- If you've ever wanted to count yourself
among the ranks of geniuses like Leonardo da Vinci,
Margaret Atwood and Frank Lloyd Wright,
then you're in luck because there
is at least on dimension in which you,
me and probably everyone watching this video
is already like them and that's because
each one of these geniuses is
or was a massive procrastinator.
da Vinci took 16 years to finish the Mona Lisa
which is to say that he died 16 years after he started it,
and over the course of his life
he only finished a handful of projects
often leaving angry patrons scrambling to hire
other people to finish the projects
that eventually slipped from his attention.
Likewise the author Margaret Atwood
is pretty open about the fact that she spends
every morning procrastinating only
getting to work around three in the afternoon.
And as the story goes, the architect Frank Lloyd Wright
drew up the initial plans for
the famous Falling Water House just hours
before a scheduled meeting with
the man who had commissioned it.
Procrastination is a problem that plagues
most of us to some degree.
From famous polymaths and artists throughout history
to YouTubers ironically making videos about procrastination,
to students just trying to get their homework done,
almost all of us deal with it along
with its consequences of which there are many.
Despite the justifications that procrastinators
love to make like I work well under pressure man, it's fine,
research has shown that procrastination
is significantly correlated with poor study habits,
with depression, anxiety, lycanthropy,
low self esteem, and yes I may have made one of those up,
but the fact remains that procrastination
is a damaging habit to be in.
So, over the course of the next three videos
we are going to dig deep into both
the causes of procrastination
and how we can finally over come it.
This video in particular will focus
on the science of procrastination
and we're gonna pull from a wide body
of research to find out exactly
why we tend to put off our work.
As the ancient proverb goes, know thy enemy.
Then in the next video we're gonna go over
several tactics you can use to stop procrastinating
in the moment once you catch yourself doing it
and the final video will wrap things up
by looking at how each of us can once and for all
shed the label of procrastinator from our identities
and permanently reduce our tendency to put things off.
For now though we are focused on the question of why?
Why do we procrastinate?
One of the most popular theories
that attempts to gather and integrate
the many potential answers to this question
is called Temporal Motivation Theory
which was created by Doctor Piers Steel
which was most thoroughly explained
in his book The Procrastination Equation.
As the book title implies,
Temporal Motivation Theory attempts
to explain procrastination in terms
of a formula which aims to solve our tasks utility
or the general motivation to do it.
The higher the utility or the higher the motivation,
the less likely someone is going to be
to procrastinate on that particular task.
And the elements of that equation include number one,
expectancy which is your belief
that you can complete the task.
Number two, value which is how valuable
the reward the task will give you is to you.
Number three, impulsiveness which is
the likelihood that you're gonna
be distracted by something that would
give you instant gratification now
and finally number four there's delay
which is how long you're gonna
have to wait to get the reward.
So to solve for motivation or utility,
you simply set the equation up like this
and then if you want to raise your motivation
and stop procrastinating you just need
to figure out how to manipulate
one or more of the equations elements.
For example you could raise expectancy
by getting clear on the details of your task
or by breaking it down into little sub tasks
each to which feels more actionable.
Likewise you could raise a tasks value
by setting up additional rewards for completing it
like giving yourself a preplanned break once you finish it.
And of course you could lower impulsiveness
by disconnecting from the internet or working
on self discipline exercises to make yourself
less vulnerable to distractions or by changing
your study location to increase the distance
between you and your VR headset.
And finally there is delay which is probably
the hardest element in the equation to manipulate
since a lot of tasks have a set in stone due date
meaning there is a set in stone reward.
Now Temporal Motivation Theory
has its routes in behavioral economics
proposing that the reason we procrastinate
is purely due to our current perceived utility of the task.
And to be fair it is a model that does
a pretty good job at collecting many
of the reasons we do tend to put things off.
The expectancy piece accurately reflects
the fact that we tend to be more resistant
to starting a task when we know that it's difficult.
Likewise the value and delay variables reflect
how we tend to offer instant gratification
over rewards who's value we don't much care about
or that we've discounted because it's far off in the future.
But it's worth mentioning that this theory
does have its critics including Doctor Timothy Pychyl
who heads up the procrastination
research group at Carleton University.
In a critique that he wrote
for the website Psychology Today,
Pychyl points out that in the attempt
to unify everything under this utility based equation,
this theory ends up making too many assumptions.
