Why You Procrastinate (And How to Finally Stop) with Itamar Shatz

Dr. Itamar Shatz is joining me today to talk about procrastination. He's a lecturer at Cambridge University, and we're gonna learn how specifically we can smash and crush procrastination. So if that's something you struggle with, this is the episode for you. Dr. Itamar Shatz, a huge welcome to the Habits of High Performers Podcast. How are you doing?

Good, how are you today?

So good, I'm glad that we get to connect. Look, it's not every day that I get to connect with a Cambridge University researcher and lecturer, Specializing in procrastination, the thing that all us humans try to avoid, but it's almost— for some of us, it feels unavoidable. So, I'm super excited to talk about what you've learned, what you teach, and of course, all about your book, Solving Procrastination, which recently came out with Penguin Random House. So, well done on getting a deal with Penguin. That's a pretty huge deal in and of itself. Yeah.

Thank you. It's very exciting for me too.

When did the book release?

So the book is coming out on 25th of August.

Okay, awesome. So as we record, folks, we're end of July, but this will probably go live right around release time. So guys, go preorder if it's still in a preorder phase or get your copy today in the show notes. The link is in the show notes.

Absolutely.

Now, Itamar, I guess the starting point for me is what is procrastination? Because we've all got an idea of what we think it is, but in your research, how do you define it?

Well, great question. So basically, procrastination is when we put something off even though we don't intend to and even though we expect it to be bad for us. So when we say, okay, I want to file my tax return, go to the gym, study for a test, ask for a promotion or whatever it is, and we keep putting it off again and again, even though we shouldn't be doing it, that's when we procrastinate.

Makes total sense. I love it. Why do successful people procrastinate?

That's a great question. So in a sense, we're hardwired to do it. And one analogy I like for this is sugar. So when we were just— when humans started evolving, sugar was a great thing because energy was a very scarce resource, and it was good for us to have the drive to find it. And that drive sort of stayed with us. And today, when it's so easy to get energy in so many different places, it's not as adaptive as it was before. And the same thing with procrastination. So At a certain time in our history, being driven to only think about the immediate, to really prioritize what's here right now, was adaptive. It was useful because, you know, you're running from a lion right now. You're trying not to freeze to death. You're trying not to starve to death. At those times, you basically want to focus on the immediate, and thinking long-term could get in the way of that. But today, our life looks— our lives look very different. So let's say you want to promote your new book, or you want to run a podcast, or You need to send tax forms to your accountant so you don't get fined in half a year or something like this. All of these things are kind of things that they matter to us from a self-actualization perspective. They matter to us today. And we're very fortunate to be able to focus on them. But at the same time, there are things that are not as visceral and not as immediate, and our brains are just not as focused on.

That's beautiful. It's interesting. I think of some of the stuff I procrastinate on, and one of them is certainly tax return. So my accountant, is so patient, and it takes me forever to get the stuff done. I know how to do it, and I know it's not hard to do, but it's just one of those tasks I'm like, no, tomorrow, tomorrow. And that could go on for 5 or 6 months of tomorrows. What's behind that? Am I just lazy? Hey, James here. I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about something. Look, I get asked to deliver keynotes and workshops for teams and companies over the world, from London to Antarctica, from America to Australasia, from armies to small businesses to large corporates to sports teams. But I go in and deliver keynotes around the mindset of high performers, around the habits of high performers, about how we navigate change. If you would like me to come and speak to your team or speak at your conference or deliver a bespoke workshop, please get in touch with my team. caroline@jjlaughlin.com will be able to help. I'll also make sure that we put that In the show notes.

