easy bite size chunks and all pretty decent ideas, you know, schedule your time and all that. But what someone that's as good at procrastination as I am will do is reward myself with a break after I've done all this scheduling and organizing, right?

So I haven't actually done anything. And yet I'm like, well, I did good stuff, right? I'm done for the day. So scheduling can become a form of procrastination itself. Yeah, absolutely. Not to undervalue like scheduling. I mean, it's super important. I mean, I have I've got lists and to-do lists and I've got a calendar and all that sort of stuff.

But hyper-scheduling. Yeah. It can definitely be a form of procrastination and can result in, inappropriate rewards of breaks. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I've definitely seen myself do that in the past. So you identify that these were the issues.

You thought that this would help in your sort of overarching feeling of being out of place and not being sufficient and being an imposter. Yep. So what steps did you take? in this journey?

I think, so I'll be a little circumstantial and go back a little bit. Yeah, sure. Because I think some foundation was laid that I didn't know was going to be important for this. When I was in medical school, I was actually, so I went to Loma Linda Medical School, so where David works with the residency. And so there are these partial hospitalization, programs and IOP programs, or that's redundant, but IOPs. And I was in there and they were talking about CBT stuff and cognitive distortions and

which we've touched on a little bit already. But that's the first exposure I got to any of those concepts. And I felt that it was super foundational for my ability to like recognize patterns within myself and be honest with myself about what was going on. So you were doing the CBT on yourself? Kind of, yeah. Basically, I was in those programs watching as a medical student, but I thought the skills were super cool. And so they were doing these like David Burns mood logs, you know, where you, here's the experience, yada, yada. And so I just started doing them on myself and identifying the distortion and counteracting the negative thought and all that. So you had an experience in your day. You had a experience in your day. an emotion. You looked at the thoughts that came with the emotion. And then you looked at the cognitive

distortions. Yep. And somehow that was helpful doing that over and over again. Yeah. Just kind of getting the skill of at least catching the distortions. Okay. Not always being able to refute them, but at least catching them. I think was foundational for my ability to then kind of move to the next step when I was actually caring about specifically procrastination, I was just a little more psychologically minded and was aware of this kind of stuff. So I do think that's important. I mean, you've done stuff on cognitive distortions already, so we don't need to go into all that. Episode two, I go into that in detail. For those who haven't dug that far back. So, okay, so you noticed these cognitive distortions in your day-to-day life, in your day-to-day life,

in the emotions that you were having. And then somehow that started opening up this world. Yeah, I think it just made me able to understand the stuff I was hearing about procrastination, reading and listening to about procrastination. And it just kind of linked with that positive experience I had with CBT before. It was like, okay, this sounds kind of like I could do something similar here. So I actually, I think I was like Googling about in podcast. Hoster syndrome and I found some stuff about procrastination and I started doing some Googling on that.

And I came across, there's a guy, I can remember exactly where, but he's up in Canada. He's a research psychologist, PhD Timothy Pitchell, who does a lot of research on specifically academic procrastination. And he had just a bunch of resources. I found a lecture that he was giving to educators about. how to help their students not procrastinate. And I just kind of went down the rabbit hole from there, just soaking up all this stuff about procrastination

and kind of how to deal with it. And like what's involved? What are the variables? What can you change? What can't you change? And that's where I really got all of my understanding of how procrastination works and the tools that I've been using. Any emotion that comes up for you as you remember back to this?

Like as I found those things. As you talk about it now. Um, relief's not really an emotion, but that's what, that's the word that comes to mind. Did you find, um, like a drive to sort of soak up this stuff? Maybe that's what I'm picking. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like a passion. Yeah, like I was, I was pumped to find something that was more than just, oh, you know, get a planning app. Like, that's not going to help. Yeah. I mean, it's a great first step for. Here's what I see, okay? Yeah. You're reading my micro expressions, right? I am. Yeah. What are they? I don't know. It's anger, actually.

