Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: Your Ever-Changing Personality & Procrastination With Less Guilt

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Starting point is 00:00:51 And it's mostly for the better. Across young adulthood and middle age, most people become more agreeable, more conscientious, and more emotionally stable. Also, why giving speeding tickets to drivers can actually be dangerous. And procrastination, is it really that bad to put things off? I'd say that it's always okay to procrastinate. I would really want to communicate to people that procrastination in itself, delaying, deferring, putting off, avoiding, those are part of being a human being. So let's try to accept that.

Starting point is 00:01:22 What we may not want to accept are the consequences. All this today on Something You Should Know. Metrolinks and Crosslinks are reminding everyone to be careful as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress. Please be alert, as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals, be careful along our tracks, and only make left turns where it's safe to do so. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe.

Starting point is 00:01:57 Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know as we get back into the swing of things after the holidays. And as you look back over the past couple of months, you probably bought a lot of gifts for people, and it was probably, at least at times, difficult to figure out what to get some people for a gift.

Starting point is 00:02:30 So we're going to begin today with what makes a good gift. Psychologists at Carnegie Mellon University looked at several studies on gift-giving and discovered that going for that big, wow wow surprise gift is often a mistake, particularly if you aren't certain that the gift is something they really want. Physical gifts are immediately well-received, but something less physical, like tickets to a show or a gift card, could bring more enjoyment in the long term. Socially responsible gifts, such as charity donations in someone's name,

Starting point is 00:03:08 may seem like a good idea, but researchers say people don't really think much of them or the person who gave them. And don't discount practical gifts. They can be great because the receiver will get use out of them over and over again. It really does help to try to put yourself in the other person's shoes and think about what they want. And that is something you should know. Have you ever wondered why you are the way you are? Your personality, where did it come from? Why do you do the things you do and why do you do them in the way that you do them?

Starting point is 00:03:48 Do you like your personality? Could you change it if you wanted to? These are some of the interesting questions we're about to tackle with Christopher Soto. He's an associate professor of psychology at Colby College in Maine, and director of the Colby Personality Lab. Hi, Christopher. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Thanks for having me, it's good to chat with you. How do you define a personality? I mean everybody when they meet somebody makes assessments of their personality based on what their experience is, but is there like a clinical definition of what a personality is? Sure, so in general, someone's

Starting point is 00:04:26 personality is their characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving, along with the psychological mechanisms that cause those patterns. And more specifically, most scientists who study personality focus on what are called the big five personality traits. So there's extroversion, which is the extent to which someone is talkative, assertive, and energetic, rather than being more socially and emotionally reserved. Second is agreeableness, which is how much compassion, respect, and trust someone tends to feel toward other people, rather than being more blunt, argumentative, or suspicious. Third is conscientiousness, which is the extent to which someone tends to be

Starting point is 00:05:05 organized, hardworking, and responsible, as opposed to being disorganized and maybe a bit lazy. Fourth is neuroticism, which is how prone someone is to experiencing negative emotions like anxiety, sadness, and anger, as opposed to being more calm and emotionally stable. And last is openness to experience, which is how much someone tends to seek out and create new ideas and new experiences rather than sticking with more familiar and conventional ones. Now, there's certainly more to personality than the big five, including people's attitudes, goals, values, and life stories. But a lot of the scientific research out there has focused on those five basic traits. And are those five basic traits pretty much baked in?

Starting point is 00:05:48 And who bakes them in? Are they baked in by your parents because that's how they made you? Or are they baked in by your experiences? I guess the short answer is yes. We definitely inherit a personality, but also our personality definitely develops over time as the result of our environment and our life experiences. And the way we know that personality is at least partially inherited is research on behavioral genetics. So these are studies that recruit participants who are more or less genetically related to each other. So you have some pairs