Yes, I think that's super common experience. And the answer is no, you're not lazy. And it is very common. And I think that's something important to keep in mind. It feels as we're going through it, it can feel very isolating in a sense, because, you know, it doesn't make sense. So probably other people aren't doing it. Other people are absolutely doing the exact same thing, because we're all hardwired to this. And there are lots of reasons we do it. But for the most part, it ties into this focusing on immediate pleasure and avoiding immediate pain. And for some people, it could be, you know, it's fine, you just need to submit it. But there's always something more satisfying you could do at the moment, whether that's social media or playing a game or doing something else. And for others, it can be something like maybe there's a bit of fear there around, actually, I'm not that good at handling these things and I'm afraid that if I'll do it, I'll feel stupid, or I'm afraid that if I'll do it, I'll mess it up and then there will be consequences. And it's even worse when you have both these things. So on the one hand, you have all these fears. underlying it and all these self-doubts. And on the other hand, what you could be doing is fun stuff that doesn't challenge you and doesn't make you feel afraid of pain. And then when that happens and you're basically saying, okay, I could either work on this task that is maybe frustrating, that is maybe scary, or I could just chill. And even if you know you should be doing that thing, your brain says, let's go with chill.

Is procrastination getting worse? Is it something over the decades and millennia that's getting worse for us humans, or is it just about the same as it always has been?

So in some senses, it's getting worse, likely. I want to caveat it because the research is a bit unclear. It's very difficult to do this kind of longitudinal research. But we do think that a lot of things that make procrastination worse are now more common. So social media is a great example of that. Our brains basically did not evolve for this kind of hyper-optimized, Algorithms that are just meant to capture our attention for as long as possible, and that can make procrastination worse. Other things can also do it. So again, this whole thing around having very nebulous long-term tasks isn't something that was as much of an issue thousands of years ago. But at the same time, even though a lot of aspects of modern life make procrastination more likely, this isn't just a modern phenomenon, and it's something that we know that people have been dealing with throughout history.

Yeah. And so we'll get into the social media in a second, but what else makes procrastination worse?

A few things. One is uncertainty. So when we have a task and we don't necessarily know, okay, maybe I need to submit tax returns, but I don't actually know what am I supposed to be doing next? Should I be gathering stuff? Should I be categorizing it? What format do I need? And all this uncertainty creates this sort of initial friction that makes it harder to get started, in addition to making the task seem more scary.

Mm-hmm.

On top of that, Things like fear, things like perfectionism. So if you're so afraid of making mistakes that you don't take action, or maybe you do take action, but there is this unattainable thing that you're striving for constantly, and then you never end up actually reaching that. And either then you become so scared of it that you stop again, or maybe you just keep iterating and iterating and iterating without ever actually letting whatever you, you are working on be completed.

Mm-hmm.

So maybe you're working on a book and there's this unattainable standard in your mind for what this book should look like. So you keep iterating and iterating and you never send it out because it's not perfect and it's never going to be either.

That's such a good example. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think a lot of people experience that there and experience it in other places as well. Other things that could get in the way, self-efficacy. So if we don't actually believe we can achieve the things we want, so maybe we say, I, maybe I'm a successful executive, but I've never had experience with Exercising. And even though I feel that I'm a capable person in the context of making decisions at work, I don't feel that I'm capable in the context of exercising and getting in shape. And if I don't feel that I can do it, then why bother? Because I'm going to fail anyway. That becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So I'm probably going to fail, so I don't try. Then I have this painful experience of, okay, in practice I failed. And then you just keep not trying and keep procrastinating on it. There are tons of other things like it. Burnout is an issue. So If we work really hard, then we get burned out, then we start to perform worse, which is really painful, especially if we're used to performing well. Then we start procrastinating more, and then we compensate for that by working harder, get more burnt out. And again, there's this painful cycle there that just makes it harder and harder for us to take action.

I could see this in so many contexts. Like, we can procrastinate the tax return, but then as we go slightly bigger deal, career change. So for me, I go back and I was teaching drums in a school for a long time. And probably the last 3 or 4 years, I was kind of not bored, bored is the wrong word, but I just wasn't getting the joy from it anymore. And I procrastinated having to make the next decision, procrastinated, should I move? Should I resign? Should I try something new? It took 3 or 4 years to actually figure that out. And that was painful because for those 3 or 4 years, I probably wasn't performing at my best.

Yeah.

I probably was experiencing a lot of burnout, lack of fulfillment, lack of joy. So, to me, there's big costs associated with procrastination. In your research, have you found that there's any biological consequences for sitting in procrastination? Yeah.

