How To Defuse Procrastination And Be Productive (Without Using Willpower)

because there's no point in even wasting your time reading one line of a textbook unless we are going to study enough to actually do well on the final it's like completely wasted effort it's like okay I'm going to dig a well and the water is 100t deep and if the water is 100 ft deep there is no point in digging 5T down it is literally a waste of effort this is where a lot of people make a mistake they think just get started but if you really pay attention to yourself we've given this advice to

everyone not everyone is getting started many people are not getting started procrastination is getting worse not better today we're going to talk about how to shortcircuit procrastination without really using willpower now this may sound kind of weird because when we think about procrastination we think like oh the way to overcome procrastination is discipline willpower maybe we need to work on our emotions but if you understand the science of how procrastination works in the brain and spe specifically we're going to be talking about working memory today if you understand how working memory works then we'll actually

figure out a really interesting technique that can help a lot with procrastination so let's take a look at procrastination and what goes on in your mind when you procrastinate so here's you and here's the task that you want to do or here's the task that you should do you you should study and then here's what you want to do you want to play video games I don't know about y'all but right now I want to play video games I could play some no man's Sky I could play some DOTA I could do anything except for

make this video okay and so here's what we normally find right we're in this situation where there's a tension between these two things things and what we try to do is we exert willpower to try to push things in this direction and we exert willpower to push things in this direction or we'll use things like habits we're kind of here in the middle we're conflicted and we'll do whatever we can to push things towards study but then at some point maybe this stuff will run out and then we end up snapping back towards video games

so this is the first type of procrastination right but if we really look at our mind what we find is it's not quite that simple because sometimes when you need to study and you end up playing uh and you you're you think to yourself oh I shouldn't play video games because I need to study what do you actually end up doing you end up wasting some time on scrolling right and when we procrastinate it's not like we just don't want to study we also need to take out the trash and then we also really should

um update our resume right and then it's not just video games and scrolling maybe it's a touch of the porn watch a little bit of porno so if we really look at the nature of procrastination what we tend to find is that there tend to be a hand full of things that we don't want to do that we're procrastinating towards and then a handful of things that we tend to end up procrastinating with when people hear about our coaching program their first response is usually why would I work with another human being when I can

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in the description below to see if coaching is right for you so if we look at the struggle of procrastination in our mind it is basically a 3v3 so when you actually pay attention to how you procrastinate you aren't actually thinking about the million things that you actually need to do and you're not thinking about distracting yourself with all of the options right so if you really pause and think about it there's a lot of stuff that you could do you could go to the gym you could order some stuff for a party you could

text people that you've lost touch with right you could even do 10 push-ups you don't have to go to the gym just do 10 push-ups there's lots of options and there are lots also lots of things that you could avoid your tasks with like it's not just video game scrolling and porn you may be able to avoid by reading a book you may be able to avoid by going for a walk there's all kinds of options down here but in our experience of procrastination we don't think about those options and the reason for this is

because of something called working memory so it turns out that because of our working memory we are only able to hold a certain number of conflicts in our mind and our working memory is only able to resist a limited number of things so this is really important our working memory is only able to crave a limited number of things right so you can't use the sentence I crave period that's not a sentence does that make sense crave requires an object so I crave a pizza I crave a donut I crave love I crave I don't

know appreciation from other human beings so craving and resistance in our mind are actually like highly specific and localized to what is in our working memory at the time so we discovered this principle in addiction Psychiatry and once we started working with this principle of working memory it turns out that we can teach someone who is like addicted to methampetamine or crack cocaine or opiates or marijuana we can use this principle to overcome the strong strong biological drive to engage in an addiction and we use this technique very interestingly in a in a phase of

something called motivational interviewing which is an evidence-based technique that we use in addiction Psychiatry and we use it in something called the planning phase so here's what we figured out if you take a patient who let's say is addicted to alcohol and they come into my office and I'm a psychiatrist and I'm like you know what I'm psychiatrist trained at Harvard man come on listen to me I have all the answers we have mat medication assisted treatment we have Psychotherapy peer support I will tell you take this medication come to me and I will therapize

you and go to Alcoholics Anonymous and talk about your problems if you do these three things you will be cured H and then patient is like okay Doc and then they proceed to do none of those things right so there is the ideal scenario which you are pushing them towards they resist that those particular things and they end up doing whatever the hell they want so what did we discover in motivational interviewing we discovered that the best way to start is not by telling them what they should do okay so here's two ends of a

