How Can I Stop Procrastinating? with Dr. Tony Puliafico

Faith: Welcome to Health Matters, your weekly dose of health and wellness from NewYork-Presbyterian. I’m Faith Salie.

We all have those tasks that we put off. Sometimes we delay them because they are mundane, while other times we do it because they are big and overwhelming. But no matter the reason, we are guilty of: procrastination.

To explore the roots of procrastination and how it relates to our mental health, I talked with Dr. Tony Puliafico, a psychologist at NewYork-Presbyterian and Columbia. Dr. Puliafico explained how avoidant behaviors like procrastination are a normal part of human life, how to tell when it’s getting out of hand, and, of course, what changes we can make so that our habits work for us, instead of against us.

Faith: Dr. Tony Puliafico, I’m so glad you’re here. I can’t wait to talk to you about procrastination.

Dr. Puliafico: Thank you, Faith.

Faith: Even just the word procrastination, I feel like, is surrounded with anxiety and guilt. So what is the medical definition of procrastination?

Dr. Puliafico: Really at its core, it’s delaying any type of task because it’s unpleasant, stressful or anxiety provoking, or even boring. We all do it. So even just, you know, watching a TV show for an extra few minutes or a few hours or scrolling on a phone longer so you don’t have to do the dishes right away or get to those emails you have to deal with. That’s procrastinating.

A lot of times, we’re still thinking about the thing we need to do. We’re still stressing about the thing we need to do. So it can cause distress and then there’s the added, cumulative distress of not having those tasks done and whatever negative consequences there are from the late paper or assignment or whatever.

And for many of us, we procrastinate and there’s no big, big consequence, except it might delay our day or it’s something we know we need to do. But for a lot of folks, and research suggests up to 50%, that procrastinating can lead to problems. It can cause problems with work or school or just getting tasks done.

Faith: You mentioned scrolling. Do you think that procrastination is a new problem in our digital age? Or is this something more fundamental to how humans have always thought and acted?

Dr. Puliafico: So, I think we’ve always procrastinated. It’s just so much easier to procrastinate now.

Faith: Yes!

Dr. Puliafico: So, Da Vinci was a huge procrastinator. Turns out it took him over 16 years to finish the Mona Lisa. Uh, procrastinating’s been around as long as we have. But these days, it’s never been easier, right, to spend time scrolling on a phone, or, you know, continuing to watch that show that keeps saying, hey, watch another episode, watch another episode, watch another episode.

I mean, we have these mini computers in our pockets that give us 500 ways that we can avoid doing a task. Um, that said, I think that the problem of procrastination itself is an age-old one.

Faith: How does procrastination come up in your clinical work?

Dr. Puliafico: We work with a lot of folks dealing with anxiety. And a hallmark feature of anxiety is avoidance. When we feel anxious or stressed about something, our tendency is to avoid it, or escape it, or not do it. Whether it’s work, whether it’s a social encounter, whatever it is. So, a lot of times, anxiety about doing a task can lead to procrastination or avoidance. We see this particularly with folks who are perfectionists, um, if you think that you need to do a task perfectly, it becomes all the more overwhelming and stressful to do it. And, you know, you may push it off and push it off and push it off, and then the stress about it grows. So a lot of the work that we do is really helping folks think more flexibly about how well a task or assignment or school paper needs to be done and, and to really kind of play around with those expectations.

Faith: How do you know if you’re procrastinating, quote unquote, normally, or if it’s a chronic problem?

Dr. Puliafico: I think it really depends on what are the consequences of that procrastination and how frequent is it? So, um, there is actually some evidence suggesting that some procrastination can be helpful. There are, there’s some research that’s been done that’s shown if you hold off on doing a task, your mind is actually unconsciously working on that task or assignment. And so when you actually get to it, you can perform better or be more creative in terms of your output.

Faith: Anyone who procrastinates is listening to that thinking, see, I’m working on it.

Dr. Puliafico: Well, there seems to be two types of procrastination. There’s active procrastination, which is really this idea of intentionally, pushing off a task until there’s a little bit more of a time crunch versus passive procrastination which is driven by either anxiety or stress or distractibility.

If you know you’re the type of person who’s that 11th-hour worker and it works for you, procrastination may not be a huge problem. You know, we all knew that college friend, or we were that college friend, who waited until the night before to get a paper done, and if that worked, fantastic.