Starting point is 00:06:22 of identical twins who share all their genes, and some pairs of fraternal twins or ordinary biological siblings who share about half of their genetic material. And you also have some pairs of adoptive siblings who were raised in the same family environment, but don't share any genetic material. Then you measure everyone's personality and see how similar they are to each other. And these behavioral genetic studies consistently find that people who are genetically related to each other, more genetically related to each other, tend to have more similar personalities. So identical twins, more similar personalities than fraternal twins or biological siblings. Biological siblings, more similar to each other than adoptive siblings. That pattern is true for all of the big five traits,

Starting point is 00:07:06 as well as many other psychological characteristics. Well, that's interesting. It surprises me a little bit just because I think of people in a family, kids in a family where there's the quiet one and the gregarious one, and they're very different personalities, even though they have the same parents and they grew up in the same house. That's certainly true. There's still room for variability in personality among siblings and even among twins. But siblings are more likely to have similar personalities than would be,

Starting point is 00:07:38 you know, two random people that you picked off the street, or even compared to two adoptive siblings. But we also know from the same research that genes aren't the whole story, that our personalities are also shaped by our environment and our life experiences. Because if genes were the whole story, then identical twins who share all their genetic material would also have identical personalities. And that is not the case. Identical twins tend to have similar personalities, but not identical personalities. So there must be something going on in terms of environment and life experiences that are also causing people, even who are very genetically similar, to have somewhat different personalities from each other. So these personality traits, though, they're basically

Starting point is 00:08:25 descriptive, but they're not absolute. In other words, I act differently around different people and on different days, my personality changes in the sense that I'm not always exactly the same person all the time. That's certainly true. And that is a good thing. You know, if your behavior were perfectly consistent across all situations, that would get you into real trouble in some situations, right? So if you imagine someone who's very high in the trait of extroversion, so in general, they're very talkative, but they recognize, you know, if they're a student in a class listening to a lecture, they should be quiet. If they go to a funeral, they should not be chatting and joking around with people left and right. So I think a nice way to think about

Starting point is 00:09:11 the relationship between personality traits and behavior in particular situations is thinking of a trait as a kind of distribution of states. Will Fleece and others have a nice model of this where basically your personality trait in terms of the big five or any other trait describes your kind of average level of behavior. But if you're a healthy, well-functioning person, you're going to regulate your behavior in one direction or the other, depending on the particular situation that you're in. And that is a good thing. Even as a personality psychologist, I would not want people's behavior to be perfectly consistent across all situations. Do you think, or is there research that would show that the way I view my personality is the same,

Starting point is 00:09:59 generally speaking, as the way other people view me, or am I way off? Generally speaking, the research shows that people have a pretty good idea, a pretty accurate sense of what their personality is like, but not perfectly good. So if you ask me what my personality is like, you ask me to rate my personality, and then you ask three people who know me well, maybe one of my brothers, my wife, one of my students, and then you compare those four ratings of my personality, they're going to agree better than you'd expect by chance, but they're not going to agree completely with each other because every person has their own biases, their own view of me. And if you ask two different informants, they're not going to agree completely with each other either. So people have some

Starting point is 00:10:54 pretty good accuracy in describing their own personality or rating their own personality, but nobody's perfect because we all have subjective biases. It does seem that there are some overriding characteristics. Like if I think of somebody as a flake or a jerk, then that's who they are. That's their personality, and I don't need to dig any deeper than that because they obviously did something that makes me describe them that way. And so it kind of, they're probably probably it's like the guy that cuts you off on the freeway what a jerk well you don't know anything about him but you pretty much have

Starting point is 00:11:30 decided the guy's a jerk and i think that happens with people when we encounter people where some things really grab our attention and overshadow everything else that's certainly possible uh i mean we start making judgments of other people's personalities as soon as we start interacting with them. And for good reason, right? We want to understand and be able to predict how other people are going to behave. And so we try to make judgments about their personality. And usually, even with just a little bit of information, people can make at least somewhat accurate judgments of people's personality traits. But sometimes our first impressions are way off because we happen to catch them on a bad day or in an unusual situation.