So, we know that procrastination is painful. So, When we talk about the pains of procrastination and the cost of it, often we have this mental model of students, and then they procrastinate, and they don't get enough done, they get worse grades, at worst they have to drop out. And that's true. That is a very core consequence of procrastination. But it's important to keep in mind that there are additional costs. These issues also carry to work, then it can make it harder for us to get jobs, it can make it harder for us to get promoted, to thrive, to be entrepreneurs if we want to launch our business, things along those lines. But there are also biological costs, like you've mentioned. So Stress is a big issue. It affects our mental well-being, which then affects our health as well. There are, there are also cycles there as well. So we get stressed, we find it hard to concentrate, we do badly, or we get stuck in procrastinating. Then we get more stressed because we've procrastinated. That becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, and that just feeds on itself. Same thing with other things like not enough sleep. So maybe we should be going to sleep, but then we end up procrastinating. Now we're exhausted. We're trying to work in the middle of the night where we're inefficient. Suddenly we're going to sleep very, very late. Then we're not efficient the day after. And again, there's this self-fulfilling prophecy that gets us stuck.

Yeah, and it's also these simple things. Sleep, getting up in the morning or going to bed at night. It could be food-related, procrastinating that new diet, procrastinating going to the gym. Sometimes they're super small things, but actually they can be significant. And you talked about social media being something that can make it worse. Look, I'll be honest, I do find myself scrolling and then I go, why am I doing this? What on earth? So is there any research or any proof that shows that we can actually solve our scrolling and put barriers between us and social media?

Yeah, yeah. So in general, there is a lot of research showing that we can overcome our procrastination and that we can overcome these kind of things with the caveat that it's very, very hard and it's very hard to do it in the long term as well. So I think a lot of us are familiar with this thing where we do find a solution that works for us in the short term, but then over time we start defaulting back to the same kind of cycles. And because of that, it's really important to, to do 2 things, I think. One is making sure that we're actually treating the root of the problem. And 2, and in the, the context of social media, for example, the issue— so I think an interesting thing there is about cues. And often we might think, okay, I'm procrastinating because of social media. And again, social media is definitely something that can draw our attention. But what might actually be the case sometimes is we need to do a task like tax returns, we're unsure about it, or we're, we're afraid of pain or something along those lines, and then we go to social media. And again, social media draws us in because it's a very easy thing to engage with, but it wasn't necessarily the trigger there. And the problem is that if we block social media, which is again useful, it doesn't necessarily solve the underlying problem. And then we might end up going back to social media ultimately because we still haven't tried the problem that caused the issue in the first place.

And if we don't go back to it, we might look for a different solution, which could be sugar, which could be TV, which could be alcohol, whatever.

Exactly. Because again, we're still saying, okay, my mind is saying I don't want to deal with this. And then it's saying, okay, what can I escape to? So social media is very tempting. If we make social media less tempting, it does give our brain a bit of a fighting chance to not get distracted from the task. But it also means that The brain is still trying to get distracted and will turn to other things if they're there, as opposed to if you were saying, okay, I'll put this obstacle in the way so I give my brain a chance to overcome this desire to go with social media, but I'll also handle the things that make me want to go to social media in the first place. I'll unpack this task to make it easier for me to understand what are the next steps. I'll maybe break it down even to— into micro steps that feel less intimidating, that are very easy to deal with. Maybe I'll shine a light on my fears and say, okay, What am I actually worried will happen here? How likely is this to actually happen? What can I do if it does? And things along those lines that make us less afraid of whatever it is that we're not dealing with in the first place.

Amazing. I want to definitely spend a bit of time on the solving of the procrastination. Before we get there, why did you commit your life to focusing on procrastination and writing a book on it? Like, that's huge. It's a huge sacrifice. You could have done a million other things, but you're like, no, this is the thing. What was it about your life or your curiosity that has led you to doing this?