Interesting. And it's anger because your goal is to overcome this, right? Okay. And the obstacle in the way is... Me? The procrastinating. Sure. And so when there's an obstacle, anger is the energy to overcome the obstacle.

Okay. So your energy mobilized at this point in your life, I think, and you really dove into this. Like, you were like, this is going to help me overcome this handicap I've had. And by overcoming it, I'm going to be able to achieve. some of the goals. Yeah. No, that actually makes perfect sense. And I would say, if I was thinking about the emotion that led me to do all the furious

Googling, see, I just used the word furious, right? Unintentionally. It was like, I am so sick of this pattern. Yeah. And just, I'm just kind of angry at it, right? Yeah. So, yeah. Nice read.

I knew you had that look in your eye. I knew you were looking at my eyebrows or something. Yeah. Now that I've given some talks on microexpression, and by the way, I use. usually don't, I'm not so forthright with patience about what I see, a little bit more subtle. But for those in the audience, that's what's going on. Yeah. So, yeah, I found this really cool stuff that I thought was going to be helpful.

And turns out it was. And obviously, like, I'm not 100% cured, but, like, it's way better. Okay, so tell me some of the things that you learned that were most helpful. I'm a guy that likes understanding the underlying structure of things. And so just like what are the nuts and bolts of like, why do we procrastinate and how does this work and what are the variables involved? I could go into that. It would take a while. I feel like most people that would click on, you know, this podcast to listen to it are waiting for me to say, how do I stop procrastinating?

No, no. Give me like, give me a couple lines. Yeah. On the nuts and the bolts. Okay. So. If possible. Yeah, no, it's more than a couple, but it'll be short enough.

So basically, what are the pieces involved, right? There's, like, the personal components, and then there's, like, the task and the system. So the personal components, there are fixed things. There's, you know, like conscientiousness. You can't really change, like, your core conscientiousness or, like, what your attention span is, right? Like, I've got ADHD. I can get treated. That helps, sure.

but I'm not about to like totally change my brain. So what you're, you're talking about the big five personality types. One of them is conscientiousness. And you are lower in it, you think? Very likely. I mean, I haven't actually been, I haven't actually taken the big five.

Yeah. But and neuroticism, correct me from wrong, is another one of them, right? Neuroticism is, it's different. It's more of the emotional sort of libility. Mm-hmm. But conscientiousness is, you know, highly conscientious people

are very super organized and move themselves forward. So, you know, people with high IQ and high conscientiousnesses tend to do very well financially in their careers. Because they just, you know, they're driven by what they do.

So they see other people by, you know, this is not, they see other people by their CVs. Yeah, not how I operate. So that makes me feel good around you because you don't see me just as a CV. I don't care about your CV at all, really. That's good. Even a little bit.

Yeah. So I wish I cared more so that I cared more about my own, you know, right? Because that's important in, you know, professional environment. Well, it's important if you have certain goals. And I think that's where this sort of tendency as part of your personality structure to some degree, you know, can be facilitated by some of the changes that I think you've been working on. Right. So those are the things we can't change, kind of. Then there's like the variable stuff about ourselves. There's willpower. So associated with procrastination would be like low willpower

reserve or just depleted willpower for the day. Low distress tolerance, unwilling to ask for help, being very focused on the task or the goal rather than your actual values. And then high self-consciousness, anxiety. That's a lot of stuff, but... What I hear from that is still some of the sort of what we were talking about with the Big Five and willpower, consciousness,

kind of highly correlated. And then... High self-consciousness, anxiety, anxiety that can kind of, you know, make it harder to move forward. But some of these things, like willpower is changeable, whereas... Yeah, and I don't know if I agree that we only have so much willpower in the day. Yeah, so let's talk about that. That's actually one of the big things that I learned about.

