 Hello, I'm Dr. Tariq Sani. I'm a CBT practitioner. I'm here because I love to share my knowledge and with people around me, and you can find me as Tariq Sani on almost any platform around the web. I'm here to present the workshop on procrastination and the workshop objectives are, the what and how of procrastination, learn about the cognitive processes involved in procrastination. Cognitive processes is just a fancy word for the thinking involved with procrastination. It is slightly complex, the thinking involved, but cognitive processes is just what the thinking is involved. Training to overcome procrastination and of course, world peace. I would like to add a mandatory disclaimer here that this workshop is not intent about medical advice. Use the knowledge gained at your discretion. Jumping right into it, the first part is understanding procrastination, what it is and how we procrastinate. Procrastination is not a monolithic entity like many people think that, okay, there's a task and you don't do it. No, there are many complexities and bits and pieces which will bring together in this presentation and you'll see that how to overcome each part of your procrastination. But we'll begin with something very basic as to what procrastination is by definition. It comes from a Latin word, procrastinatus, which itself evolved from the prefix pro, meaning forward and the procrastinus means off tomorrow. A very wordy definition of procrastination goes something like this. Making a decision for no valid reason to delay or not complete a task or a goal you have committed to and instead doing something of lesser importance despite there being negative consequences to not following through the original task. So there are three components here. There is no valid reason. We may give ourselves excuses and we'll see how giving excuses makes it seem valid but there is no valid reason to complete a task or a goal that we have committed. Instead, we do something of lesser importance. We do something but it is of lesser importance and many a times this thing confuses people that like, oh, let me finish my answering all my important official emails first and then I will go on to make the report that kind of thing. And there are negative consequences. People know that there are negative consequences but still they do it. Most often people confuse between being lazy, procrastination and what is a strategic delay. So the more common synonym for procrastination which everybody uses or is being labeled as you are a lazy fellow. No, laziness is something very different. Let us see how each three of these are defined. Procrastination, we just saw that postponing task for another time instead of doing tasks for lesser importance. And procrastination is usually discomfort driven. Remember the word for now, discomfort driven. Compare that to laziness. Lazyness is about not working, not doing anything and avoiding to make an effort by all means. So while a procrastinator wants to do the task and is unable to for various reasons, a lazy person strives not to do that or whatever he has committed to. So like procrastination is discomfort driven. You can say laziness is driven by a desire for comfort. And of course the last one, strategic delay. This is when a better, more research outcome is anticipated by delaying the task. The important thing to note here is that there is a better result anticipated and it is not habitual and the outcomes are generally positive. So not being habitual about a strategic delay is the key here. That you use this strategy delay only a few times, not habitual. So this is what procrastination is and how it differs from laziness and strategic delay that procrastination is discomfort driven. Just keep that in mind for now. The next part of this workshop is procrastination cycle and how we can change this cycle, putting the components of procrastination together and understand what we change. So we'll start with what are the components of procrastination, some unhelpful rules or assumptions that we have in CBT that is cognitive behavioral therapy parlance. We call them as cognitive distortions or they are somewhat akin to cognitive biases but cognitive distortions, let's call them for now as unhelpful rules and assumptions. The first one is the need to be in charge. I can't do any stuff, any task of importance unless I am completely in charge of the situation. This is an unhelpful rule because nobody can be 100% in charge of all the variables involved in most of the tasks. Pleasure sequence. Here, the thinking is that pleasure must come first. Things must be easier for me. I don't deserve this hardship, fear of failure or disapproval. This is a big one for many people who suffer from anxiety that the fear that they will fail or somebody in authority will disapprove of the work they are doing. Thus, they avoid doing the task at all, thinking that if they don't do the task then there can't be any judgment. Fear of uncertainty or catastrophe. It is very similar to fear of failure or disapproval but it is the outcome that you're predicting is catastrophic. So something like if I make this report, my boss will not like it. If my boss doesn't like it, it will go on my CR. If this year my CR is bad, then I will be probably out of the job. If I'm