Episode 100 - In the Mood to Procrastinate

<h2 data-pm-slice="0 0 []"><strong>Summary</strong></h2> <p class="">Procrastination plagues many of us. It seems we are endlessly creative at avoiding things that we know are important. This week we explore different ways to think about and avoid procrastination.</p> <p class="" data-rte-preserve-empty="true"> </p> <h2><strong>Transcript</strong></h2> <p class="">Hello and welcome to episode 100 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we explore different ways to think about and avoid procrastination.</p> <p class="">Procrastination plagues many of us. In fact, research suggests that around 25% of people have procrastination as a defining personality trait. But whether you procrastinate all the time or just every so often, I’m sure you would love to procrastinate a little less.</p> <p class="">And that’s not surprising, particularly given that procrastination is associated with a range of negative outcomes including low self-esteem, high pessimism, high anxiety, boredom, fatigue and detachment.</p> <p class="">One definition of procrastination is “voluntarily delaying an intended task despite expecting to be worse off for doing so”. This highlights a few key aspects of procrastination:</p> <ol data-rte-list="default"> <li> <p class="">It’s voluntary - procrastination is something that we choose to do</p> </li> <li> <p class="">It gets in the way of our intentions - despite wanting to do one thing, we introduce something else as a replacement, even if that replacement is just staring at the ceiling</p> </li> <li> <p class="">We know it will make things worse - procrastination never makes things easier, and we typically know that at the point we choose to procrastinate</p> </li> </ol> <p class="">So given all of this, why do we procrastinate? Researchers describe procrastination as “a form of self-regulation failure involving the unnecessary and voluntary delay of important tasks for the purpose of short-term mood repair.” Put simply, procrastination