However, if this is a daily or weekly challenge that you’re running into, that’s causing concerns at work, that’s stressing you out and causing distress for you or leading to kind of problems in performance. Yeah, that’s a problem that we should be working on. And then we will think through what’s driving that procrastination.

Is it anxiety-driven? Is there worry about getting tasks done? Is there some executive functioning problems that we can address and work on? Are there other reasons why you might procrastinate? And doing that real functional assessment, like what’s driving the procrastination, then guides what we can do about it.

Faith: So let’s dig into this avoidant behavior and talk more about what drives people to procrastinate.

Dr. Puliafico: There’s often shame and guilt involved and, the other piece that plays out is that once you procrastinate a little, then the task might feel all the harder to get done because then you have less time to do it .Then it’s more burdensome. Um, so these factors can work in combo.

We’ve touched on anxiety, and that’s a big one. This worry about a task being good enough, doing something well enough, or a task being too hard. Then there’s also the folks who have perhaps underdeveloped time management skills or who find themselves to be distractible, and the, you know, the challenges in terms of managing time and understanding how much time you need for a task can often sometimes drive procrastination. And then, of course, there’s that third bucket of folks who really do need the thrill of being, like, on the clock to get an assignment done, uh, to get a task done, and they’re not sufficiently motivated until it’s the 11th hour. So that need for a time crunch can also drive procrastination.

Procrastination can be related to ADHD. It can also be related to anxiety in all the ways we’ve discussed already, or there can be a combination.

Faith: How are we prioritizing our short term needs versus long term needs when we procrastinate?

Dr. Puliafico: When we’re procrastinating, we’re making a very intentional choice often to take care of ourselves in the moment. Whether that’s to remove some unpleasant emotions we don’t want to have, to remove an unpleasant task off the table, even if it’s temporarily, or just kind of do the thing that we’re more excited to do.

Are you willing to tolerate a bit of discomfort or anxiety or stress now, both for a long term gain, and so you can learn how to handle this better? Because what we also see with anxiety is that the more you take on an anxiety-provoking task, the less anxiety it brings up.

That repeated exposure to something hard makes it less hard. So if you’re willing to tolerate this thing over and over again, guess what? It’s going to become less hard over time. But you’ve got to start somewhere. You’ve got to start with that short term, like, I’m willing to have this discomfort now for the long term gain.

Part of it is building that awareness and just being mindful of what’s the choice that I’m making? What are the consequences tied to watching another hour of TV or scrolling for another hour or pushing this task off a day or two or five? And even if you’re making the choice to procrastinate, even saying, okay, I understand the consequences here and I’m choosing to push off this task.

That’s a step in the right direction because you’re being intentional about it versus not, you know, not thinking it through so much. Now obviously what we’re doing here with a lot of our, you know, in a lot of the work that we do is really trying to, you know, help ourselves and others make different choices and not engage in that problematic procrastination.

Faith: How do you help people kick the guilt that results from procrastination?

Dr. Puliafico: Normalizing is a big, big piece. We all procrastinate. You know, this is a human experience. Um, I’ll help, if I’m working with someone, help them recognize that, you know, what you’re doing is something we all do. It’s just for you right now, it’s causing real problems. And kind of like sit with someone and think collaboratively about how to, how to work on it.

You know, another big piece that we focus on is tying values to getting those assignments done or getting that work done. You know, why is doing this task that is so onerous for you, why is it important or meaningful? You know, is it, is the idea of graduating high school a value that you can tie to getting this annoying social studies paper done? Or is the idea of getting a promotion at work a value that’s helpful for you to get that really annoying work task done?

Because a lot of times these tasks that we’re procrastinating don’t matter that much to us personally. It might be a work task that just feels like a giant pain in the neck or paperwork we don’t want to do, bills we have to pay. But if we can tie personal meaning and value to it, that can anchor and motivate us to get it done. And so then you learn, okay, I can do this, and I can get through it, and it’s not so bad, and some internal motivation grows from that.

Faith: Is part of that also thinking about breaking tasks into smaller achievable chunks?

Dr. Puliafico: Yeah, let’s say that high school paper that’s like 10 pages long that feels like an impossible task. Okay, how can we break that down to like eminently doable chunks? So it might be, I’m gonna work on this for 20 minutes today. And now granted you’re gonna need a lot of 20 minute chunks, but if 20 minutes is what feels doable, start there. If 5 minutes feels doable, start there.