out of the job then how will I pay my home EMI? Then I will be evicted from home. I'll be homeless and I will die on the streets, cold and alone. So that kind of a chain of catastrophic thinking, of course I exaggerated but you get the point that a chain of catastrophic thinking is what happens in certain case. And thus you decide that if I don't make that report, none of this will happen. Of course, it is not a very rational thing to do but that happens. Low self-confidence. All this boils down to low self-confidence that you are not sure of delivering or being able to do the task, depleted it. The key here is that it can be true sometimes that you indeed are too tired to do the task. But if you are seeing this as a habit in someone or even in yourself, then the chances are that you are using it as an excuse. So depleted energy that is unless I'm fresh and completely alert, I can't do this task. Why do we make excuses? So we have these assumptions, then we have to make excuse to justify these assumptions. So the excuses justify our behavior as reasonable, acceptable and okay. If we feel okay about putting things off, then we put things off as simple as that. So what we do is we search for, once our unhelpful beliefs are triggered, we search for excuses to procrastinate. And thus we reach unhelpful conclusions about some truths or part truths. Let us see how this happens or what kind of thought process goes on. I am tired. Thus comes, I'm better off doing this after I have tested. I don't want to do it now. I may feel like doing it tomorrow. Remember that there is some truth in the original statement that you're making it an excuse about. I will miss out on all the fun happening now. I can always wait till nothing much is happening, but something or the other always keeps happening. I don't have everything I need. I will wait till I do. I have plenty of time. So I don't have to start now. I just don't feel inspired. Wait till I feel inspired. I have other things to do. Thus I will do the current task when those things are finished. I don't have enough time to get it all done. I will wait till I have a lot of time to do it. So unless you're sure that you will be able to finish the task, you won't even start. I work better under pressure. So I will wait till the last one. So these conclusions are unhelpful because they allow you to think that you are better off not doing the task at hand. So these are the excuses you give yourself for once your unhelpful beliefs are triggered. And of course, after that, there are consequences for procrastination. The consequences of procrastination can be positive or negative. Yeah, you may be wondering how can consequences of procrastination be positive? No, there's nothing hidden about it. It's just that what you perceive as positive consequences, something like payoffs for procrastination and which make you procrastinate more. So what are these? They relieve the discomfort. So if you procrastinate, the initial discomfort that you are feeling about doing the task that is relieved for the short. You stick to your rules and assumptions. So these rules are deep rooted. And if you stick to them, then you feel good about that. You gain pleasure as well. So these are the positive consequences but then usually these are short term positive consequences. The negative consequences, even though you may feel that there have been some positive consequences are always there. They often make the situation, procrastination often makes the situation worse. Making the task even harder, more unpleasant in many, many ways. So there is more discomfort. Negative rules are reinforced. So if whatever are our unhelpful rules where they were reinforced and that will make us more likely to procrastinate. Self-criticism backfires. That is when you procrastinate, you criticize yourself. It backfires and makes you feel still low or ultimately you end up with a very low self-esteem. Things pile up. There is ultimately, of course, there is punishment or loss. All these things together make what is known as the procrastination cycle. Let us take a look at how this thing goes in a vicious cycle, feeding upon itself in a more diagrammatic manner. So you approach a task or a goal. Maybe it is work, home, health. Then your unhelpful rules and assumptions, they kick in. Maybe desire for control, fear of outcomes, pleasure seeking, no confidence, whatever it is. Once you detect the discomfort, you detest it and you make discomfort-driven excuses. And of course, once you have made an excuse, you go on to doing the avoidant activity, which is the activity which you do instead of actually doing the task which you had agreed upon. So it can be distractions, day-to-day dreaming, lower priority tasks, pleasure seeking tasks, so on and so forth. Of course, after which there are consequences, positive and negative, which reinforce the behavior which has happened. And thus what happens is you continue to procrastinate. If this cycle has to break, if you have to stop procrastinating, then you will have to break this cycle and go on from procrastination to a doing cycle. So how do I do that? First step is learn to dismiss procrastination excuses. Then practice some practical techniques, very pragmatic, nothing to do with thinking, practical