Starting point is 00:12:16 But possibly that initial judgment is still quite sticky and it's going to take a lot more information before we're willing to update it and decide that, oh, well, maybe this person is not as much of a jerk or as much of a flake as I thought they were at first. Do most people, if you ask them to describe themselves and their personality, like who they are? Most people like who they are, but most people also have some things that they would like to change about their personality. They recognize that maybe they have a few quirks, a few flaws, a few weaknesses. So I'm thinking of research asking people if they have goals to change their personality traits, and a lot of people do. Most people have some goal, something about their personality that they would like to change. In young adults, for example, it's most common for people to wish they were a little bit more extroverted, a little bit more conscientious and organized, and a little bit more emotionally stable, better at regulating their negative emotions. We're talking about your personality,

Starting point is 00:13:23 what it is, how it got to be, and how you can change it if you want to. Christopher Soto is my guest, and he is an associate professor of psychology at Colby College in Maine and director of the Colby Personality Lab. This episode is brought to you by Melissa and Doug. Wooden puzzles and building toys for problem solving and arts and crafts for creative thinking. Melissa and Doug makes toys that help kids take on the world because the way they play today shapes who they become tomorrow. Melissa and Doug. The play is pretend.

Starting point is 00:13:55 The skills are real. Look for Melissa and Doug wherever you shop for toys. This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines. Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures and warm Porter hospitality on your way there. All Porter fares include beer, wine, and snacks, and free fast-streaming Wi-Fi on planes with no middle seats. And your Tampa Bay vacation includes good times, relaxation, and great Gulf Coast weather. Visit flyporter.com and actually enjoy economy. So Christopher, since people say there are

Starting point is 00:14:34 often things about their personality they would like to change, if you go about trying to change it, how likely successful will you be? Better than average. So I think we can break that down into a couple of different interesting questions. The first is whether personality can change over time. And there the evidence is clear. Personality change can and does happen, even for basic traits like the big five. But it tends to be gradual rather than sudden. It tends to happen on the scale of months and years rather than days and weeks. So personality can change. The next question you might ask is, well, then how does personality typically change across the lifespan? And it's mostly for the better, at least in adulthood. Across young adulthood and middle

Starting point is 00:15:26 age, most people become more agreeable, more conscientious, and more emotionally stable. Things look a bit messier in adolescence where you see some temporary dips in agreeableness and conscientiousness. So we can take a moment of silence for all those parents and teachers who have to deal with 14-year-olds at their lifetime peaks of meanness and laziness. But once you get out of adolescence, for most people, it's a trend toward greater personality maturity, which is a good thing. And then the last question where you started is, can people intentionally change their personality? Now, this is a hot topic in personality psychology right now, but at least the early evidence is encouraging.

Starting point is 00:16:15 So as I mentioned, lots of people have goals to change their personality. And if you measure someone's goals for how they'd like to change right now, and you measure their personality right now, and then you wait six months or a year, and you measure their personality again, you will find that those goals that they had at the beginning of the time period do in fact predict, not perfectly, but better than chance, how their personality will then subsequently change over the intervening time period. Now, that does not mean that personality change is easy or that it happens quickly, because it is not easy and it does not happen quickly. But with persistent effort and by translating your goals into more kind of concrete ways to implement those goals, it seems like people can have some success. You outlined the five traits, the five big traits, but do you also consider things like chronic tardiness, kindness, things like that to be personality traits? Yeah, absolutely. Gerard Saussure has this nice quote that each one of the big five is not so

Starting point is 00:17:24 much a single thing as it is a collection of things that have something in common so each one of the big five is very broad and you can break it down into more specific facets or aspects so for example some of the things that you mentioned tardiness is one small part of the much broader big five trait of conscientiousness. And you've got other things in there that tend to be related, things like organization, like work ethic, like responsibility, like rule following. Those are all behaviors that tend to go together, but they don't always go together, right? Some

Starting point is 00:18:00 people might be very punctual, but not super responsible, or very organized, but not super hardworking. So that can definitely happen, but on average, those traits tend to go together. What about how people of different personalities tend to get along with each other are we typically if if we're strong in some areas are we more likely to like or dislike people who are strong in those same areas or other it's kind of moving parts here but but how do we interact with people of other personalities so on average people who are more extroverted more agreeable and more emotionally stable tend to be liked a bit better than people who have opposite traits. But there is also, beyond those main effects, there are also some interesting dynamics. So, for example, someone who is very extroverted might find it easier to interact with someone who is relatively introverted because then they get to do all

