How to Stop Procrastinating

Welcome to Solved, the self-help podcast for smart people. My name is Mark Manson, threetime number one New York Times bestselling author, and this is my co-host and longtime lead researcher, Drew Bernie. Now, Drew and I have been in the personal growth and mental health space for a combined 30 years now. And we've had enough. We've had enough of the empty promises, and fake solutions. Every episode of Solved, our goal is to create the most comprehensive evidence-based valued delivering podcast on earth on that specific topic. And today's topic is procrastination. Now, the catch of Solved is that whatever topic we cover, our goal is that it is the last time you will ever feel a need to listen to a podcast on that topic. And this is the last time we can make an episode covering this topic. Therefore, our promise to you is that if you make the commitment to get through the entire episode and implement the advice, your procrastination will be [Music] solved.

Drew, I have two things to say before we get started. Okay. Before we solve procrastination for the entire world. You're welcome everybody. Uh first thing is uh so listeners don't know this but this is the second episode that's going out of this podcast but it this is actually the first one we're recording and uh ironically we procrastinated this episode like three months. How many months did it take us to shoot this thing? Pretty close to that. Yeah. So be confident listener that uh your your hosts are are experts very familiar with the topic you're about to discuss. Yes. Yes. Exactly.

Uh, and then the second thing I want to say is is just I want to get in before all of the comments from people who are going to say, "Oh, I'll listen to this later. You're not funny. You're not clever. The same joke. I've been doing this for 15 years. Every time I create any content around procrastination, the first comment is always, "Oh, I'll get to this later." And I'm like, "Yeah, you're very cute." Those people haven't even made it that far yet, though. This far yet. So, yeah, that's true. So, All right. So, today is procrastination. We are solving procrastination. Just a reminder to the listener, the whole premise of this podcast is that this is the last podcast that you should ever have to listen to on this topic. Drew and I and our research team have gone just absurdly in depth researching trying to understand this topic. It is, this episode is absolutely comprehensive. It is everything you need to know about procrastination. and then some. Uh, you're probably going to want to vomit when you hear the word procrastination by the end of this. But the goal is that you don't have to ever listen to anything about procrastination ever again. You don't have to read another book. You don't have to take another seminar. It's all here.

So, first some statistics. Procrastination is something that pretty much everybody struggles with. This is not surprising. 95% of adults report procrastinating at least some of the time. To me, the most surprising part of that stat is who the are the 5%? Yeah, show me that. They're liars. Who are these superhuman robots that never procrastinate? Uh, yeah, I think 5% of people are liars. Um, 42% of adults report procrastinating regularly. Uh, and then 25% of adults report being chronic procrastinators, which is essentially means that you are just literally procrastinating everything all the time, right? anything you try to do you end up procrastinating which that is that's a shocking amount 25% of people. So this is a huge problem. This is like this is a massive affliction that you know gets to us all. Um so some of the things that we're going to go through procrastination as a topic is really interesting because it it is it is such a common human occurrence that there is thought on it going back 2500 years.

So, we went back 200 years and we're going to cover basically the entire corpus of human thought and approach towards procrastination uh since the beginning of civilization. And it's actually kind of surprising because a lot of things that we take to be true or a lot of our assumptions of what procrastination is are relatively modern. They're not they're they're pretty recent and and and you know people in the ancient world or people in medieval times wouldn't necessarily agree with us and how we approach uh the topic of procrastination.

Ultimately we're going to get to the bottom of what is procrastination. What like fundamentally like what is happening in your brain? What is happening psychologically when you're procrastinating something? When you're not doing the thing you know you should be doing uh and why does it happen? Why is it even possible? Right? like if I know something is good for me, like why is it possible that I can choose not to do that? That that like kind of doesn't make sense in a in a certain philosophical way.

Of course, we're going to cover all the latest research on procrastination. We're actually going to cover the entire history of research on procrastination. Uh and because a lot of it got it wrong and a lot of the conventional wisdom and typical self-help advice today is based on that old research that got it wrong. And the new research is says some things quite different than uh maybe what you're expecting. And of course, we are going to go through at least a dozen different tactics and strategies that the listener can implement uh to help lessen procrastination in their lives. Uh I think if there's one thing that I've learned preparing for this episode, Drew, is that I don't think procrastination's ever something that we just like completely get rid of.