For one, it assumes that some tasks
like socializing with friends have
a fixed utility that isn't sensitive to delay
while others like writing an essay
definitely are sensitive to that delay.
And in fact these two tasks are used together
to form an example on Dr. Steel's website.
According to the graph there,
the utility of socializing remains
higher than that of writing the essay
until right near the due date at which point
the lines intersect and now it's time
to start chuggin' Red Bull's
and scrambling to finish that essay.
But Pychyl's article asks what
would happen if a party scheduled for
this Friday were postponed to next week.
Since this increases delay, the overall utility
of socializing should be decreased
and now the utility of writing the essay
should be higher which means that you
should choose to do it right?
Of course in the real world most students
wouldn't decide to work on an essay
far in advance of the deadline just
because a party got postponed.
Now for my part I feel like Pychyl's
critique in this one example isn't
a perfect take down because it kind
of frames things as a binary choice
and in reality I'm gonna be considering more options.
If a party gets postponed,
I'm probably still gonna consider playing Overwatch
all night rather than just choosing to do the essay.
Still, I do agree with his overall conclusion where he says,
"The point is that complex human behaviors
"are not best understood by simple equations or formuli.
"Although the theories that these formuli represent
"can be useful in our discussion of behavior."
And I especially agree with this view
that Temporal Motivation is just a little
too focused on this idea of people
as rational decision makers,
carefully weighing different actions like ingots on a scale
because that isn't how it works.
We humans with our squishy multi layer brains
are a lot more irrational then
economic theories would like to paint us.
At all times the rational part of your brain
is locked in an eternal struggle with
the more instinctual, emotional side.
And it's this emotional side that plays
the biggest role in our tendency to procrastinate
especially for people that have a hard time regulating it.
In a study that was published back in 2001,
the researcher Dianne Tice found that students
who were primed to believe their mood was fixed
or frozen were less likely to seek
instant gratification or to procrastinate,
while students who were lead to believe
that their moods could be changed
were much more likely to do both.
And even though procrastinators tend
to feel guilt when they do this,
they or we I should say actually because I do this too,
we tend to rationalize it and we convince ourselves
that it's really not a big deal.
For an example of this, a study done at Bishop University
had students react to scenarios where procrastination
had actually caused a problem or at least exasperated it,
including a scenario where somebody
had come back from a sunny vacation
with a suspicious mole but then
put off going to the doctor to have
it checked out for quite a long time.
And in reaction to that scenario
the chronic procrastinators in the group
tended to say things like at least I went
to the doctor before it got really really bad
instead of saying things like if only
I'd gone to the doctor sooner.
All their statements tended to be what
are called downward counterfactuals
which are responses that reflect
the desire to improve one's mood in the short term.
And these are in contrast to, you guessed it,
upward counterfactuals which are responses
that tend to embrace difficulties now
in an attempt to learn something new about the future.
As the head researcher for the study put it,
"Procrastinators focused on how to make themselves
"feel better at the expense of drawing insight
"from what made them feel bad."
Despite the guilt that we feel,
this habitual urge to seek an emotional
pick me up in response to a task that's boring or difficult
or in response to anxiety causes us
to construct arguments that rationalize
our procrastination and keep us in
a never ending cycle of doing it.
And those studies are just the start
because there is even more evidence
to support this idea of procrastination
as primarily an issue of emotional regulation.
For instance, a study from Brooklyn College
back in 2010 found a significant link
between procrastination problems and problems
with executive functioning which is
an umbrella term for all the higher cognitive
functions that control our behavior.
When the researchers first tested students
on procrastination and then
on nine scales of executive functioning,
such as self monitoring
and emotional control and organization,
they found a significant link between
problems with procrastination and all nine of these scales.
And another study even found a biological link.
When a research team over in Germany did FMRI brain scans
on 264 adults they found a link
between difficulties in initiating actions on tasks
and a greater volume of gray matter in the amygdala
which is the brains fight or flight center.
Though it is worth mentioning just
a couple of things about this study.
The first of which being that the results merely
show an association rather than claiming
a direct causal link and the second being
a reminder that the physical structure
of the brain is in fact quite adaptable.