techniques to stop procrastination. Learn tolerating the discomfort which comes with doing the task. So these three things are the primary things which you need to focus upon while dismissing procrastination. Of course, ultimately you may want to get a deeper understanding by dismissing the unhelpful beliefs and rules that you have, but that may require help of a skilled professional, a CVT therapist or a CVT practitioner. But remember dismissing your beliefs is optional because once you start doing and realize that there are benefits to actually not procrastinating, your beliefs will also shift gradually. So CVT works on the feeling that you can either change the thought and the behavior we change or you can change the behavior and hopefully the thought will also be influenced to change. So in case of procrastination, we change behaviors and we prevent the excuses to be brought into forefront. So we begin with dismissing procrastination excuses. How do we do that? We do that by questioning ourselves and disputing our own conclusions. You can either do this yourself or you can take help of a friend. You ask questions which are similar to these four or five questions which I will present and then we'll see how it goes. What is the factual evidence or reasons that it is better for me to put off this task or group? What is the factual evidence or reasons that it is better for me to start this task or goal now? Is it really true that I will be better off in the long run delaying this task or goal? Is it really true that I can't even make a small start on the task or goal right now? Can I still get some parts of the task or goal done now even though the conditions aren't ideal? Is it really true that later is a better time to do it? If I do make some start now on the task or goal, what might happen? How might I feel right or wrong? If I don't make a start on the task or goal right now, what might happen? How might I feel? And the key of course is to practice disputing these excuses and thus come up with more helpful conclusions to the half truths and truths which we just saw. So they can be, I'm tired, but I can still make a small start right now and then rest. I don't want to do it now, but later won't be any better. So I may as well get started right away. I will miss out on all the fun happening now, but if I get something done, I can reward myself with other fun later. I don't have everything I need, but I can still try to make a start on some bits and pieces of the task. I have plenty of time, but better to get on top of it now than leave it to the last one. I don't feel inspired, but if I get started, the inspiration may follow and I can't just wait around for the inspiration to arrive. I have other things to do, but they are not more important and can be done after this particular task. I don't have enough time to get it all done. That doesn't mean I can't get some of it done now. I will better under pressure, but it is still worth making a start now because if I leave things too late, it can backfire. Once you've arrived at these conclusions, they may be enough to get you started, but at times you may need to test your conclusions and you have to test your conclusions in these three areas of fatigue, motivation, inspiration, mood, lack of resources and motivational stress. How do we do that? For fatigue, motivation, inspiration, and mood, the excuse here is that I'm tired, I don't want to not inspire. Set up a behavioral experiment, rate the feeling of fatigue or lack of motivation. You may rate it from zero to 10 or 100, whatever. Set a small target, five minutes, 10 minutes, 13 minutes. Once you have achieved this small target, rate the feeling. If you feel that after doing the feeling of fatigue and motivation has increased, then you may not continue the task and then rethink as to are you really fatigued and be motivated. But more often than not, you will find that motivation does follow action. It is a huge myth that you should be motivated to act. Action, motivation doesn't precede action. Action often leads to motivation. Lack of resources, I don't have everything I need, I don't have time. Again, set up a behavioral experiment using all or none approach. That is, unless you have everything and all the time in the world, you will not do anything or second experiment is try the bits and pieces approach of doing things with whatever resources you have and whatever parts can be completed. See what gets done and how you feel after that. Motivational stress, which is I work better under pressure. The behavioral experiment to set up is last minute approach which you are doing right now, versus try and ahead of time approach which gives you some amount of margin to make your things even better and doesn't put you under stress. Finally, when you're doing all this, you have to encourage yourself, don't criticize yourself because negative self-talk that is beating yourself up, saying that you are no good, you're not good enough, you will always fail, doesn't help with procrastination. In fact, negative self-talk will demotivate you further. So encourage yourself as if you are talking to a good friend of yours who has come to you for help, for fighting his procrastination and see what happens when you encourage yourself instead of