Starting point is 00:19:05 the talking and the introvert gets to do all the listening. So there's an aspect of complementarity there. For other traits, especially agreeableness, it's more of a reciprocity dynamic. So if I'm very kind and considerate and respectful, then I prefer to interact with others who are going to pass that kindness and considerateness back to me. But if I'm someone who likes to argue a lot and pick fights, then, you know, I don't mind being around other disagreeable people who are willing to get into it with me. You said that we, personalities tend to improve like, like wine, I guess, with age, we get, we get better. I imagine there are some cases where that's not the case. And when it's

Starting point is 00:19:53 not the case, why is it not the case? Yeah, that's the average pattern that I described, but it does not hold for everybody. Some people do not get much more agreeable, conscientious and emotionally stable across adulthood. Some people might even change in the opposite direction a bit. And that seems to be due to life experiences. on personality development across the lifespan is that genetic and environmental influences on personality change depending on the age of the person that you're talking about. So if you look at children and adolescents, genetic effects on their personality tend to be a bit stronger, and environmental effects tend to be a bit weaker. Whereas if you look at adults, the opposite is true. When does personality really settle down? And I guess what I mean by that is, okay, so I have a 15-year-old, and he is very different than he was a couple of years ago. He has a lot of those adolescent things that you were talking about. But at some point,

Starting point is 00:21:04 your personality, I mean, adolescence obviously throws you into a bit of a adolescent things that you were talking about. But at some point, your personality, I mean, adolescence obviously throws you into a bit of a loop. But when is it like you can say, okay, this guy is this way and is likely going to stay that way? Never, Mike. Never. It's not the case that personality ever completely stops changing. You know, there is this famous quote from William James, famous early psychologist writing in the late 1800s, who wrote that for most of us, by the age of 30, the character is set like plaster and will never soften again. And that was a compelling idea that really guided personality psychologists, and I think lots of other people for most of the 20th century of assuming that by, you know, personality is something that really forms in childhood and

Starting point is 00:21:50 adolescence, young adulthood, maybe a bit, but then once you settle down a little bit, you're pretty much stuck with what you've got. But that has proven not to be the case. So work by Brent Roberts, Oliver John, Sanjay Srivastava, and others has shown that although the pace of personality development does slow down with age, it never stops completely. And there is no like magical point where beyond this age, you're pretty much done changing. But I would have for someone, your son's age in adolescence, there's probably going to see, you're probably going to see more personality change over the next five years than there will be for you or I, but even for us, there's still going to be some. You've said that personality tends to get better with age, but there is that, that stereotype of the grumpy old man who, as he got older, got grumpier. And if you kick the ball in his yard, he won't

Starting point is 00:22:46 give it back kind of grumpy old man. So how does that reconcile? That stereotype seems to be inaccurate on average, that on average, we tend to see continued increases in agreeableness in these more pro-social aspects of personality throughout middle age. Now, I can't speak to quite late in the lifespan, say around age 80 or so, but at least through middle age, things are looking pretty good on average. Since you study personality, what is it about this whole subject that you find most interesting? I think still the most interesting thing for me, even after doing this for about 20 years now, is still the personality change. The fact that personality can and does change continues to interest me.