I think that it is it just seems to be kind of a side effect or a cost of being humans who have agency and have complex brains. Um we'll get more into that, but I do think it is incumbent on all of us to do all the things that we can to lessen or mitigate the procrastination in our lives. And I do think that is very much attainable for most people uh relatively quickly.

So before we get into it, anything you want to add, Drew? Um, what are you most excited for? I mean, this what are you procrastinating? Oh, god. I mean, you hit the nail on the head. This is a very common, very pervasive problem. And um, we all struggle with it. And I think there's just there's a tragedy kind of a tragic side to it as well cuz you know what what else is there to do but do the things you want to do in life, right? And then we put those things those very things off.

So, I think a lot of people are going to find a there's just going to be a big nodfest going on while you're listening to this. And um yeah, I'm excited to get into it because it's something I struggle with quite a bit. I don't know if I'm a chronic procrastinator, but there's chronic strains of procrastination that I sometimes run into for sure. Sure. Um I have a lot of experience with this just being an author, a self-employed person um for my entire career. So, we'll we'll get into that.

And you mentioned something which is like kind of the tragedy of it is that what we we'll actually discover later on the episode is that the proportion of procrastination is actually uh directly correlated to how important we see a task being in our lives. So it's like

the more important the task is the more likely we are to procrastinate it

which is so screwed up right like like that's so unfair. Why does that happen? Yeah.

We'll dig into why that is but yeah it's fascinating. But before we dive in, uh there's going to be a lot of information in this podcast. And between me and you and our research team, I think we went through like what 13 14 books and 100 research articles. So to help everyone get through this, we've put together a companion PDF guide. It's 65 pages, includes a full summary of the show, all of our citations and references, has book recommendations, and it includes some practical takeaways and lessons as well. So, if you're listening to this, you can get the PDF guide for free by going to solvedodcast.com/procrastination. That's solvedodcast.com/procrastination. The link is also in the description if you want to get through there. All right, let's get started.

Okay, so let's start off with uh a couple definitions first because it it I was actually surprised how hard it was to actually pin down a technical definition of procrastination. And even the one that I chose, as we'll see, there's a little bit of wiggle room with it. So, there's a researcher named Pier Steel in up in Canada. He did a big meta analysis in 2007, which is basically what a meta analysis is is for listeners is that it's when a researcher takes all of the the relevant studies or data and then kind of like finds a way to combine them into like a super study. So this guy still did this in 2007 and he crafted this definition of procrastination based on all the research at the time which is this

procrastination is the act of unnecessarily delaying something despite knowing that there could be negative consequences for doing

so and when I look at this I kind of like break it down into three factors.

So the first factor is an unnecessary delay, right? I think this is important because prioritization is not procrastination. Like if my plan is to uh write a a script this morning but uh then my wife gets in a car accident and I have to go to the hospital like that's not procrastination because something more important has now interfered. It's only when the delay is completely unnecessary uh and fabricated.

Um the second one is that there are negative consequences. So a lot of times when you delay something there actually are not negative consequences. There are plenty of things that you can delay and there's actually nothing that immediately there's no immediate feedback that makes you feel bad for that. I think this is why so many people procrastinate uh things like working out or eating well because the that feedback loop is so insanely long. You know it's like 10 20 30 years before you actually experience the repercussion for that decision. uh it's very easy to convince yourself that like there is no downside to eating the pizza tonight and uh sitting on the couch for another day.

Uh and then finally the third factor is despite knowing and this is where it gets tricky.

Like I actually found this whole definition very interesting because all three of these factors are ultimately subjective. Like who says a delay is unnecessary? Who's to decide what's necessary and what's not necessary, right? Who's to say what a negative consequence is? Like you say potato, I say potato. And who says that you're aware or that you know?

My personal experience is that most of my procrastination is I'm I'm usually bullshitting myself on all three of these factors. I've convinced myself that there is no negative consequence that's going to happen or the negative consequence is very minor. It's not a big deal. I've convinced myself that the delay is actually extremely necessary. Like when else am I going to be able to watch this Netflix show if if not for right now? And and then of course I myself of saying that like I'm aware I know that this is going to cause a negative. It's like well who knows, right? Like maybe you know a book will write itself, right? It happens all the time.