Yeah. So, when I was a student, when I was doing my master's, I basically started wanting to do things better. I wanted to do things more effectively. And I turned to research to see, okay, how can I do things better? How can I do things more effectively? And I started looking through a lot of different research and writing down notes for myself. And what I said is, okay, if I'm finding this useful, probably other people will find this useful as well. And I started writing about these things that I was finding about how to communicate better, how to make better decisions, how to be more productive, how to be healthier from a mental perspective and things along those lines. Then I said, okay, let's write an article about procrastination. I used to be huge procrastination in high school, like the typical wait the whole semester to do this project that you should have done at the start. And then at the last day, just do everything in the middle of the night in this all over an all-nighter. So I said, I'll write an article about that. And I started writing it. Then I said, okay, this doesn't make— like, I cannot fit everything into one article. It's too big of a problem. Too many people are affected by it too deeply. There is so much that needs to be said about this. Let's do 2 articles. That wasn't enough either. So I said, let's do a whole website. And as I kept diving into it more and more and reading about it more and learning about it more and dealing with it more, I realized there is just so much there that needs to be said and that has to be said for people to be able to deal with it that I decided that this is what I need to be focusing on.

That's beautiful. I'm glad you did. And I think it's a thing that for eternity is going to be a part of the challenge of being human is procrastination. And you mentioned something earlier, perfectionism. And I think I've been guilty of that, particularly in my younger years. I was a competitive drummer and every year getting ready for the world championships, it was about perfection. often it would lead to, I'd beat myself up over the simplest of things, and therefore I'd be aiming for perfection. In recent years, the clients that I work with, I say, look, if you're a perfectionist, you have no standards. And they go, what do you mean? I say, well, perfect isn't achievable. We can look at the Mona Lisa and I might go, that's perfection. And you might go, it's pretty good, but Yeah, there's some things I'd change. It's, you know, so we can't agree on a standard being perfect, but we could say it's pretty good, it's excellent. We can both agree it's very, you know, but when you're a perfectionist, there's no end, there's no endpoint. So why is perfection such a problem when it comes to procrastination?

Yeah, I think this really touches on a beautiful thing or a very important thing to keep in mind, which is basically perfectionism is often a defense mechanism. So we're afraid of failing or we're afraid of getting criticism. But saying I'm afraid of failing sounds less good than saying I'm aiming for perfection. And then by aiming for perfection, we basically try to avoid dealing with our fears as much as we can. And I think there are 2 reasons why it's a problem. One is because we often can't bring ourselves to get started because we know, okay, look, if I make a mistake, it's going to be so horrible, so terrible. Because it's not perfection that I'm going to beat myself up over it, and I don't want to deal with that. And then people just don't get started on whatever it is they need to do because they're not giving themselves permission to make mistakes, even though mistakes are a crucial part of creating and learning anything. And the other issue is once you start working on something, it's never going to reach that unattainable thing you're aiming for. And again, that is very, very demotivating in the sense that you're saying, okay, I'm here. There is a giant gulf between where I am and where I want to be, which is by definition also unattainable. And then again, that ends up being very demotivating for you and just saps your motivation to actually do the things you want to.

Yeah, makes total sense. And a lot of the kind of things that make procrastination worse, a lot of these things are kind of psychological. But in my research a few years ago when I was writing my book, it's all around habits of high performers. And I realized that you can have the best psychology and continue to work on your mind, but if your physiology is out of whack, often procrastination will kick back in. So, norepinephrine, endorphins, dopamine, serotonin, those neurotransmitters, when they're out of whack or imbalanced, often you could be saying the right things in your head, have good systems, et cetera, But if you don't have the physical motivation, the hormone there to drive you, I find often that holds us back. In your research, have you discovered any of that stuff as well?

Yeah. So I looked at that kind of thing primarily through the lens of things like ADHD and depression. One of the things I say in the book is if you have depression, the first order of business is dealing with this. So again, dealing with your procrastination can also help with that. But ultimately, if you're Not if you don't want to do anything because you don't feel any pleasure from anything. If you have no energy, no motivation because you're depressed, the solution is to then look for a solution for to treat your depression essentially before you look at procrastination. Same thing with ADHD. I talk about techniques you could use. I talk about things that could be ideally especially useful for you in that context. But ultimately, it is a very, very tough thing to deal with, and you need to treat the underlying condition there as well. And that ties into other things that could influence your hormones, that could influence your physiology. That's why also I talk about, look, I know that you already know all these things about getting better diet, getting better exercise, getting better sleep. I know it's easier said than done to fix these things. Some of the techniques in the book can use, but you have to basically prioritize taking care of yourself if you also want to be productive.

