Oh hey there, thanks for joining us on the daily podcast and body and soul called Healthy Ish. I am your host of Felicity Hally. Now tell me do you procrastinate on perhaps the pesky everyday things and or life's bigger goals? Well, we're going to help you out today. Joining me in the studio is Alexis Fernandez Preksa. She's a neuroscientist turn podcast host of Do You f in Mind?
And a best selling author, and she's here to share her trademark no nonsense advice on how to curb your procrastination tendencies, a theme in her new audiobook called How to Chase Change. Now, if you like what you hear from Alexis listening to Extra healthy Ish, our sister pod where she shares her mindset hacks for a bad US life.
Alexis, welcome back to Healthy Ish. It's good to be bad that chat and in person? Yeah, which is ideal? Yeah?
Absolutely, And with a new audiobook. Congratulations, thank you. Now. When I listen to Well the teaser for your audiobooks, there was one key word that just jumped out of me at me procrastinate less or two procrastination procrastinate less let's talk about this.
Yeah, for sure, it's not about laziness. No, what is it?
No, well, procrastination Ultimately, I mean it sounds dramatic, but it ultimately comes down to it's an avoidance behavior. So it's fear based, but not in the sense of like I'm scared fear based.
It's just your body kind of pulling the brakes.
Because you look at any situation and you think, if I've got two options here, I'm going to take the one that's causing me the least amount of discomfort unless there's a real reason to do so. Because when you have a deadline, you're not procrastinaating on it. Like we know, ultimately, if we have no choice, we do it. You can apply that example to everything in your life. So it's only when we have the choice, which of the two is the least uncomfortable, and I'm going to lean into that.
So I think when it comes to procrastinating, if you can learn to just curb that just the tiniest amount, you will see so much change in your productivity, in your overall happiness, and also a reduction in your stress because you're getting things done.
So it's almost recognizing being self aware enough to know, Okay, this I am actually procrastinating. Yes, I'm not just putting it off. This is procrastination, and I can do something about this exactly.
And you have to be honest with yourself, because we tell ourselves I won't do that now, I'll do that tomorrow. We think that there's a version of ourselves out there in the future that is willing to do what we're not willing to do right now, and there never is. So you've got a number one identify that, and then you've got to make it easy for yourself. So what I personally do is I say I'm going to spend ten minutes on this task, even if the task overall
takes two hours, that doesn't matter whether it be. I'll organize it so it's easier to do it when I do it tomorrow, or I will spend ten minutes towards when I was at UNI towards just looking up reference lists.
I don't have to do it. I don't.
So you make it a really easy thing to do. And then most times, after the ten minutes was up, I'm like, well, I'm already doing it. I might as well finish it. It's just the starting that is hard. It's that once you start the momentum, then it's actually relatively easy to stay on tasks.
That is such a.
Good example because often you'd be like, I'm not going to get anywhere in ten minutes, what's the point exactly? But you're saying just do it, because then you're you're on your way exactly exactly.
And even if it's let's say you've got to you want to change your super and you're you're putting that off something really boring, I'd really care about task.
Okay, so you can't do that in ten minutes.
But what I would do is let's get the phone numbers ready, let's get everything sorted. So then and then before you know, you're like, well, I'm here now, why didn't I just do it? It's not going to take that long. And if the ten minutes is up and it was that painful, well then you've done your ten minutes and then we can do another ten.
Actually a great example is exercise. If you want need to exercise, yes, just do five minutes. Just get out the door and then you.
Are never exercise.
Put on your active wear and just walk around the block and then come home.
Now your audiobook is all about chasing change for filling goals, that kind of thing.
What role does procrastination playing this? We and I think all of us can relate to this.
We always do the urgent tasks now and the important tasks later.
It's, oh, that's really hard. I'll wait till I've got a full day. I've wait till I wait, I'll wait.
I think so many of us can relate to us having a goal or a dream that we've been talking about for at least five years. You know, you're capable of doing it, but the only reason you're not doing it is because it's a little bit uncomfortable. There's so much that we have right now, with the resources that we have, without needing extra money, without needing that much more time, that we could accomplish in our life just with basic, tiny tweaks that we don't purely because we put it off.
You know.
It's I think a lot of the time people think, oh, but I've got to wait until this happens or until that happens. But it's like, no, just with the resources you have right now, you could be doing fifty percent more than what you're doing.
Wait another year, then another year, goes, and then half time passes and then it's too late.
Yeah.
Yeah.
One thing when it comes to procrastination is distractions. I mean, this is you're sitting there, let's go back to the exam, because that's a great example. You've got it coming up. If you just spend ten minutes. Oh there's my phone, Oh what's going on on Instagram, what's happening on TikTok. I mean, I feel like there are more distractions around today than there perhaps well even five years ago.