Starting point is 00:23:34 And I find that when I talk to other people about it who aren't doing personality research, it comes as a surprise to many of them. Many people do seem to have this intuition that at some point personality becomes fixed and you lose the possibility for change. And so I think it's great that we can tell people that is not the case. Personality change may not be as dramatic or as likely as it is at older ages than at younger ages, but that the potential for change is always there. Well, I can see why you like studying this and why you find it so interesting that everybody has a personality and where that personality came from and how it can change and how it does change. My guest has been Christopher Soto. He is an

Starting point is 00:24:20 associate professor of psychology at Colby College in Maine, and he's director of the Colby Personality Lab. Thanks for joining me, Christopher. Thanks very much. It was a pleasure to talk with you. This is an ad for BetterHelp. Welcome to the world. Please read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an

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Starting point is 00:25:19 I want to go to Jack's place today. I'll just take the car. Don't wait up, okay? Kids go from 0 to 18 in no time, don't they? At Intact Insurance, we insure your car so you can enjoy the ride. Visit intact.ca or talk to your broker. Conditions apply. Could procrastination be a good thing? I mean, we've all learned that you should not put off until tomorrow what you can do today. But why? Says who? Maybe procrastination has a place and a purpose, at least some of the time. Still, it is an interesting question. Why do we put things off? Here to discuss procrastination in a whole new way is Dominic Vogue.

Starting point is 00:26:01 He's a consultant and speaker and senior associate director at Princeton University's McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning. So let's define the term here. What is, from your perspective, what is procrastination? Procrastination is avoidance. It's avoidance that's designed to protect our sense of self. It's not the behavior itself, but actually the motives

Starting point is 00:26:25 underlying our actions. Well, that's interesting, because I think most people think that procrastination is the behavior itself. Well, we often think about procrastination as this behavior that's some sort of distraction or time waster. I would argue that, more importantly, it's what's motivating us. So when we procrastinate, we're not, we don't want, not only do we not want to do the task maybe that's ahead of us, but we're avoiding some meaning of that task. So if it's frustrating or challenging, or I feel I can't do it, it might raise doubts. Those feelings are what I'm avoiding. Or if I'm concerned that it will be judged as inadequate or ineffective or not my expectations, I'm often avoiding those meanings or those

Starting point is 00:27:11 judgments. And so procrastination is fundamentally about avoiding a threat to our sense of ourself. And it does seem, well, maybe it does seem that almost everybody procrastinates or feels like procrastinating or has had an experience of doing it. It does seem to be human nature, yes? Yeah, I think so. I make a joke sometimes that the research says 85% of people procrastinate and the rest are liars. I think not everybody does, but I think everybody experiences the conflicting or competing motivations that lead to procrastination. But some people have developed strategies and techniques, tools for overcoming and managing those competing motivations. And in fact, most people who procrastinate, just to point this out, in some areas do not procrastinate.

Starting point is 00:27:59 And often, if you've achieved anything in life and academically, professionally, at some point you stopped procrastinating and started doing the task at hand. So people procrastinate and stop procrastinating. The idea of procrastination, when I think about it, there seems to be some sort of, like, in order to put it off, you somehow have to justify it. Like, not only are you putting it off, but you also kind of give yourself a reason why it's okay. Very astute observation. Yes, indeed. So we don't give up our rational faculties in that moment. So we have to have an explanation for why we are putting things off. So we say to ourselves, well, I can do this tomorrow. Or a common one is, I'm tired. I'm not in an optimal state. So I'll wait until I do. I'll go to sleep

Starting point is 00:28:51 now. Or I need to reduce stress. I'll watch some YouTube videos. And then tomorrow when I'm feeling better, I'll undertake the task. At that point, often we continue to put it off. And in fact, often what we do at that moment is we say, how did I talk myself out of doing that? I made this plan. So while we need that justification in the moment, and we're seeking, in fact, those justifications, oftentimes with retrospection and introspection, we see really what I was doing was looking for an excuse. So in my case, like I'll be working on an episode of the podcast, and it'll be getting late, and I'll say to myself, you know, if I start fresh in the morning, I'll do a much better job. And then I come back the next morning, and I start fresh, and I probably do a better job.