Makes total sense to me. We got to look after self before we look after anything else, whether it's our career, et cetera. Who's the person that might lift this book? Who and what might they be facing in their lives that would go, I need to buy that book?

I would say a few things. One, you procrastinate. So you're putting things off that you shouldn't be putting off, and it hurts you in some way. 2, you're aware of it and you're interested in changing. I think changing your behavior and especially overcoming procrastination is so difficult even when you really want to do it. That if you say like, I'm a procrastinator and I don't care, I think that's perfectly fine. This is not for you. But if you procrastinate and if you want to do something about it, and if you're interested in a research-based practical approach for it, then I think this is the kind of person who would benefit from that. And that's true regardless of what kind of procrastination you have, what kind of specific challenges you're facing because of it, because I intentionally wrote the book to cover as wide a range of procrastinators as possible.

Amazing. So everyone listening, if you're procrastinating going to the gym, Getting on the diet, doing your tax return, getting your first book written, transitioning careers, getting into a relationship, getting out of a relationship. It literally applies to all of us. So, get the book, folks, in the show notes. The link is right there.

So, let's solve it.

Let's do that right now. So, someone's listening and going, look, I want to know what the steps are to solving procrastination. What are those steps, Itamar?

So, What I would start with, first of all, is basically figuring out what your goals are. And the way I frame it is a bit about the goal is figuring out where you're trying to end up before you start figuring out how to end up there.

Mm-hmm.

And the goal could be something like you've mentioned, starting or ending a relationship, going to the gym, building your business, writing your book, whatever it is, but basically figuring out what am I trying to achieve right now by overcoming my procrastination? And when I talk about this, a few things that I say is, one, the goal should be realistic. So a big pitfall is aiming for things that are unachievable, whether that's because of perfectionism or not. And that can be demotivating. That makes it a bit harder to apply, to implement what you learn in practice. So let's say focus on a specific goal that is realistic. That's something that you can achieve, and you can always go further later. You can always add additional goals, but for now, focus on something specific that procrastination is getting in the way of. Beyond that, you also should be focusing again on something that is very specific. Ideally also, if you can do something that is time-bound, so that has a sort of deadline. Again, you don't have to have a deadline, but the nice thing about it is that it makes things much more concrete. So saying, I want to write the first chapter of my book by, I don't know, a month from now, or I want to launch the MVP for my business by 5 weeks from now, or whatever it is, but basically making it concrete so you then have to focus much more about how and when you implement your techniques. Once you figure out where you're trying to go, the next step is to figure out what problem you're facing. And this is basically reflecting about the procrastination by asking yourself, why do I procrastinate? What is causing me to put off the things that I shouldn't be putting off? And often you will need to dive in and ask yourself why a few times. So initial why might be, okay, I'm procrastinating because I get distracted by social media. But then when you think about it, you realize I'm actually not getting distracted by social media. I feel unsure what to do in my work, and then I go to social media to cope with that uncertainty. And basically, you want to ask yourself that why enough that you can get to the main reason you want to be addressing. And if you go deep enough, eventually you'll end up at, okay, I'm prioritizing immediate pleasure or avoiding immediate pain, which again is deep enough that is more difficult to address as well. So usually you want to stop somewhere in between and say, okay, This is the actual reason why, and this is the reason I should be focusing on addressing. If you're unsure about this, something that can help you is basically looking at cases where you've taken action, comparing them with cases where you've procrastinated, and asking yourself, what is the differentiating factor? So you might say, okay, I've procrastinated this task and I haven't procrastinated that task. And maybe the reason is because here I'm actually much more confident in my ability to do what I need to. Or maybe here there's much more certainty about the next steps. Or maybe when I work on this task, I don't have my kids in the background distracting me constantly. And whatever it is, you basically want to figure out the why so you can then figure out what to do about that.

Hmm.