spectrum let's take a look at this so here's two ends of a spectrum of behavior to drink or not drink right these are the two ends of the spectrum and basically what happens is they they have a lot of trouble avoiding this and they have a lot of trouble doing this so we when we think about procrastination right we're jumping between these two poles do I play video games or do I study there's nothing in between and now here's the problem is to not drink invites the highest form of resistance and increases our chances of

failure the most right and drinking is the easiest thing to do so this requires zero willpower and so if we try to if we give in then we're kind of screwed it's very very easy to play video games right you know doesn't cost you anything so the cost here is too high and the cost here is too low so what do we do we ask them what can you do we move somewhere over here somewhere over here somewhere over here or somewhere over here and most of the times when we procrastinate we don't think to

ourselves oh I need to study right what we we we actually think to ourselves I need to study and this is a very vague idea what does study mean well I have a final on Friday so what does study even mean we don't say to ourselves I I just need to study period right the thought is unformed our working memory can only have so much R so it doesn't think about what all the steps of studying are we never say to ourselves I'm going to study for 15 minutes we never say to ourselves I'm going

to study for 30 minutes we never say to ourselves oh I'm going to just finish this worksheet and then I play games but then you will say hold on Dr K you're wrong how so dear listener well sometimes I do say that oh very interesting and when you do say that what happens well I end up doing it more easily and this is what we learned from motivational interviewing that what we really want to do is I'm going to get boil this down to a principal do the next best thing what does that mean the

next best thing if you can't do this thing do the next best thing if you want to bump it down one spot go for it if you want to bump it down to oh that's too much to do then do two steps lower do the next best thing and this is what we do in motivational interviewing we don't tell someone medication assisted treatment alcoholic annonymous and Psychotherapy once a week twice a week if you want if you want to get better faster what we ask people is what can you do and we when we procrastinate

we never ask ourselves recognize this procrastination is not about what you can do it is about forcing yourself to do what you should do but I want you all to think about this for for a second because this is insane you are not operating on what you are actually capable of you are operating on wishes and hopes and dreams not what you're capable of so what do we want to do we want to find all of these tasks in the middle right we want to think about all of these tasks over here okay so if

you can't drink then what are we going to do okay I'm going to avoid drinking today avoid drinking at the barbecue okay so for whatever you're procrastinating give up on it don't do this thing try just figure out what can you do okay I can't take out the trash can you take all of the cups and glasses in your next to your computer and at least put those in the trash can you do this can what can you do this is the main question you need to ask yourself what can I get away with before

I start scrolling I'm going to at least take five cups to the sink before I pull out my phone okay so if you engage in this what we know from evidence-based studies on overcoming addictions is that this is the right way to do it so the way to get from this is where we don't want to be right so I kind of flipped the axes last time but this is bad and this is good so what we want to do is find something in the middle now here's another really really really cool thing so a

lot of people will look at this and they'll say oh I've tried this before and sometimes what I need to do is I need to move from bad here so I let me do the smallest thing first right let me just get started there's this idea of getting started all I need to do is get started so it turns out that getting started is one of the worst things that you can do now you may Wonder to yourself hold on Dr K what does that mean getting started is the worst thing that I can do

I thought everyone saying all you need to do is just get started there's some value to that but here's what we learned from motivational interviewing so remember that we're looking at state number one and state number two okay now here are the problem psychologically with getting started if I tell you to get started so you tell me right because we've already figured this out people have told you oh just get started and you're like yeah that works some of the time it works really well when I do it well hold on a second if it

works so well why don't you do it all the time it's because getting started started actually creates resistance so if I tell you oh yeah like just take one cup and put it in the trash and then what does your mind say your mind says not enough right and now something really interesting is happening in your working memory your working memory anytime it tries to to give you a task right when it tries to get you to do something it thinks about the outcomes and I want y'all to answer a question for me what is

the point of doing something if it doesn't solve the problem like so what is the point if I have a final on Friday what is the point of reading one line of a textbook my brain is actually going to say that is the biggest waste of time because there's no point in even wasting your time reading one line of a textbook unless we are going to study enough to actually do well on the final it's like completely wasted effort it's like okay I'm going to dig a well and the water is 100t deep and if