Faith: We’ve talked about different ways to think about procrastination, why we procrastinate, um, some kind of scripts we can give ourselves. What are some other tips and tools and strategies that you give your patients?

Dr. Puliafico: We do a lot of what we call exposure based therapy, where for folks who are struggling with needing to do things perfectly or having unrealistically high standards will very intentionally help them to do things imperfectly.

And sometimes it’s send a text message with a typo in it. Um, it might be as simple as that. It might be sending an assignment to a teacher that intentionally has a mistake here or there. It might be just completing something in a time limit that’s much less than you think you need to get the assignment done.

And what we’re doing is we’re helping folks recognize, hey, I can do this in a way that feels much less perfect than I thought I had to. And I could see myself through it. And then you realize that you tolerate it and you survive it. And the more you do that, you, uh, you start to change how you think about how perfect things need to be. Really to, kind of like, develop this imperfect lifestyle or this imperfect work style.

Faith: I love that. Do you just, called it the imperfect lifestyle? That’s, that’s not a phrase you hear a lot.

Dr. Puliafico: Yeah, well we focus on that a lot. We, we often say like, let’s get perfect at being imperfect and let’s lean into that. Because the more you can lean into that, you’re going to realize a few things. Number one, the mistakes you make are probably not as big as you think they are. And number two, that you can handle them.

Faith: How can we as parents really help our kids with procrastination?

Dr. Puliafico: So I think the short answer is more modeling, less nagging. So by modeling, I mean, how can we as parents show in our behaviors, things that we’re doing to not procrastinate? And also have conversations with our kids about strategies we use to get things done that we don’t want to do. Sharing with our kids that we all have that tendency to procrastinate, and how we deal with it and that we’re not perfect with it.

So that modeling is helpful. And also helping our kids in calm and cool moments to think through what works for them? Because there might, you know, our strategies might not work for our kids. But what doesn’t seem to help is, like, the in-the-moment nagging.

We’ll also work with parents and with kids to think, “Hey, what’s that thing you can earn by doing this hard thing?” It might be an activity they want to do, can be that external motivator for kids particularly when they’re not necessarily tied to like internally, why is this so important to me? And what we see is that by setting up an external motivator early on, particularly for kids, kids can realize okay doing this hard thing, I tolerated it, I got through it, and hopefully, after doing it over and over, it’s not as horrible as I feared it would be, and some internal motivation grows from that.

Faith: And also something I’ve learned from you today is being really transparent about our own fallibility about how, how we don’t achieve perfection, nor at this point in most of our lives, I hope, is it a goal to achieve perfection.

Dr. Puliafico: Absolutely. Absolutely. And the more our kids can see that we struggle with procrastination, we struggle with anxiety, we struggle with being distracted. It normalizes these problems and it opens up lines of communication for our kids to come to us when they’re struggling with these things.

If I’m procrastinating, I’m usually saying like, what are all the less onerous things I can do right now that feels like I’m working? And you know what? Sometimes, every once in a while, that’s actually helpful. If you’re getting other stuff done and you eventually get to that bad task. Okay, but you got to get to that hard task eventually.

Faith: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve Swiffered our floor to feel like, Well, I’m not really procrastinating because you could eat off this floor, everybody.

Dr. Puliafico: And your floors thank you, I’m sure. And so again, not all procrastination is, is horrible all the time. And if you’re getting other things done, as long as you get to that other task within a reasonable amount of time, maybe no harm, no foul. But procrastination causes problems when you’re not getting that test done or when it’s causing undue stress or when your performance is really suffering.

Faith: Dr. Puliafico. Thank you so much for joining us today

Dr. Puliafico: It’s been a real pleasure, thank you so much for having me.

Faith: Our many thanks to Dr. Tony Puliafico. I’m Faith Salie.

Health Matters is a production of NewYork-Presbyterian. The views shared on this podcast solely reflect the expertise and experience of our guests. NewYork-Presbyterian is here to help you stay amazing at every stage of your life.

To get the latest episodes of Health Matters, be sure to follow and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts.

Dr. Puliafico: We call this Grandma’s Rule because this is like your grandma says like, “You got to eat your peas to get your ice cream,” right?

Faith: Although I think a lot of grandmas are like, “Here, I’m giving you this ice cream. Don’t tell your parents.”

Dr. Puliafico: That’s true. That’s true. It should be more like Mom or Dad’s Rule.