Yeah, I definitely ran into this too when talking with people about this, you know, kind of prepping with this and just talking with people around my life too. I definitely ran into this. They're like, "Well, is it so bad that you put this off? is I there was a lot of that that goes into it.

So yeah, it's very subjective. It's Yeah. And it it is there's a whole question around this of of awareness and knowledge uh which is actually very much well we we'll get into that. We're getting a little bit ahead of myself. So the other thing that kind of surprised me and I guess well I I guess it makes sense is that there there is a cultural element to this um that I think is worth discussing at least just for a few minutes especially because I know the the audience for this podcast is extremely international.

So it turns out that procrastination is to a certain extent culturally defined or culturally relative. There are some cultures where showing up late it's not a huge deal. Turning something in late is not really judged or viewed as as something negative. Um, it actually reminded me, so I I lived in Brazil for a few years. My wife is Brazilian and and it's one of the things that drove me crazy as an American down there is that if you if you ever do a business meeting with a Brazilian, um, first of all, they show up like 20 minutes late. Uh, then they spend the first 20 minutes like talking about their weekend and uh, telling you about like their kids soccer game and uh, you know, asking you what kind of beer you like. And uh and then it's like not until like minute 45 that you actually get to the thing that you're supposed to be talking about. And what's interesting down there is that if you ever like cut try to cut that time down, they see it as as impolite and rude. Like they see you as doing something wrong.

Um whereas coming from American culture where I'm like, "Dude, I was here at 10:00 a.m. It's 10:45. We still haven't even like talked about the the business thing." I see it as rude that they're like wasting my time. So this concept of time and punctuality uh is very culturally dependent.

And what I found interesting there there's a a social psychologist from from the Netherlands named Gear Hof who did a bunch of work on just like cultural factors. He I think he called it I think it's called cultural dimensions theory or something like that. And um he talked about how certain cultures have different orientations towards time and they have different understandings of like what is something that's done on time or not. Um, so some cultures very much prioritize.

So like western cultures or like Anglo-Saxon cultures very much prioritize uh like following the clock. Like if I say we're going to do a thing at 11:30 and you show up at 11:35 to me, you've now delayed things unnecessarily. It's causing negative consequences. So on and so on. It's procrastination. Some cultures, if you say 11:30 and they show up at 11:40, as long as they show up in a way that's like feels justified or is like emotionally consistent uh with the people around them, it's not seen as being late, you know?

It's like, oh well, yeah, we were going to be here 15 minutes ago, but like uh I was hanging out with my my my brother and my cousin, and we were having a great conversation. Um and so it just took longer. And like that's seen as a completely justified response.

And so it's interesting that I guess coming back to the subjectivity of procrastination, some cultures see it very strictly in terms of tasks getting completed on time and some cultures see it more in terms of like emotions and relationships. like in Brazil, if I don't sit there and kind of chitchat for 20 minutes, um that is seen as some sort of productive failure because I'm not doing the work to maintain the relationship with that person. Okay. Yeah. Um anyway, it's just very interesting. We're not going to spend a ton of time on this, but I like I said, I'm bringing it up simply because we do have a big international audience.

There are going to be people listening to this in Latin America and the Middle East and the Mediterranean and some of these places that are not so rigid with the clock itself. They're more kind of emotional, social and emotionally based. Um, and it's just worth considering. And I think it it really just comes back to I think probably a more effective way to just frame this entire discussion is why do we consistently fail at doing the things we wish we could do, right? Like we have things that we know are good for us and we want to do them yet we don't do them.

Let's go back. I think the best way I decided the best way to do this is to just go start at the beginning. So the first recorded discussion of procrastination and what what it is and why it happens does start with Plato. He has a few dialogues that get into it. The first one is uh called Protagoras. There's a quote from Socrates in there. He says,

"Surely no one goes willingly towards the bad or what he believes to be bad. Neither is it in human nature, so it seems to want to go toward what one believes to be bad instead of the good."

Plato puts forth like a really interesting argument. He kind of argues that procrastination like doesn't actually exist. That like if you're not doing the thing, it's because deep down you actually don't think it's worth doing. That if you thought it was worth doing, then you would just go do it.