So the whole willpower is like a muscle analogy. Have you heard about that? Yeah. Okay, so kind of both sides of being like a muscle, right? One being that you use it more, it becomes stronger. Two, being that in a, you know, specific period of time, you can kind of wear it out. It can regenerate and get back your willpower reserve, but you can kind of wear it out at least in a period of time. Do you believe that?

I believe that it goes down and you can make it go back up. Okay. But I don't necessarily think that it's only related to time of day or stuff you've done. I mean, one of the, one of the physiologic correlates of willpower is like blood glucose. Okay. So the studies that I learned about through this guy, Tim Pitchell, one of them, for example, was there were two groups, and these were pretty much all in academic population. so like postdocs and stuff. And they had two populations and they would give them a willpower depleting task.

Like it could be anything. Could be just something kind of wrote and boring. Could be like not eating a cookie that's sitting right in front of you. And then so the task would be the same for both groups initially. And then one group would get a little swig of like something that would. that would boost their blood glucose. They also did blood glucose measurements as well. And the other group would get, you know, like water or something, right?

Something that's not going to boost their blood glucose. And they found that the group that got something like, you know, lemonade or Gatorade or something was able to perform better on a second task that was willpower related. The secret to Starbucks, right? Everyone getting their lattes midday, you know? Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely.

Absolutely. I mean, but here's my kickback on like this idea that willpower is depleted. If I work out, if I take care of my body, if I eat right, it seems to me that I have more willpower as I go on into my week. So if I fight, like, I get on my rowing machine and there is nothing in me that wants to pull the numbers that I know I need to pull. And the first couple minutes, like, I'm literally like, it's just like everything in my body is saying don't do this. Yeah. You know? And if I fight through that, it seems like I can push forward in my podcast and push forward in my career goals.

So I question the whole like, we only have so much willpower. Are you talking in the course of like a week or in the course of a day or? Yeah. So I think you might be right in the course of like, if we're talking about four. hour straight. Is that kind of what you're talking? Yeah, it's more of like a short-term. Short-term sort of thing. Like a muscle, it regenerates, right? And get stronger. So if you're exercising your willpower by forcing yourself to do the rowing machine,

your will be actually stronger once it regenerates, right? Just like a muscle, you've got to do a little bit of, what is it? Building some calluses between your forehead is what I like to call it. There it is. Yeah. Sure. But stress, what is it? Stress. Stress, recovery, adaptation. Yeah. My basic, the basic model of how people grow, right?

Yeah. And yeah, exactly. I think it's true for willpower as well. That's interesting. So if you're pushing yourself on the rowing machine in the morning, maybe the task right after that, you might not have quite the willpower to do, but let's say the next morning, I would say it's probably better, right?

Okay. So the thought is exercise your willpower and be judicious, judicious with it. So don't try and tackle a high willpower activity at, you know, eight, nine p.m. Like, it's just not, not going to go super well, probably. People talk about the concept of like eat the frog, which is like, um, there's some, I don't know, some parable or story about if you got some giant frog to eat, you better start early in the morning or something like that. I'm probably totally butchering it. But basically, you, you, You want to tackle your really high willpower depleting task early in the day rather than

tackling a bunch of little easy things and then trying to tackle some giant presentation at 8 p.m. or whatever. Okay. Yeah, no, I think this ties into Sensorium to some degree. Like, sensorium is like highest, you know, earliest in the morning when our cortisol is high, when our brain is fresh. You know, so there's certain times of the day that we should really, you know, optimize for different tasks. But that being said, like if you need to do, you know, like some, most nights

at 8 o'clock after full days when I'm doing the podcast stuff, you know, and it's like, that's all I got. But your willpower is probably bolstered by the value you place in the podcast. So there are so many moving parts to this whole willpower equation. And I actually at one point sat down and tried to like make an actual like equation, like a super nerd. Okay. like variables and stuff, I couldn't figure it out. But because it's so complicated, it's a multifaceted thing. So if we talk about one of these, it doesn't fully explain the picture. We got to talk about all of them. So there's willpower, right? There's, one of the biggest breakthroughs I had was learning about self-forgiveness in its role in procrastination specifically.