Starting point is 00:29:38 So is that procrastination, or is that just smart working? I'd say in that case, it's smart working, right? Because it's not the behavior itself. It's not putting it off, deferring, reprioritizing. Those are a crucial part of our work life. We have to reprioritize and adjust. The question is, why am I doing it? So that justification, you have some expertise, some knowledge about yourself that says, if I put it off till tomorrow morning, will I actually do it? Will I start? Or is that simply a justification that I'm giving myself? And so that's where the really the crucial part of my approach to procrastination comes in is self-awareness is actually a strategy. And it's essential if you're going to overcome recurring chronic patterns of procrastination. So in your case, I would say that's a wise

Starting point is 00:30:26 choice based on experience and self-knowledge. So where is that line between it's okay to procrastinate once in a while versus chronic procrastination? I'd say that it's always okay to procrastinate. I would really want to communicate to people that procrastination in itself, delaying, deferring, putting off, avoiding, those are part of being a human being. That's part of the human condition. And so let's try to accept that. What we may not want to accept are the consequences of procrastination. If it's affecting your life in a negative way, your relationships, if you find you have to make excuses to your boss, that you're unsatisfied or dissatisfied with your performance, that's the marker of when something has become procrastination. Then the second part of that is in the moment when you're looking inward as you did

Starting point is 00:31:16 and from the outside, I cannot say whether what you're doing is procrastination or not. Only you can. And we have, frankly, layers and layers of motivation. So to look inside, gain awareness, understand your history, your dynamic and patterns and say, hmm, does this feel like procrastination? Is this a pattern I've done before? Then to be skeptical of that and be prepared to implement some strategies or techniques to change up that dynamic. Does every procrastinator know full well what they're doing? I would say no. And certainly not in the moment. And they don't fully know why they're procrastinating. People carry around false understandings of what procrastination is and why they're doing it. And as a result,

Starting point is 00:32:06 likewise, their solutions are flawed and incomplete. So I don't believe that we do, but there are moments, there are times when we're, and I've done them myself, when I'm sitting there thinking, I am procrastinating, I'm putting this thing off. I know full well that I'm avoiding the task because it's distasteful or I don't like how it makes me feel or I'm frustrated or what have you. The question is, how do we respond to that awareness? And so that's where the skill comes in. Here's the interesting thing to me. You said that procrastination is part of the human condition, that we all basically procrastinate. Okay, I get that. But when I'm thinking about procrastinating,

Starting point is 00:32:45 when I'm thinking of putting something off, of not going to the gym today, but I'll go tomorrow, of not doing this now, I'll do it later. But if I tough it out, if I say, no, I'm going to do it, and I do it, I don't procrastinate, I feel great. I always feel better not procrastinating. Yes, exactly. So our worth is tied to that. And in that case, it seems, I think if I understood you correctly, that your worth goes up because you persisted, you persevered, you overcame something difficult. Is that right? Of course. Yeah, sure. And so that is a way to build our self-worth that's not connected to the performance, the evaluation of the performance itself, right? What made you feel good was not the grade.

Starting point is 00:33:30 It's that you persisted, is that you overcame an obstacle. And that is about self-growth and intrinsic motivation and value to you. you just described is one of the keys to overcoming the threat of judgment evaluation competition is to focus inward and say, can I improve? Can I acquire a skill? Can I meet a challenge? If I do, I often feel just as accomplished. In fact, sometimes more so. Talking about procrastination and ways to avoid procrastination, talking about it in the abstract right now, it's interesting, but I'm not sure it's helpful in the sense that I'm not going to, next time I feel like procrastinating, I'm probably not going to think about this conversation and try to think of ways to not procrastinate. I'm going to say, I'll do it tomorrow. And so one of the strategies is to find ways to remind ourselves what really motivates me,

Starting point is 00:34:33 what's a powerful intrinsic motivation that can overwhelm or dominate the countervailing feelings of boredom or frustration or fear. We need to creatively look inside and find our motivations and then find ways to remind ourselves of those motivations and turn them into things that are actionable. One thing I've wondered about, and Christmas is the perfect time to discuss this, people complain that they don't have enough time to get everything done for Christmas. There's so many things to do, so many gifts to buy. Well, the fact that Christmas is on December 25th every year should come as no surprise to anybody. And so there's

Starting point is 00:35:19 plenty of time. We all know what the deadline is. And yet people often put things off to the last minute, then complain that there's no time and get all stressed out about it and complain and say that they hate it. But you have to wonder, since it happens year after year after year, that maybe they don't really hate it or maybe they love to hate it, but it's part of the tradition of Christmas, of rush around and get everything done. Interesting. Maybe we say we don't like something, but maybe we actually do. Or maybe we like some aspect of that.