And it's kind of interesting that the earliest take ever on procrastination is like super spicy like that. I wouldn't expect that. I would expect something like, you know, uh uh I don't know, start small or um you know, like give yourself a little reward, a piece of candy if you like if you do something that that you've been putting off. And it's like Plato's like no, no, it's it's impossible to do something that you don't think is the best thing to do, which I think just intu like our gut intuition, everybody's gut intuition.

It's just like that that doesn't feel true. Does that feel true to you? Absolutely not. No. the definition you brought up earlier and we'll get into that a little more too, but despite knowing part, right? I just I feel like anybody you talk to, they've probably got at least a handful of things in their life that like they know are good for them and they don't do it. Exactly. So Plato's full of No, that's So, okay, I'm I'm being I'm being facetious.

The interesting thing about Plato is so almost all of his work is written in the forms of dialogues and those dialogues revolve around it's usually Socrates having a a debate a philosophical debate uh with some other prominent person and in most of the dialogue Socrates just kind of like clowns the the person and there there there's a lot of ambiguity around Plato's work for a couple reasons. One is it's sometimes unclear because Socrates was a real person and Plato was uh somebody who like followed and learned from Socrates. So, especially in in the early dialogues, it is hard to differentiate between what Socrates thought and what and Plato is just reporting what he thought versus like what Plato actually thinks and he's just putting his words into Socrates's mouth.

So there's a lot of ambiguity around that and Socrates had a reputation for being a bit of a troll. The second piece of ambiguity is that sometimes Plato would just create a dialogue to just kind of raise points and play with those ideas and because they it was a conversation between uh two historical figures, it's sometimes unclear if he actually believes what he's writing.

So later on, in "The Republic" which was actually uh seems to be very clearly Plato's thoughts and ideas um he kind of backtracked a little bit and and the republic is the first place that you see this idea of what he called the tripartite soul and it's he basically says that the the mind is divided up into three different parts and it and it's actually pretty incredible because this idea still persists today like you still see it all over psychology and philosophy today. So the three parts of the mind is he called the the rational, the spirit and the appetitive.

One way to think about that is that there's like the animalistic self, the part of you that has hunger and impulses and cravings. There's the emotional part of yourself. That's the spirit, right? It's the anger. It's the love. It's the passion. It's the joy. It's the sadness. And then you have the rational, which is like the calculating and um the the logic and all that stuff.

Plato's argument is that he used the metaphor of a chariot which is that the rational part of yourself is like the driver in a chariot and he has two horses in front of him. One horse is the animalistic appetitive part of yourself. The other one is the spirit-emotional part of yourself and it is your job to guide those horses in the right direction. But they're wild horses. And so sometimes they're going to buck and they're going to run and they're going to go try to go in different directions and it's going to be chaotic, right?

And in the Republic, Plato said that it is essentially what procrastination is or back then they called it a basically this experience of not doing the thing that you know you should do is when essentially your horses don't go where you want them to go. It's like, "Hey, we should go to the gym." And the horses just start going towards the fridge for another piece of cold pizza. And you're like, "Wait, no." And then next thing you know, you're there.

And so I feel like that is a little bit more relatable and a little bit more understandable. But I think that the takeaway from Plato is that he ultimately saw Acrasia or procrastination as a knowledge problem. It was your problem isn't that you don't have willpower. The problem isn't that you don't have discipline. The problem is that you just aren't aware enough of the repercussions of your choices. He kind of puts forth this argument that like if people were just more knowledgeable and educated on what their choices were causing in their life, they wouldn't make those choices.

And I personally think this is a very idealistic view. I think it's it feels nice. I mean, there's something to it clearly like knowledge certainly does help probably at the margins, but I also just think it's it's I don't know. It's too like roses and rainbows. It doesn't match my personal experience.

Uh and I don't think it matches most of the people that I know who really struggle with procrastination and and not doing the right thing. Um but it is it's a nice it feels good to believe. It feels good to believe that like oh if I just understood what I was doing when I was going back to the fridge instead of the gym then I wouldn't do it so much. And you actually like you still see this a lot. It's funny. I'm going to I'm not going to name names, but um I was on social media the other day, and I see this stuff all the time.