And the way it's linked is in that, let's say, I've done something wrong to you. Right. Okay. I've made you upset or something, right? And you have not forgiven me. Are you likely to approach me or avoid me? Avoid you? So if you hold a grudge, basically, if there's some negative emotion associated with me, you're

going to avoid me. If you forgive me, that's probably going to reduce that grudge or negative emotion or whatever associated with me, you're probably more likely to approach me than if you hadn't forgiven me. So considering procrastination as sort of a harm or a harm against the self, if you forgive yourself, you're more likely to approach the task. So for example, I had Stahl's Psychoform sitting on my desk for like a year, didn't touch it. Every time I thought about touching it or opening it up or starting to read, I thought about all these, well, I should have already read it, right, all the should statements.

And a lot of negative affect, negative feelings came associated with trying to approach that task. And after I learned about this self-forgiveness thing, I basically just sat down. I was like, okay, it's a little bit of radical acceptance of I haven't read it. Okay, like let's move from there. Let's forgive myself for not having read it yet. And suddenly I just didn't feel as bad every time I tried to go read it and I started reading it. and I started reading it. That was huge for me.

That's fascinating. Yeah, I can see how that works. Similarly with presentations. So, I mean, I told that story of typing in content while people are grabbing food. That hasn't happened since I've started doing the self-forgiveness thing, where whereas before, if I were approaching a presentation, I would think about all the times that I've waited until last minute. Yeah.

I would feel very guilty thinking about a procrastination because of all these negative experiences. So if when I forgave myself for all those past problems actually approaching the task, I was able to approach the task because it wasn't as distressing anymore. That's cool. I was actually able to produce content that I cared about

and was pretty good, in my opinion. That's really cool. Yeah. It seems like it's another way of saying self-forgiveness is to be able to identify the emotions that you've attached to tasks from not doing it the way that you would have wanted to do it or I'd plan to do it. And just becoming more like, yeah, forgiving. I guess that is a good word. Forgiving of yourself for that and kind of accepting of your accepting of. accepting of the

emotion that's there. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Self compassion for the experience you're having. I also think of it as kind of like you're becoming conscious of

the emotion. Yeah. So I could see why your kind of identification of cognitive distortions. Exactly. And the thoughts that come with it could be helpful as well there. Yeah.

I think that's why that was such a powerful base for this learning about self-forgiveness and willpower. Because I don't think if, I think if I hadn't had that, then I probably wouldn't have been able to approach this. One other thing I wanted to talk about was mindfulness and its role in all this, like mindfulness meditation. That one I haven't kept up quite as strongly. I actually restarted doing it again recently, but I found it really very very very, very much.

I found it really valuable early on because it gave me a lot more awareness of my own actions as they were happening. Because if you're really prone to procrastination, they've been doing it for a long time, it's pretty automatic at a certain point. And so just like the identifying cognitive distortions allowed me to identify the mental patterns, the mindfulness meditation helped with that a lot as well. And what was so key to that was the non-judgmental component of mindfulness meditation. Like as things do pop into your head, you non-judgmentally kind of just watch them pass on and don't, you know, ponder on them rather than thinking, oh, you idiot, why'd that come to your mind? Right. So again, this pattern of kind of self-compassion, non-judgment, very neutral stance.

And it allowed me to, as I was meditating more, I would find myself catching. myself like picking up my phone as soon as I sat down to my desk to do something I didn't want to do. I just felt a little more hyper aware of my own actions as they were happening. And the only thing I had changed was doing mindfulness meditation. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. I think I'm going to sort of introduce that topic in more depth and future talk. One thing that when I was looking at this recently was the effect side.

is like 0.7 for depression and anxiety. So it's pretty high actually learning how to do this, doing mindfulness, practicing mindfulness. And I think it is that piece of like you're noticing the emotion, you're noticing the thoughts, and it's not like you're applying the cognitive distortion system, you're more like it's a different type of skill. It's like you're just kind of watching them.

