Dr Tim Pychyl25 August 2022

World's Leading Expert On How To Solve Procrastination - Dr Tim Pychyl

4Frameworks

14Insights

Frameworks in this episode

Productivity7 steps

Insights & moments

The myth-busts, hot takes, explainers, and tools worth keeping.

Myth Buster· 3

Myth Buster18:00

'I work better under pressure' is self-deception, and the data shows it

When Pychyl's students finally started the work they'd deferred all week, none of them said they were glad they'd waited or that pressure improved their output. What they said was that it wasn't as bad as they'd expected and that they wished they'd started earlier and could have done a better job. He points to philosopher John Perry, author of The Art of Procrastination and the essay 'Structured Procrastination', who notes the whole business requires self-deception — and that procrastinators are very good at it. 'I'll feel more like it tomorrow' belongs to the same family.

“you didn't hear people spontaneously say things like oh I'm so glad I waited till now”
Dr Tim Pychyl · 18:00

“we're really good at saying things I'll feel more like it tomorrow I work better under pressure and on and on and on”
Dr Tim Pychyl · 19:00

Myth Buster28:30

Willpower is not the answer — outsource your will instead

Pychyl notes that the willpower chapter in his own book leaned heavily on the ego depletion model, which has since come under considerable scrutiny. He won't throw the baby out — there are clearly points in the day when you feel depleted — but the practical conclusion is that willpower is not dependable. Citing philosopher Joel Anderson, he argues we can outsource our will the way we outsource arithmetic to a calculator: extended cognition applied to self-regulation. Calendars, environmental cues and implementation intentions are that outsourcing in practice.

“that chapter on Willpower was based a lot on the ego depletion model and it's come under quite a bit of scrutiny”
Dr Tim Pychyl · 29:00

“you can't depend on your willpower”
Dr Tim Pychyl · 29:30

Myth Buster36:00

Flow is not effortless — effortlessness is the output of prior effort

Ali asks whether tasks can be made to feel effortless through framing or gamification. Pychyl's answer is yes and no. Flow sits at the intersection of will and skill, and the tennis player hitting a thousand slice backhand approach shots gets there only after training, discipline and focus. The effortlessness is an outcome, not an entry condition — you never go in thinking it will feel effortless. He also notes 'first nature': Ali's intellectual and creative work has come easily since childhood, while the gym never will, and that asymmetry is normal.

“flow takes effort before you get there the effortlessness is an outcome of a whole whack of effort earlier of training and discipline and focus”
Dr Tim Pychyl · 36:00

“motivation is at the intersection of Will and skill”
Dr Tim Pychyl · 33:00

Hot Take· 1

Hot Take1:08:30

Sometimes the answer is to abandon the goal — no trick will save you

Past the tools, Pychyl says the residue is existential. Drawing on Paul Tillich's The Courage to Be and Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, he frames the final step as self-affirmation in the face of uncertainty. And crucially, it's okay not to do the podcast — if it isn't value-congruent, if you were enticed by the thought of going viral rather than genuinely wanting to share what you learn, abandoning it is legitimate, provided you do it from a place of authenticity. When you're authoring your own life, autonomously, the word procrastination stops existing. Believing a technique can substitute for that choice is naive.

“sometimes when we get into that we realize we shouldn't do it and it it's okay to abandon it but you've got to do that…”
Dr Tim Pychyl · 1:10:00

“no technique or trick is ever going to save you”
Dr Tim Pychyl · 1:13:00

Explainer· 6

Explainer08:00

Why avoidance feels so good: procrastination as negative reinforcement

Pychyl grounds procrastination in the oldest behavioural choice there is — approach or avoid. Resistance leads to avoidance, and avoidance removes an aversive internal state (fear of failure, anxiety about the podcast flopping or the book not selling). That removal is a negative reinforcer, not a punishment: like putting up an umbrella to get rid of the rain. The reward is the disappearance of the bad feeling, which is why procrastination is an emotion-focused coping strategy and why it's so durable. Ali's illustration is a cancelled personal-training session producing a burst of dopamine-like relief despite being against his own interest.