criticizing yourself. So this is what the thought process is that is there and how to try and reframe the thought process. But we need some practical techniques to stop procrastination because many a time it is a skill deficit of time management or how to get things done which leads to procrastination because the dictum here is just go do it. That is all fine, but nobody tells how to just do it. And this section precisely is going to tell you how to just do it. First figure out what I need to do. So prioritize your task. Figure out what is the most important task. There are tools for this. Then create or chunk each of this task. So for example, you have a task of preparing a report. So chunk it into parts. Like I need to ensure that I've got all the research done. I need to ensure that I've got time block. I need to ensure that I have the proper tools in place to get the report done. So breaking down the larger task into smaller parts. And finally, tell time. Procrastinators have this weird unusual relationship with time. For them, time is more of a stretchable quantity and mythical thing that miraculously get more of it. But the fact is that you will never get more time. You have to just take as much time as everyone else has been given and do things in that time. Procrastinators typically are unable to estimate how long it has been and how long it will take. So what you need to do is to learn to tell time a bit more precisely. Nobody can tell time very, very precisely. Like if I tell you estimate five minutes, you will be somewhere around like three and a half to five and a half, six and a half minutes. But you need to get a better grip on estimating how much time it will take. The second part of it is how can I do it? So here I will give you a quick run through of 10 techniques, practical techniques. You don't need to use all of them, but see it more like a toolkit and figure out which tool works the best for you. The worst first. So whatever you are dreading the most, do it first. Get that out of the way and rest of your day will be much easier. Versus putting the most difficult things for the end of the day, you go through the entire day dreading and in discomfort that you have to do the particular discomforting task at the end of the day. So start with the thing which you dread the most right in the morning, preferably using momentum. So start with a task which is your favorite and just don't stop. Use that momentum and go on to the next task and then the next task and then the next task. Just five minutes. We had talked that discomfort is, procrastination is discomfort driven. So tolerate that discomfort for five minutes and see what happens. And if you can for five minutes, chances are that you will want to work a bit more on that. If not, then you can always step back and see what other strategy works for you. Set time limits. Don't decide to work on the entire task at once. You can start with a short time limit like 30 minutes or you can use the very famous Pomodoro technique wherein you work for 25 minutes, take a five minute break and then you work for 25 minutes and so on. So set time limits of how much you are going to work in a particular setting and not try to do the entire task at once. Utilize your prime time. Some people are morning people, some people are more evening or night people. So work out what times are the best for doing tasks which are not really very enjoyable. So use your prime time. And the typical way to find this out is try out stuff, try an error and figure that which time feels the best for you. There's a prime time with a prime place. And it is very well known that if the surroundings are distracting, we are more likely to progress today. So figure out the right place to do the right task. So if it is again continuing with the example of a report, then a study or a home office or the office would be probably a better way or a better place to do it. Remember then to then do. For small irritating tasks which are less than 15 minutes, just do them as soon as you remember so that they don't linger around. And of course you can pair it with reminders, visual prompts, post-it notes, alarms, whatever. So whatever reminds you to do the task on time because remember procrastinators cannot tell time precisely or as precisely as other people do. For bigger tasks, a very powerful technique is to visualize a very vivid scene or a picture of you doing the task or better of you having completed the task and the positive consequences of having completed the task. This can be a big motivator for you to finish the task. And finally, the 10th focus, calm the mind down, settle and practice a bit of mindfulness. So these are the 10 techniques but I have a bonus one, plan rewards, guilt-free rewards and play time, promote promptitude and banish procrastination. So always remember to encourage yourself rather than self-criticize and plan rewards for yourself for having done the task. And of course the rewards should be proportional to the task done and that is a given thing but rewarding yourself will motivate you and keep you motivated for doing the task. Thus, how can I do it? Use one of these two gets worst first, using momentum just five minutes, set time limits, prime time and place, remember then do reminders, visualize, focus