Now, once you've done this, you basically laid the groundwork in a sense. And the next step there is figuring out, okay, here's where I want to end up. Here's the problem that I have. Now let's figure out how I address the problem so I can get to where I want to end up. And I focus in doing this on various key anti-procrastination strategies. So an example of one would be unpacking large tasks into manageable steps. So basically saying, okay, I've got this large task of filing my tax return. What am I actually going to be doing in practice here? How do I break this apart so it turns from this big uncertain mess to something that is very concrete and achievable? And that could be, okay, step 1 is let's look at last year's tax return and see what I submitted then. Step 2 could be, okay, I'm just gonna collect the, I don't know, the invoices without doing anything else. I'm not in my mind, I'm not saying, okay, I'll collect them and then sort them and then send them. I'm just collecting them. There is no room for error here because it's very, very simple. And basically doing things like this, and you can even go further and just break it down into tiny micro steps. So that could be something like writing a single word on your article. Or maybe doing just a single push-up or something like this. And the idea there is to just make it both clear and also very unintimidating, to make it much easier for you to do the things you need to. And there are additional things you could do. You could remove friction from your environment if it's getting in the way of taking action. So let's say you want to go to the gym after you get home from work, but every time you see that you get home from work, and then when you want to go to gym, it just doesn't happen. And then you realize, okay, actually the problem is I get home, then I should pack my bag, but that's really a bummer. And then by the time I end up packing my bag, I just don't want to go. And instead, in that case, to remove the friction, what you could do is say, okay, I'm going to unpack the gym bag the night before when I'm actually motivated to do this, especially because when I'm unpacking it, then there's— I don't— I'm not going to the gym yet. So it's very easy. It's not I'm unpacking and then going to the gym. It's just I'm unpacking for now with no further commitment. And then the day after that, when you're there, there is much less friction in the way. You're just taking the bag or going. Or maybe you can even just take the bag with you to eliminate the temptation of, okay, I'm home, maybe I'll just take my shoes off, I'll watch TV for 5 minutes, I'll, I don't know, scroll on social media for 2 minutes or whatever it is. You're eliminating that temptation essentially. And a bunch of other things like this. So taking care of yourself if you're burnt out, expressing self-compassion if you're too harsh on yourself, finding short-term rewards that can motivate you.

Hmm.

A lot of things, and they all revolve basically around the idea of Figure out what the problem is and then find a way to stack the situation in your favor.

I love how structured this is and how actually straightforward it is. The one thing I guess for me that I really connect with is the idea of having this massive task, let's say a full-size pizza that you've got to eat, but actually cutting it into 16 slices and going, okay, what's the tiniest step I could take? And is there anything in my way between me doing that step? What's that friction? How do I remove the friction? For me, simple things like when I travel, so I do a lot of keynote speaking. So, when I travel, if I don't have a pair of running shoes, I'm just not going to the gym at the hotel. It's not happening. But if I pack them in and I look at them when I open my luggage, I'm like, I've got to go to the gym. Why did I pack those things? I've got to do it. There's no friction, right? So, I love that. And I guess that's the one thing that probably holds a lot of us back is just Small little levels of friction.

Yeah. And what I love about your example as well is it relies on this sort of system instead of willpower. So it would be very easy to say, you know what, it doesn't matter if I pack the shoes or not, I'm going to go to the gym because I know it's good for me. But it's very— it's much more effective to look at yourself and say, you know what, realistically, I know that even though I know it's good for me, if I don't have these shoes there, I'm not going to do this. And the same thing applies to other tasks. So in a sense, you can ask yourself, okay, what are my running shoes for other tasks as well? If I need to submit the tax return, what do I know will be a blocker that if it doesn't happen, I'm never going to do this task? Maybe I need to book— I have to book a meeting with my accountant for half an hour before the tax season because technically I don't need it. But I know that if I don't have that form of accountability, I'm just not going to do whatever it is I need to.

Beautiful.

Identifying these things, just being really— the way I talk about this is there is a self-control fallacy where we often say, okay, next time I'll do what I need to just by trying harder. Because after all, you know, I know that it's the thing I should be doing, so clearly I'm going to do it. Otherwise it will be irrational not to. And the insane thing is that we keep doing— we keep telling ourselves this again and again and again, even though we keep not doing the thing. And what I talk about in the book is about something called the reality rule, which is when we think about the things we need to do, ask ourselves Not just what would I want to do in that situation, but what am I actually likely to do based on what I've done before? And your example really touches on that because it says, look, realistically, if I don't have the running shoes, I am not going to go to the gym when I'm traveling. I should be going. I want to be going otherwise, but it's not going to happen. And what is really great is basically trying to implement that in other areas of life too, and figuring out, okay, this is the kind of thing I'm going to procrastinate on. Again, I know I shouldn't. I don't want to, but realistically, that's what's going to happen. So I should be changing something about my approach to avoid making that mistake.