“probably the fundamental behavior of every organism since the beginning of organisms has been the choice to avoid or approach”
Dr Tim Pychyl · 08:30

“so we avoid it and we get rewarded because it gets rid of those negative emotions”
Dr Tim Pychyl · 09:00

Explainer19:30

Guilt becomes shame: the downward spiral, and how progress reverses it

The strongest emotion associated with procrastination is guilt. Do it long enough and guilt turns into shame, because you stop reading it as a bad action and start reading it as a moral failing about your whole personhood. Pychyl argues that getting started interrupts this by changing your perception not just of the task but of yourself, and that social psychology shows even a small amount of progress on a goal fuels well-being — which is the raw material motivation is built from. That's the difference between hedonic and eudaimonic happiness: engagement is where the reward lives.

“guilt and if we do it for long enough that can become shame because now we take it as this somehow this moral failing”
Dr Tim Pychyl · 20:00

“even a little bit of progress on a goal fuels our well-being”
Dr Tim Pychyl · 20:00

Explainer11:00

Compensatory thinking: the donut now, the salad later that never comes

Pychyl connects procrastination to what dietitians call compensatory beliefs — a live strand in his recent research. You want the donut now, so you promise a salad tonight; you want money now, but you'd like it for retirement too. The commitment is always to later, and later never arrives. He frames the personal-trainer example the same way: you want the long-term goal but not what it means in the short term, and rationalisation bridges the gap. It is the identical mechanism to 'I'll do it tomorrow'.

“you think for example oh I really want that dut well I'll eat just a salad tonight you know this commitment to later but it's…”
Dr Tim Pychyl · 11:30

Explainer31:00

Conscientiousness is the trait that correlates most with procrastination

The highest correlation between any personality trait and procrastination is conscientiousness — defined by dutifulness, organisation and self-discipline. Pychyl describes himself as high on it: something in his calendar for 8am tomorrow is a serious commitment and he'll show up, echoing Pressfield's line that professionals show up. But the take is even-handed. Some people arrive with more of it by nature and nurture; if you have it, use it, and if you don't, don't bemoan it — there are plenty of ways to outsource willpower rather than manufacture a trait you weren't given.

“the highest correlation between any personality tradeit and procrastination is conscientiousness”
Dr Tim Pychyl · 31:00

“some of us naturally have more discipline we're more conscientious by nature and if you've got it use it but don't bemoan the fact if…”
Dr Tim Pychyl · 32:00

Explainer38:00

The paradox: goal pursuit and 'this is it' present-moment happiness

Asked whether goal-directed striving contradicts the meditative claim that happiness is only in the present, Pychyl says no — but reconciling it requires accepting a paradox, where the opposite of one great truth is often another great truth. He tells the Zen story of the monk told to wash his bowl after breakfast, which hit him like a truck, and links it to Alan Watts's 'this is it'. Humans are goal-oriented and becoming a meditator doesn't make you less human; the distinction that resolves it is having a goal versus being identified with and clinging to it.

“then he said then wash your bowl and at that moment some of the stories go the monk was enlightened”
Dr Tim Pychyl · 39:30

“you can have a goal but are you are you identified with the goal are you clinging to the goal that's different”
Dr Tim Pychyl · 42:00

Explainer1:01:30

Task aversiveness changes shape depending on the project phase

Pychyl and Allan Blunt asked what task aversiveness actually means, since it tastes different to different people and different tasks. Using Brian Little's personal projects methodology, they had people sort projects into inception, planning and action phases and rate them on psychologically meaningful dimensions. The finding: in inception and planning, a project is aversive when it lacks meaning; in the action phase, meaning matters less and structure matters more — whether you know how to do it. Boredom, frustration, resentment, anxiety and fear all attach to aversiveness, sometimes as a blend, and personality shapes which one shows up.