And then you're watching them like, like if they were hitting like a Teflon pan and the Teflon hand pan was tilted. and you're watching those kind of things, hit the Teflon pan, and then just kind of slide off and then drift out. It's a beautiful sight. Like, thinking of that, watching that happen, like, in your mind is so relieving, honestly. Yeah, yeah.

And how I learned it, because I'm a kind of a more technical person than someone who can just, like, sit there and breathe, is I did it through biofeedback and watching my, my score and the biofeedback and and then the walking mindfulness was helpful to me. Nice. Okay, so let's... Yeah, topic for another day. Yeah, we'll go into more depth than that future.

But go ahead. I'm not sure how much else there is to say. I mean, there are a couple other things we've sort of already talked about, like values. So one of the most important things you can do is connect your tasks and your goals to your underlying values. So if I've got something, let's say I don't necessarily feel like doing some component in my workday, I need to remember that underneath it all, I value patient care.

I value my patients, and I also value my job, and I value a lot of these things, right? And connecting that task to that value helps you just kind of do it. Because if you don't want to, it needs to get done, right? But sometimes we can get stuck on how much we dislike some task and we're losing sight of our actual values. Yeah, absolutely. I think especially for people who are studying to kind of come back to, okay, I value taking care of people, helping people. And the person I'm going to be able to help in the future maybe helped a little bit more by this knowledge that I'm procuring, that I'm developing. I think that's so much more helpful than studying out of a place of fear.

Absolutely. Then there's obviously like the grab bag, obvious things of like, you know, eat food, sleep enough, exercise. Those are all obviously really important when it comes to willpower and not procrastinating. But if I just tell people to go exercise and they're procrastinating already, that's maybe not the best first thing to tackle. For me, it was, it's like the self-forgotism. forgiveness, the cognitive distortions, and the mindfulness stuff.

We're probably the three biggest things for me. So what's happened now since, what is your life since you've done these things? How is your life different? I would say my capacity to take on things I'm passionate about has gone up significantly because I can juggle more things at once, whereas before, if I had several things on my plate, I would easily get very overwhelmed and kind of put them all off. Whereas now I got my hands in more pots than I expected to. And like it's working actually for the first time ever. And it's actually, it's just really exciting. Yeah. I mean, I'm like we're, you know, leading a small

group or, you know, I'm playing music. I'm doing the chief year. Um, doing, you know, uh, Whitney, And my wife, you know, we're about to have our second kid. So like there's just all these things and a lot of tasks associated with them. And I feel like I'm able to triage them and like just get stuff done. Whereas before I would often get paralyzed in a situation like this. Yeah. And, you know, it's interesting. I was thinking about you the other day as I was watching you play in the band.

Yeah. And I really enjoyed it. And I was like, you know, don't. Dr. Brammer's like this budding leader. And yeah, it was a really good moment. Thanks. Like I really, I don't know if that's like part of the process of kind of growing up and what you're talking about or just growing into a leader, you know. But that was my sort of overarching experience of you at that moment.

That's what was going through my mind. Yeah. Um, okay, wow. That's a really cool man. Hopefully it was organized enough to digest, you know, from the listening end. But if not listen again, or maybe there's some notes afterwards, right? Yeah. I'm going to put a blog together like I always do.

Cool. I'll link it in the show notes. If there's, if there's something that you heard that you want to go back to and kind of dig into a little bit more, we'll also link some, the, this mentor guru that you listen to. We'll link his stuff in the blog entry. And if this was helpful, you can throw up a comment at that point. And maybe I'll have Jackson throw up a comment back or I'll talk about. Yeah, sure.

Absolutely. Dr. Brammer. Thank you so much for coming on to the show. Thank you, Dr. Peter.