That's awesome. And the reality rule is what you call it. Yeah, I love that. That's so good. We got to live in reality. And it's interesting when I think of willpower versus systems. Systems are not very sexy, right? It's just like, oh my God, a system, another system. But actually willpower, as a youngster, I would have thought willpower is an infinite Well, an infinite resource, but my understanding is it's very finite. And in fact, as each day goes, we deplete it. So by afternoon, evening, our willpower is really quite low. However, if we've got systems, we don't need to rely on whatever that willpower is doing because the system will ensure and almost enforce that we do the thing. Is that right?

Yeah. So there's a lot of uncertainty in the research about the concept of depletion. So we definitely know that willpower is not invincible. There's a bit of question of, okay, is it depleted the more we exercise it? Is it— do we just get more tired? And because of that, we find it harder to exercise it, even if it does not necessarily get depleted. But I think the overall takeaway is, even with the uncertainty around depletion, the main thing is willpower is not invincible, and we shouldn't assume it is. And it can feel like it because often, you know, we're sitting there in bed and we're saying, okay, Tomorrow, when I'm facing those temptations, I'm going to say no to them. And we kind of assume that our willpower is going to be perfect there, especially, you know, when we're thinking about these things. We tend to be in a cool emotional mode as opposed to the hotter emotional mode where we're actually trying to deal with the temptations, to actually deal with our fears. And the important thing is, you know, there's all— there are all these research controversies around depletion and things like that. But in practice, what we do know is that willpower isn't perfect and we shouldn't assume that it is.

That's beautiful.

I love it.

What you're just a master at doing is taking this concept of procrastination and distilling it in a way that a layman like me can actually understand it, can really get an idea of what drives it, what's behind it, what are the costs of it. But then more importantly, like a lot of researchers who are authors, they write these brilliant books and then there's no solution to the problem. And it's just like, hey, I've done all the research, here you go. I love that you've actually solved procrastination. This is a multi-trillion-dollar book, in my opinion, because everybody suffers from it, including corporations.

Yeah.

So, I think if anyone's listening right now that just wants to individually perform better, have more productivity and joy, buy the book. If anybody's listening that has a team, buy the book, read it, and consider getting your team to read it and maybe action it. It's super exciting. What do you hope in the first year of your book? What's the— what's your goal?

Yeah. And I can say I even have a specific chapter on how to implement everything that you've learned to help other people stop procrastinating. Because I think that's really a common thing where you see these other people making mistakes and you really want to help them. And in some cases, it can be because it's at work and clearly this is not good for the team and you want the team to function better. In either case, it can be someone that you love and you really want to see them stop suffering with this problem. I think that's really, really crucial for people. And my goal is basically to help people. I really— I'm very happy to hear your comments because I really set out to take all this research and not only distill it, but also turn it into something that people can actually use. I think there's, you know, when people are reading this, and this is actually something I think I did wrong in the earlier draft in the book and then really changed where I I was opening with a lot of background about procrastination. And then I said, look, people are reading this book for a simple reason. They're procrastinating and they want to stop. Everything in the book should be targeted at that, at helping them solve their problem. They're not there for the background of procrastination. They're there because there is this very painful problem that they're trying to address. Then I structured it so that from the start, you're diving into the details and diving into the practical side of things of how can you stop procrastinating in practice.

That's amazing. I love it. Yeah, I really think this book is a solution to so many challenges. I'm going to be pre-ordering mine right now. And everyone else, as you listen to this, it's actually out. Go get the book in the show notes. And Ida-Maria, I just want to wish you nothing but the best with the book. Anything I can do to support the book in your first year, just reach out. And I'm looking forward to seeing it on shelves. I'm looking forward to seeing it in airports and people's desks. But you should be so proud of the work you've done. And thank you for not procrastinating on this book.

Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

Yeah, joy. We'll chat again soon.