“the nature of task aversiveness changes depending on where you are in the project”
Dr Tim Pychyl · 1:03:00

“boredom fr frustration difficulty resentment anxiety fearfulness all those things are related to task aversiveness”
Dr Tim Pychyl · 1:03:30

Story· 2

Story16:00

The 1990s pager study that changed how Pychyl saw procrastination

Before mobile phones, Pychyl bought pagers, handed them to students with binders, and paged them throughout the day — experience sampling. All week they rated what they were doing and what they should be doing: the stats assignment scored crazy difficult, crazy stressful, zero enjoyment while they sat in the coffee shop. Then on Thursday night, actually working on it, the ratings shifted by a statistically significant margin: more enjoyable, less difficult, less stressful. Not eight out of ten — just no longer a one or two. And nobody spontaneously said they were glad they'd waited.

“in Psychology we call this an experience sampling approach”
Dr Tim Pychyl · 16:30

“we saw a statistically significant difference in the enjoyment the difficulty and the stress it became more enjoyable perceived as less difficult and less stressful”
Dr Tim Pychyl · 17:30

Story1:15:30

The dinosaur dad: 'don't steal their struggle' and modelling self-regulation

Pychyl became a father at 50 after fertility treatment, having pushed back hard on the idea, and calls himself a self-described dinosaur dad. He describes waiting for his 17-year-old daughter to return from a month-long wilderness canoe trip, driving to get her sushi with his son, unable to put into words how much he loves her — an experience he says he could never have anticipated. Professionally it feeds back: drawing on Winnicott's good-enough parent, plus his wife's line about not stealing their struggle, he works hard at modelling self-regulation because children who don't learn it procrastinate. The irony he enjoys: his daughter was voted best procrastinator at school.

“loving another human being like a child is something that I could never have experienced ahead of time”
Dr Tim Pychyl · 1:17:30

“as my wife would say don't steal their struggle”
Dr Tim Pychyl · 1:18:30

Tool· 1

Tool1:05:30

Deep breathing as the most portable volitional skill

Pychyl defines procrastination as a breakdown in volitional action — volition being a fancier word for will. Among volitional skills, he rates the simplest highest: taking a few deep breaths. He uses it with his daughter when she gets worked up, and even one breath calms things down. He points to German psychologist Matthias Berking's Affect Regulation Training, plus yoga breathing and body scans, as more structured versions. The reason he keeps returning to breathing is portability — two or three breaths change your perspective anywhere, and he'd run them before even starting RAIN.

“one of the most important volitional skills someone might have is just being able to take a few deep breaths”
Dr Tim Pychyl · 1:05:30

“I'm a big believer in the breathing because it's very portable and two or three deep breaths and you're you're changing your perspective”
Dr Tim Pychyl · 1:07:00

Takeaway· 1

Takeaway25:30

Set process goals, not outcome goals you don't control

Ali describes finding a DEXA body-fat number motivating while a five-million-subscriber target is demotivating, because one is in his control and the other isn't. Pychyl maps that onto the research language of process versus outcome goals and endorses the input focus: with body fat you control the exercise; with the internet you don't know what goes viral. Where a goal is beyond your control, don't make it specific and measurable. He also declines to litigate Piers Steel's criticism of SMART — these are heuristics, and specificity preference varies by individual.

“these are sometimes known as process versus output and so we need to focus more on process goals”
Dr Tim Pychyl · 26:00

“because it's out of your control then you don't want to set a measurable goal or a specific goal”
Dr Tim Pychyl · 26:30

Frameworks in this episode

Implementation Intentions: When-Then Planning

RAIN: Emotion Regulation at the Moment of Resistance

The Delay Taxonomy: Is This Actually Procrastination?

The Next Action Rule: Motivation Follows Action