So, this is a very prominent person in our space posted this. They said,

"Your entire life will change when you realize that you have to sacrifice short-term freedom in order to earn long-term freedom. Instant gratification will kill your dreams."

Ed has over a quarter of a million views and 7,000 likes, right? No Sherlock. Right. Right. Like everybody knows that. We all know the information. We all know that. Like it it's not you're not moving the needle by telling us that. But I think there is a part of ourselves, a very idealistic part of ourselves that just feels like if we were reminded of that, then it wouldn't be so hard. That it would be a little bit easier to get up early in the morning and, you know, put on your workout shoes and, you know, start with the hardest task of your day.

And you know all those things that we wish we could do. So that's kind of the first school of thought. We're going to return to it quite a bit. It it like most of Plato's ideas, they never really go away. It's interesting. We actually, you and I talked to pretty much the most prominent researcher on procrastination in the world, Fuchsia Sarra. And even talking to her, she brought this up multiple times. This never really disappears, but it starts it starts with Plato.

Yeah. The second school of thought I want to bring up. So around the same time, the Buddha was doing his thing and uh Buddhism has an interesting kind of spin-off of the the Platonic idea that that I think is worth talking about just briefly simply because I think when towards the end of end of the episode when we talk about interventions and tactics and strategies, there is a little bit of the Buddhist approach that I think makes sense.

So Buddhism saw procrastination as ignorance of oneself. You know, Plato saw it as like an ignorance of the consequences of your action. The Buddha saw it as an ignorance of your own cravings and desires, not understanding what your own motivations were, which I think is a really interesting twist. And I actually think there's probably a lot more value in the Buddhist approach.

Like I just know from my own life, you know, I like as you know, I went through this huge weight loss journey over many years. And a big component of that was like really understanding where my food cravings were coming from. What was causing my distractions when I couldn't focus or or or get any work done. And sure enough, usually there's like some emotion underneath the surface that's like driving things. And becoming aware of that or mindful of that and then um learning how to how to deal or negotiate with that emotion is super useful.

Uh so I thought like the Buddhist twist on the ignorance as as on the procrastination as a knowledge issue. Um I actually think there's it carries some water.

Sticking with Eastern philosophy, just want to touch really quick on Confucianism. Um from I'm not I'm by no means an expert on Confucianism, but uh by the little bit of research I did, it didn't seem like there was a whole lot directly written about it. But the interesting thing about Confucianism is that there is so much emphasis put on accountability and social pressure. Um everything in Confucianism is kind of written in such a way of like you have to do the right thing to honor your family, your society, your your country, your emperor, whatever. There's a nugget in there as well that's actually really important and useful that we will come back to much later. But that social pressure and accountability is like a legit thing.

Um, this finally brings us to Aristotle. So, Aristotle in the Nikomachian ethics wrote quite a bit about akrasia or procrastination. He wrote quite a bit about why people don't do the things that they they should be doing. And I have to say, dude, like as somebody who has studied the psychology around this for a decade, going back and reading Aristotle's take, I'm like, "Oh, he nailed it." Like the dude just nailed it over 2,000 years ago. Yeah. Like 2,300 years ago, he's just like in one chapter just like, "Here's why we don't do the things that we know we should do."

So, Aristotle essentially, here's like the super condensed version of what he says. Aristotle essentially saw procrastination as a skill issue. He said,

"Like any other skill, we all are born terrible at it."

Uh, and then as we grow older, we develop and practice and and habituate ourselves to it. And anybody can learn to do it. Anybody can practice it. Anybody can develop the skill or discipline. And like any skill or discipline, some people are naturally extremely gifted at it and some people are naturally not gifted at it. Right?

What's also interesting about this view is that he kind of puts his middle finger up the Play-Doh. He's just like, "Dude, we all don't do the things we know we should do." Like, we all know we should do certain things and we just fail to do them. Look around you. Yeah. Seriously, like it it's like wake up, man.

But what I like about Aristotle as well is that it's there was no moral judgment or shame attached to it. This is actually what's super unique and interesting and like way ahead of his time. With Plato, it was there was a little bit of like, well, they're not doing the right thing just cuz they're they're ignorant. They're uneducated. They're not as privileged as you and I are, right? They're not as enlightened as us.