Starting point is 00:35:57 For instance, maybe we like complaining about it. Right. And I don't get to complain about it. And so, again, what I would say is we can both simultaneously dislike that or feel the pressure of getting the gift just right and want to be able to I want to get it done, but also the striving to do so invokes fear or avoidance in some way. And what procrastination is, is actually a way to resolve these competing motivations that maintains our sense of ourselves and our worth ultimately. What about the idea of just, you know, I don't want to do it, but I'll work on it for five minutes and see where it goes. Where you're not committing to staying up till two in the morning to finish this, you're just going to work on it a little bit and then maybe you end up

Starting point is 00:36:58 getting it done. Is that a valid strategy? Absolutely. So that's a version of lowering the expectations, right? So you said, I'm going to commit to a certain amount of time. And one of the features of that is time is in my control. If I can keep my behind in the seat at the front of the computer for 10 minutes, that's within my control. I can't always control how much I produce. I'm going to write three pages, but I can control time. And this also has an ending.

Starting point is 00:37:24 And so I know, and I know how far I'm going along. And so I can track that and monitor it. So that's a very good technique to get started. Give a defined, small unit of time where you commit to being invested in that. And at that point, you can make a decision. Hey, can I do another one of these 10-minute bursts? Should I take a break, give myself a reward? That's an outstanding approach. Yeah. Anything else about procrastination that you think people don't quite understand?

Starting point is 00:37:53 Because I think what you said in the beginning, that it isn't just that you're goofing off, which is what I think people feel guilty about. They feel like they're just goofing off, but there's more going on than that. Well, I think I'd like to make two points. One is that there is more going on than that. And that procrastination, if it's so common, and it is very common, it's the norm. It's not anomalous. It's, in fact, quite predictable.

Starting point is 00:38:27 So we have to ask ourselves, wait, what does procrastination do? What is it good for? If so many people are doing it so often, it must have a function. So let me just explain this scenario. So if I put off some task and then I leave it to the end, I only have a limited amount of time, then when I actually do the task and turn in my work to be evaluated or for my annual review or what have you, and then if I get a poor evaluation or less than I expected or less than perfect for those people who think of themselves as perfectionists, then I have a built-in excuse. I have an explanation. Well, the reason I didn't get this great response was because I only had this much time and so I couldn't do it great. Now, if you delay and put off and procrastinate, and then you actually do get a good response, you get the

Starting point is 00:39:09 equivalent of an A or an outstanding review, then your ability, your sense of your ability is bolstered. Either way with procrastination, my sense of myself as capable and able and smart is protected. So procrastination is the perfect strategy to protect our sense of ourselves as smart, able, capable, even as we, when we do that, we necessitate more often that excuse. That's a key thing. And then a second thing, and I think people will be surprised at this, is that workaholism, being overcommitted, not saying no, that is a kind of protective, arguably procrastination. If I have so many things to do, then if I don't perform at an exemplary level or I'm not judged as being outstanding in some part of my work, then I have a built-in excuse. I had so many things to do I couldn't achieve at

Starting point is 00:40:05 that level. And so in a way, overcommitment or being overextended is a kind of procrastination. It's a justified avoidance of the most important priorities and tasks. And I think we see that in the work world. People are taking on things and we think, why are you doing that? That's not your core mission. That's not your primary function. And I think it's worthwhile to examine for ourselves, what's motivating me here? Is it to do so many different things or is it to protect myself from judgments? I love that. Because people don't think of that as part of procrastination, but that's huge because

Starting point is 00:40:39 how many people do you know who have so much, well, I couldn't get that done because I had all these other things to do. And that, in a way, is procrastination, but not in the way we think of it. It's not because you put it off. It's because you did something else and said, well, I don't have time. Right, because the goofing off is not tolerable. Just goes back to your point about we need a justification. So what's better justification than have too much to do than to be able to do something great? That's a great justification to protect ourself, even as it inhibits or can undermine our performance in