In fact a study done back in 2013 showed
how just eight weeks of training and mindfulness meditation
can actually shrink the volume of the amygdala
and as the study notes, "As the amygdala shrinks,
"the prefrontal cortex associated
"with higher order brain functions
"such as awareness, concentration
"and decision making becomes thicker."
And I think that this is very important to include
because while all of us are born with different brains,
we're also born with brains that
can in fact change, adapt and improve.
So, to sum things up the current body
of procrastination research seems
to point the finger primarily at an inability
to self regulate emotions and mood as the cause.
When you're a chronic procrastinator
you consistently give in to feel good,
even though you are keenly aware of the hard you're causing
and even though you feel guilty about it.
And make no mistake, even the greats felt guilty about it.
In fact, Walter Issacson's biography
on Leonardo da Vinci makes this pretty clear stating,
"The most obvious evidence that he was human
"rather than super human is the trail
"of projects he left unfinished.
"Tell me if anything was ever done.
"He repeatedly scribbled in notebook after notebook.
"Tell me.
"Tell me if I ever did a thing.
"Tell me if anything was ever made."
Of course this primary reason is connected
to other causes as well such as those problems
with executive functioning and the expectancy value
and delay issues laid out by Temporal Motivation Theory
and by how close we are to our distractions
as well as how addicted we are to them
which I think is an important point to note
since now more than ever our distractions
are specifically engineered to keep
us coming back again and again.
Now, in the next video in this series
we're gonna dig into some specific tactics
that you can use to stop procrastinating
in the moment when you notice yourself doing it.
But before we end this video I do
want to address one of the most common fixes
for procrastination that I see being touted on the internet
which is to simply go and do the work that you love,
to follow your passion because if you're procrastinating
right now it means you're doing
the wrong work and you need to quit.
(sighs)
If only it were that easy.
But alas even people who are
quote unquote "following their passion" have elements
of their work that they tend to procrastinate on.
I mean, most of these people would probably
feel pretty silly telling Margaret Atwood
that the work she spent her life doing
is in fact the wrong work for her
because she procrastinates on it.
More importantly though this is just dangerous advice.
Sure, occasionally you're gonna see somebody
who quit everything, dropped out of school
and went all in under water game development
and they made millions of dollars
and became an inspiration to us all.
Those are the stories that get told
but they are the exception to the rule.
And as the author Barbara Oakley wisely
points out in her book A Mind for Numbers,
"Over the past decades students who
"have blindly follower their passion
"without rational analysis of whether
"their career choice truly was wise
"have been more unhappy with their job choices
"then those who coupled passion with rationality."
A better path is to dedicate your free time
to exploring your interests and passions
and to double down on the ones that you
seem especially interested in.
And by deliberately learning what triggers
your procrastination with your main work
and then by learning to combat those triggers
which is what the other two videos
in this series will be about,
you're gonna find yourself with more of that free time
then you would've otherwise had.
Of course another way to start moving something
that you're passionate about from being
just a side project to becoming something
that eventually maybe something
you could turn into a career is
to accelerate your skill development in that area
by learning from expert teachers.
For example, if you eventually wanted to build
your own successful YouTube channel
then you might want to learn about content creation
from somebody who already does that for a living.
And fortunately my friend Evan
who runs the excellent channel Poly Matter
recently released a course over on Skillshare
that talks all about how to do that.
Evan's course covers the entire creation process
for making an animated YouTube video
starting from topic selection and research,
then moving on into story crafting
and finally heading on into a section
about how to actually make the animations
and one thing that I was really surprised
to learn especially given how smooth
and awesomely animated Evan's videos are is how simple
his process for making those animations actually is.
And beyond Evan's course you're also
going to find over 24,000 different classes
in Skillshare's library covering UX, InDesign, productivity,
entrepreneurship and tons of other topic areas.
Plus classes are hands on.
All of them feature projects and many
have downloadable example files
so you can immediately start using
what you're learning and learn actively.
A membership with Skillshare is also really affordable
costing about as much as your Netflix subscription
but of course being a lot more
useful to your future skill development.
And what's best if you use the link
in the description down below and sign up
you're gonna get two months of completely
unlimited access to their library for free.
So if you want to start accelerating
your skill development today then definitely use
that link below and sign up because there
is a lot that you could learn in two months.
Big thanks to Skillshare for sponsoring this episode
and as always thank you guys for watching.
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Thanks for watching and I will see you in the next video.