Definitely, definitely, And you've got to look at you know, when you look at the business side of those companies, they're designed to distract us. They're designed by the smartest people to distract us. So they're doing their job and they're doing it very well. But we've got to learn how to always say, learn how to use technology and
don't let it use you. So one main thing that I always recommend is no social media for the first hour, if possible, two hours of the day because you've got to look at especially that kind of distraction where it's a quick, fixed distraction. So something that instantly makes me feel good with no effort, that's really dangerous when it comes to pulling our focus and also like lowering our willingness to do things. Because every time you look at
your phone, you get a hit of dopamine. Someone liked it, someone sent me a message, someone whatever, and so then that hit of dopamine that feels good. Dopamine is our willingness to do things, and you get a release just before you open the app and when you open.
The up and then it drops.
There's certain ways that you can get dopamine where it doesn't drop, and that's things that require effort, So not checking your phone. That's things like exercise, getting outside in the sunlight, working on a task, that cooperating in a team. These things are like a good slow release of dopamine.
So we've got to look at Okay, if dopamine is my willingness to do things, and me checking my phone is reducing my dopamine, I get a spike and then a drop below baseline, What does that mean for my studying?
What does that mean for my effort at work?
So it's not saying don't use your phone, but I if I've got a big thing that I've got a plan or work towards, I'm not going to look at my phone until after that time block is done, whether it's an hour or two hours, then I'll check my phone for ten minutes and then I put it.
Do you put it somewhere else? Like? How do you manage that?
Yes?
Yes, definitely.
So what I do is, especially if I really need to drop into a deep focus zone, I will set a forty five minute timer on my phone, but have it away from me so it's not within reach, and there's forty five minutes in the zone where I can absolutely not grab my phone, and my phone's on silent.
That's it.
And then once the timer is off. Sometimes I'm just two in the zone and I'm like, forget the time. I'm still doing it. And when the timer goes off and I think, great, okay, I get I give myself fifteen minutes. I just total rest do it?
Are you good at this? Yeah?
Yeah, but I do this well not. The thing is you can start off with really small blocks. The beauty about time blocking is that it's easy from.
The get go.
So you can start off with twenty minutes on, five minutes off, or twenty minutes on ten minutes off, and then just you find your sweet spot. For me, it's forty five minutes. That's my sweet spot. Some people it's thirty. And I actually got taught this by a lecturer who used to do this during a lecture and in between she'd put on Modern Family and all our focus was just great because we'd be in the zone. Then she'd do something really fun in between, and then we'd be
in the zone again. And I thought, I'm going to do that at home. And it's worked really well.
What great I mean?
I suppose your lecture would know the ins and outs of what's going on in the brain, so she knows how to manipulate her students exactly actually gets off. Now, studies have found self compassion can be one of the ways to overcome procrastination.
Talk to us about this and perhaps some other.
Ways that you overcome yours when it comes to setting the big goals.
Yes, well, I think if you look, because because procrastination is about avoiding the uncomfortable, when you're really hard on yourself, you're making this thing bigger and bigger and bigger. It's like the elephant in the room that you're not addressing. So if you keep saying, oh, but I'm a failure, but it's going to be really hard of it. You know,
I get anxiety. You really pay attention to your language, and if we're really self critical, if we're really catastrophic with our language, then that thing that we're avoiding becomes the source of more pain, more and more and more pain. If you can just be a lot kinder to yourself and say, the reason I haven't done this is purely because I haven't given myself the resources or I haven't looked at it in a different way. And I'm going to give my chance to try doing it in this way.
You know I'm capable. I've done this before. I can surely do this. You start being a lot more specific with your language instead of being universal with this really negative phrase is that we say, so, if you're a lot kinder to yourself in that regard, then you give yourself more chances. And everybody procrastinates. I procrastinate all the time.
You've got anything you particularly procrastinate about.
Yes, anything to anything to do with like banking and budgeting and all that stuff. I definitely procrastinate on. It gets done, but it's something that I have to really remind myself that, you know, like practice what I preach and think okay, just thirty minutes or twenty minutes, you know, and then it's done.
Alexis, thank you for coming on, help you. Thank you so much for having me.
Lexus is good, isn't she full of really useful, no nonsense information and wisdom. I will leave a link to her last chats with us in the show notes, as well as a link to her audio book called How to Chase a Change. If you did enjoy this chat, rate and review it, or of course, subscribe to this podcast, Jump online, Body andsoul dot com dot you is the place to go for lost and social grub our print edition which is out in your local Sunday paper. Thanks again for listening and stay healthy. Is