You know, in the Buddhist view, there's if you're not doing the right thing, like you got to get right with yourself, dude. Like, you know, sit on a mat and meditate for a few years and and and like figure out what the hell's going on in your head. You know, the Confucious system, it's like you're dishonoring your family and you're you're screwing up society. Like, get your together. Aristotle's like, "Hey, man, we all struggle with this. This is a journey for all of us and it's something that any of us can get better at. Any of us can practice it. We can develop the right habits, we can develop the right skills and you can and you can improve upon it.

And so I think the first takeaway around all of this is that ultimately there are like there's a little bit of truth in everything that each of those schools of thought said there, you know, some of it is knowledge of the repercussions that are going to happen if you, I don't know, stay up till 4:00 a.m. on a Tuesday night. Some of it is understanding your own internal awareness and emotions and you know what's motivating you, what's driving you. Some of it is finding good accountability systems and social pressure to like nudge you in the right direction. But ultimately, this is a skill issue. It's something that you can learn. It's something you can get better at and it's something that you have to to try to get better at.

So, I'm curious, Drew, have you seen your procrastination as a skill issue? Uh, because I certainly haven't most of my life. I'm curious what your experience was. No, I think there is just a lot of that self-judgment that goes into it and I've always thought, yeah, if I just knew a little bit more, had the the right information at the right time, then I would be a better person, not so, you know, morally corrupt. Yeah. uh and and bankrupt in my ways.

But um yeah, it's it's interesting that each one of these kind of schools of thought took one angle at it and it's like, yeah, you got that right, but you got this completely wrong. Yeah. And I I feel that within myself even too today. So, yeah, definitely. I think I started seeing it as a skill issue relatively late in my life. I would say like well into adulthood. Like I have vague I have vague memories in my 20s of like starting my first business and just being like incredibly upset at myself for playing too many video games or not being able to finish a work task in the amount of time that I allotted for myself. Like just really chastising myself and beating myself up over it. Uh and I feel like that's the default for most people.

Like there is a shame and there's a moral judgment. And what I found super fascinating and surprising is that that moral judgment is is for the most part didn't exist in the ancient world. You know, Aristotle saw saw uh accasia or or doing the right action. He saw he had a whole ethical system around virtue, right?

The virtues were like the right way to live. But Aristotle was very aware that like nobody is virtuous all the time. The virtues are never achieved. They're they're just something that you work towards and you get better at over time and everybody's going to screw it up. Everybody's going to fail to a certain extent. And so the only thing you can do is just try to fail less.

And if you look at the Stoics, there's there's a very similar vein there, right? It's like you should try to be virtuous. The the Stoics were a little bit more platonic in that they saw it as more of a a lack like a knowledge problem, but it it's still the same attitude of like nobody's virtuous all the time. Nobody gets it right all the time. Just get up each day and try to do your best and try not to dwell on on your failures and and things like that.

And it's it's so fascinating like going back and looking at those takes because that doesn't feel like anything I heard growing up. Yeah. Right. I heard that you are you are a a immoral piece of who's irresponsible and is failing yourself and failing your future and failing your family and like it it is there's so much moral judgment especially I guess in western culture but I think eastern culture as well there's so much moral judgment wrapped up in your ability to be disciplined you know. Like I think about people who are obese or overweight like one of the huge judgments against them it's not about the unhealthy illness. It's about the apparent lack of discipline, right?

Like I've been around people who have said really mean things about overweight people. And it's never about the weight. It's about the like why can't they control themselves? Why can't they like keep food out of their mouth? How could you let yourself go to that extent?

Yeah. Right. Yeah. And it and we have similar judgments like if somebody loses their job or if somebody doesn't make a lot of money. Um it it's there's like a moral judgment. It's and we just we joked about it earlier, right? It's like if I showed up an hour late for this shoot, you would judge me. Yes. Yes, I would. Yes, you would. So, it's interesting that that didn't always exist like that. That is it started somewhere along the line. And uh drum roll. Do you want to guess where it started? I have a good idea. Why don't you go ahead? I'll give you one. It starts with a Chris and it ends with aity. Yeah. Yeah. One of the seven deadly sins, right?

Sloth. Sloth.

Exactly. Exactly.