Starting point is 00:41:15 any one of these core areas. Yeah. Well, and just being aware of that and realizing, well, maybe you need to knock a few things off your to-do list might make you a much better performer on the things that are left. Precisely. Yeah. Well, it's a fascinating topic and one everybody can relate to because procrastination is just seemingly so universal. And given that second definition of it, it's more universal than I realized. I think so. And so because it's universal, I think we can look around and accept it in ourselves and others and say, ah, this is part of being human. It's okay. I don't have to feel ashamed or awkward or guilty about this. I still want to change my behavior. I want to change the outcomes, but I don't need to feel bad about that

Starting point is 00:42:01 I procrastinate because that shame and that guilt actually gets in the way of the challenges of behavior change that are necessary if we're going to overcome it. And one of the arguments that people use to say why you should not procrastinate is that if you, for example, as a student, have a paper to write and you put it off until the last minute, it won't be as good as it would be if you really spent the time and did it. And then the procrastinators often say, no, I perform really well under pressure. I need that last minute pressure to perform well. So what do you say to that? Well, I think that can be the case. We need that last minute pressure to overcome the fear and the obstacles, right? So they're performing better

Starting point is 00:42:45 because the alternative is not to perform at all. But I used to tell myself that story when I was in college, and I would say things, well, I work better under pressure. But the fact for me and for many people is I'd never not worked under pressure. So I actually couldn't not make that comparison. Really was, I just couldn't work unless I felt pressure. And so that's a different statement. And I'm empathic to that, and I understand that. The question is, could we create, rather than a negative, fearful pressure, could we create a positive pressure? Could we create other things? Rather than feeling scared, can we feel so interested or compelled towards something? And maybe we can't entirely, but we can use a variety of methods, self-talk, the ways of collaborating with other people. We can,

Starting point is 00:43:32 you know, use our time management and task management techniques, like the one that you mentioned, give ourselves 10 minutes just to do the task. So if we can use a repertoire of strategies, then we don't have to rely upon that threat. Because not only does that put in question our ability, but that's really unpleasant. It really takes the joy out of our work. We get stressed out. It has negative consequences for our health. It is not ideal. It can work. It can be effective, but it's not thriving. Well, since everyone procrastinates, it is good to get some insight into why we do it and maybe how not to do it.

Starting point is 00:44:13 And also, as you say, sometimes it's just fine to do it. Dominic Vogue has been my guest. He is a consultant and a speaker and senior associate director at Princeton University's McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning. Thanks for being on Something You Should Know, Nick. Thank you, Mike. I really appreciate it. In order to keep people driving under the speed limit, the police give out speeding tickets. The idea being that if you see the police giving out speeding tickets in a certain area, you are more likely to slow down yourself.

Starting point is 00:44:47 But it turns out that strict enforcement of speeding laws may actually be dangerous. Researchers at the University of Western Australia conducted some experiments and found that when drivers were worried about getting a ticket and focused on keeping their speed under the speed limit, it caused them to not focus on other things. In other words, you can't make drivers pay more attention to their speed without taking their attention away from some of the other critical aspects of driving, and that can cause accidents. The conclusion was that aggressive ticketing policies have a clear

Starting point is 00:45:24 downside. So if you are in one of those situations when you're focused on your speed, like when a police car is following you, remember you still have to pay attention to all the other things too. And that is something you should know. If you enjoy this podcast, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with someone you know, or maybe a couple of people. I would really, really appreciate that.

Starting point is 00:45:50 I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Hey, hey, are you ready for some real talk and some fantastic laughs? Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? We're serving up four hilarious shows every week designed to entertain and engage and, you know, possibly enrage you. In Don't Blame Me, we dive deep into listeners' questions,

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Starting point is 00:46:59 New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, friendship,

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Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: Your Ever-Changing Personality & Procrastination With Less Guilt

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