In her 30+-year career in communications, Mills has extensive media experience, including being interviewed by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and other top-tier print media. She is a social, health and personality psychologist who is broadly interested in how self-regulationhow we manage our thoughts, emotions and behaviorsaffect our health and wellbeing. That if you notice a funny mole or you notice a funny lump or something, or change in your bowel habit of it or whatever it is, that is an area where procrastination can be deadly. And I think, yeahI mean, I would go back to, well, were they really procrastinating or were they engaging in some other form of delay? But people have to have their own motivation. And I think it makes sense though too, because if you are really driven and your whole sense of self-worth is focused on how well you do this task and you're so worried about that task, that's enough, that fear of failing, that fear of it not being good enough or not pleasing others can be enough to put you off ever even starting it. Does willpower work? And obviously creativity comes from noticing unusual associations between things or noticing things that we dont usually notice. Mills: You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology on our website at www.speakingofpsychology.org or on Apple, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. So I think it can be quite mixed. I have the value of the two of us being in a relationship where we make up for each others weaknesses, that were there to compensate for each others weaknesses. We all feel guilty about it. Its why people have workout playlists. Since using all of these tools to beat his habit of procrastination, Dr. Brammer has been able to add more things to his life, and is still able to accomplish it all and feel confident. I think that would kind of level the playing field for many people as well in terms of whether they were able to be productive or whether they found themselves falling into a trap of procrastination. When you can't figure out how to tackle a project or feel insecure about your abilities, you might find it easier to put it off. There hasIt's a little bit controversial. APA 2023 registration is now open! It's just not that thing that they should be doing right now that's looming and important and will have negative consequences if they don't get it done. Most of us are decent humans and its not consistent with our values to be being jerks. And I think the people that I've spoken to who really struggle with procrastination, they are in a bad way. For the American Psychological Association, I'm Kim Mills. And you see this a lot. And then I think of one way to mitigate against each of them. You can learn about my research at procrastination. Although we may experience discomfort in the final moments before a task is due, we rarely think about the past or future when procrastinating. And they should have an explicit system. And there's multiple layers of doing this. CURT NICKISCH: You mentioned earlier that when people do the tasks they know, those are often the easiest to do, and they put off the harder ones. I just want to ask if perfectionism and procrastination are linked and are perfectionists more or less likely to procrastinate? And how can we be more conscious of that? So you take that task that's really stressing you out, you've got that report you've got to write, you're worried about what your manager's going to think because maybe a promotion rides on it, or you're worried if you're going to be doing it correctly, or if you're going to do it as perfectly as what you want, and you take that task, you put it aside and you get busy with other things and you've now have this immediate sense of relief.