and plan rewards. The third part of banishing procrastination is when can I do it? Here you can either schedule or scheduling is simple. You know that, okay, you put a time and fill up your calendar with all the things that you are procrastinating about but that is scheduled. For many people, scheduling works but for some scheduling can feel very stressful and as if they have been caged. For those people who feel that scheduling will not work for them, there is another similar technique which is unscheduled. Unscheduled is very similar to schedule in which what you do is that you're regularly committed task like getting up, making breakfast, commute, we don't have that anymore. All that you fill this regular committed task which you have to do on a daily basis into a schedule. You will invariably find that there are chunks of time which are free for you. Match those times with a list you have of the tasks to be done. So whenever a chunk of that free time comes up, see your list of things to be done and start on one of those tasks. This will also help you in figuring out whether you are over committed or not. Maybe because there are too many things already on your plate and the tasks that need to be done, you just don't have time for doing those tasks. So try unscheduling, figuring out what parts of the day are free for you. You may be surprised that they are not really free, it's just that in your mind you think that it is free. So this is the unscheduled. Of course the final thing, if schedule or unscheduled doesn't work, the final thing is what I call as the tada list. Tada list is a list of things that you need to do and at the end of the day, just mark the things you have actually done. This is still a step up from not having a list and not doing anything. Keeping the list, seeing that your tada list is gradually becoming longer and longer and that you are doing tasks and reaping the benefits slowly builds up motivation. Some additional tips here are self-monitoring, being aware that how things are going with you, what are you feeling, what are the sensations, are there any physical sensations which are associated with the feeling of discomfort? So monitor yourself and write them down so that you can be aware that this is what happens when I start feeling like that I want to procrastinate. Second is telling someone, this is a very powerful motivator as well, just declare that, okay, by end of today, I'm going to finish this task. And being accountable to someone helps you finish the task. And of course lastly, assertiveness, more importantly in assertiveness, is the ability to say no. If you are a people pleaser and you always say yes to things, when people ask of you, chances are you have very little time left to do your own things. So learn assertiveness to how to say no. Actually there are six ways to say no. And I do have a course which teaches this, this particular thing is too short for going through it, but assertiveness is kind of a gateway skill, which I insist that everyone should invest at least some time in. So this is how you can do various things, practical techniques for avoiding procrastination. The last part of this is learning to tolerate discomfort. It involves a more abstract kind of working, but gradually you can learn that as well. First is be aware, learn a bit of mindfulness. Mindfulness is not only meditation, meditation does form a part of mindfulness, but mindfulness is simply being aware of yourself, the things that are happening to you. You watch and observe the thoughts that you're having without engaging with them, without judging them. So you have to learn to be mindful, watch and observe your thoughts which are making you discomforted, but learn to watch them without judgment. One of the visualizations that you can use is that these thoughts are like leaves in a stream and you can just watch them float away without having to act or do anything. Finally, let go of those thoughts by just letting them ride the wave of discomfort like a surfer. The discomfort always comes in waves. It will increase and then over a period of time decrease. Once you are sure of that and once you've kind of found your rhythm, you can learn to ride the wave of your discomfort. Finally, gradually delay and increase this time for which you tolerate this discomfort. Over a period of time, this discomfort will decrease. Remember, you can't decrease the discomfort by demanding that this discomfort not be there. Discomfort will decrease only when you accept that, that yes, I have discomfort, but I can tolerate it. Try out these things. They are simple in terms of understanding, but they require a considerable amount of practice, but are definitely not impossible to master. Remember to start with something trivial and easy. This is like running a marathon, so you are not going to do it overnight. You will train for it gradually and you will go on step by step, increasing your stamina and your endurance till ultimately you are no longer procrastinating and you are into that state of comittitude always. And that is how you deal with procrastination in short, of course there are more bits and pieces to it, but essentially this is the crux of what we deal with when we want to turn our procrastination into comittitude.