the water is 100 ft deep there is no point in digging 5T down it is literally a waste of effort so this is where a lot of people make a mistake stake they think just get started but if you really pay attention to yourself we've given this advice to everyone not everyone is getting started many people are not getting started procrastination is getting worse not better there's a second problem with just getting started which is that you are actually capable of so much more right so if you can push yourself to get started it's not

like putting one cup away and five cups away is actually that much work right so if I tell you okay like what's harder reading one line of a textbook or reading five lines of a textbook and you're like well the pain in the ass is getting the textbook out and opening it if I'm going to do one I might as well do five now when you do this there's a very very very important cognitive difference so the work of pulling out the textbook and reading one line is the same as the work of pulling out

the textbook and reading five lines the difference is that your dopaminergic brain and your nucleus accumbens and your working memor say that one gains more benefit than the other so it actually increases motivation so this is why in motivational interviewing remember what what is the technique that we use we say do the next best thing don't do the first thing don't do the weakest thing we don't tell people let's start with the basics do the tiniest tiniest tiniest amount oh for your addiction treatment just do this just don't drink when you're in the bathroom today

we don't actually tell people to start with the smallest thing what we ask people is what can you do so what we really want to do is not actually start at the beginning because that does not give our brain a sense of enough gain from an action right because there's a cost benefit analysis this is why what we actually want to do is be as close to this as possible so if you can't do this then can you do this if you can't do this can you do this so this is why we tell people

what can you do well I can not drink during the week well holy crap it's a good thing as a therapist that I didn't tell you just to drink today because we would have lost so much ground and so it is very inefficient to focus on just getting started instead what we want to do if this is too hard no big deal how much can we get right this is the gap that we want to try to cover and we want to try to maximize that Gap as much as possible so if you are procrastinating

you have to understand working memory and if you understand working memory then you will understand that there are actually many easy ways for you to do stuff you just have to not fight the fight that is in your head because once your brain wants a particular thing and wants to avoid a particular thing this conflict is kind of locked in and we already know it takes a bunch of willpower to move from here to here so instead what we want to do is create option C option D option e and those things won't have the

same amount of resistance and I don't know if you all have experienced that but that's just like true right so like if I have a 5-year-old who's like I don't want to eat broccoli and I'm like okay how about green beans they're like I don't want to eat green beans and I'm like okay how about radishes I don't want to eat radishes it's like well what do you want to eat I want to eat Gummy Bears I want to eat cookies well it's like okay like well what about an apple Apple kid is like I

don't want to but okay fine how about apples and peanut butter okay fine so if you've like worked with kids or you've negotiated with humans what you often times find is that there's a lot of stuff that we're willing to do in the middle between what we should do and what we want to do there's a big gap in there the problem is literally our brain our working memory does not consider those possibilities there's one last trick that I'm going to teach youall to reset your working memory and help you with this and that is

literally walking through a door so there's this really interesting uh neuroscientific or psychological principle called the doorway effect and the doorway effect is the reason I don't know if this ever happened to y'all but if you walk you know like if you're like in a room and I'm like oh like I need to go grab something and then you leave the room and you walk over to the next room and you're like I don't remember why I'm here I forgot what I'm doing here we like forget things right we forget things all the time oh

I have to go upstairs and I have to get a glass of water I have to grab my toothbrush I have to grab a change of clothing and then you go upstairs you knew the three things that you needed to grab but when you go upstairs you leave one room you walk upstairs you walk into another room and what you tend to find is that your working memory literally resets and this can be useful for resolving an internal conflict so we can harness the doorway effect so anytime you know I'm I have patients who are

struggling with addiction I strongly strongly strongly encourage them or people who are procrastinating take a walk and try to go through a couple of doorways if you can so if you walk out of your the door to your room and you walk out of the door to your house and you make one circuit around the block you'll notice that you're thinking will automatically change if you are struggling to play a video game sitting in front of your computer and you literally go for one walk around the block the struggle will feel very different and that

is literally because we are resetting your working memory it's stuck in this like conf conflicted process that is hogging up all of your system resources and the one simple way to turn it off and turn it on again is to go for a walk to walk through as many doorways as possible I guess if you've got a list of arches that works too so if you're struggling with procrastination under understand the science of working memory understand the science of motivational interviewing and start to harness those principles and make things way easier on yourself while you

get way more stuff done hey y'all hope you enjoyed today's video we talk about a bunch of topics like this on the channel so be sure to subscribe for more if you're already subscribed GG and we'll see you in chat [Music] the [Music]