Dr. Timothy A. Pychyl, associate professor of psychology and director of the Procrastination Research Group (Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada), provides a series of short talks, interviews and question/answer podcasts that explain why we procrastinate and what we can do about it. An award winning educator, Dr. Pychyl challenges his listeners to explore their daily choices to act or postpone acting on their intentions. Do we head to the gym as intended, or slouch back on the couch thinking "I'll feel more like a workout tomorrow"? Do we tackle the task now, or do we avoid it arguing to ourselves that "I work better under pressure"? From losing 10 pounds to changing personal habits, Pychyl, a personality psychologist, focuses on the breakdown of intentional action - a problem commonly called procrastination. This series expands on three main themes: 1) irrational delay that sabotages personal productivity, 2) personality attributes that contribute to self-defeating behaviours, and 3) situational factors that undermine our ability to take or sustain action. Drawing on the research literature, topics include: self-handicapping, anxiety, self-regulation, perfectionism, will power, coping styles, effects on health and well-being, impulsivity, temporal discounting, motivation and even purpose in life. Of course, Dr. Pychyl doesn’t leave his listeners with the problem itself. Once these key factors have been established, he turns his attention to techniques that facilitate self change, habit-breaking implementation intentions, as well as strategies that help each of us to “carpe diem!� The emphasis is on self-understanding, practical advice and tools for change. We guarantee that you will find this an engaging series of podcasts that will provide you with tactics to increase personal productivity and well-being.
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I am working on this podcast as a way of not doing other things that I should be doing - reading final papers, editing manuscripts, writing a letter of reference - at least that's what John Perry would argue. This is the essence of his concept, structured procrastination. Perry, a professor of philosophy at Stanford University, will even sell you the t-shirt! Learn more about how structured procrastination may allow you to harness a liability to create an asset in your life. Get some tasks done ...
Here is the second part of my thoughts on existentialism and procrastination with a focus on self-deception - "I'll feel more like doing this tomorrow." Sartre calls this bad faith as we try to escape our own freedom to choose. It's an inauthentic way of living. It certainly seems to describe chronic procrastination well.
At the request of many listeners, I am presenting some thoughts on existentialism and procrastination. This podcast, the first of two parts, explores how the notion of "choice" is at the heart of existentialist thought and procrastination.
This podcast is a little different from the others. I am rebroadcasting an interview that I did with Alan Kearns of CareerJoy.com. Alan interviewed me last fall about procrastination in the workplace, and he published the podcast on the CareerJoy Web site. At his suggestion, I'm offering it to iProcrastinate Podcast listeners, as Alan and I covered a wide range of topics, some of which overlap with my topics in the previous podcasts. As you'll hear in this podcast, I'm using a new digital record...
Although we all believe that information technology makes us more productive - it's our belief that technology is progress - it's not a one-sided issue. Along with the benefits provided by our new information technologies, particularly Internet-based communication technologies, there are potential drawbacks. In this podcast, Dr. Pychyl discusses how email, Facebook and other Internet tools can lead us to make poor decisions about time use and cause us to procrastinate on our more important tasks...
In this podcast, Dr. Pychyl discusses how mindfulness meditation may help reduce procrastination. The focus is on the role of attention in self-regulation failure. Based on a recent thesis by Ariel Rotblatt conducted as part of the Procrastination Research Group (www.procrastination.ca), Dr. Pychyl explains how mindfulness may serve as a self-regulatory resource to manage our attention.
In this episode, we explore how fear of failure has been identified as a factor in our understanding of procrastination. Specifically, Dr. Pychyl discusses evaluation anxiety, perfectionism and low self-confidence as issues related to procrastination and what we might do to address these problematic irrational thoughts.
After nearly 4 months away, finally, another episode on dealing with procrastination. We pick up where we left off in May with a discussion of two other strategies to deal with procrastination: restructuring how we think about our tasks and strengthening our volition to get the task done. Please note that I have increased the volume in the recording, but I noticed some popping sounds with my microphones. I will continue to refine the recording (I've changed some of my equipment). Thanks for the ...
This is the first in a three-part podcast where we begin to discuss strategies for overcoming procrastination. The content is based on a research paper published by Wendelein Van Eerde in the journal, Applied Psychology: An International Review (see www. procrastination.ca and the podcast link for reference details). In this podcast, we explore 3 strategies for overcoming avoidance with specific examples related to academic procrastination.
Why do so many of us procrastinate on our taxes? Isn't the saner question, who doesn't? Who likes doing taxes? In fact, that's part of the answer to why we put it off - it's aversive! But, what does aversive mean? We explore a little bit of this based on research about personal projects and task aversiveness. Although we focus on tax preparation, this research speaks to any task we find aversive and what this means to procrastination.
Although I argued in the last podcast that procrastinators are not "broken" and that buying a daytimer or creating a schedule isn't a magic solution to procrastination, a time management approach can be beneficial. In this podcast we consider research that explains how this might work. (Check out www.procrastination.ca for the Carpe Diem cartoon feature for March.)
This week, we consider how even apparently good intentions like making a schedule can contribute to procrastination. We focus this dicussion on a new cartoon strip, "Carpe Diem," that you can find at www.procrastination.ca
In this podcast, we extend the "colour wheel" metaphor with the Five Factor Model of personality ("the big five") and briefly summarize some key relations of the major personality traits with procrastination.
In this podcast, we focus on what many personality psychologists consider to be the fundamental traits. Using the metaphor of the primary colours, we consider the "primary colours" of personality and briefly define the "Big Five Model" of personality. We will expand on this to relate these traits to procrastination in the next podcast.
This was my first podcast back in January of 2006. The original recording was poorly done, but thanks to a generous listener, it has been greatly improved. Thanks Lucas! In this podcast, I introduce the purpose of the podcasts and spend time discussing the definition of procrastination. This discussion is not just theoretical, and you'll find insights into why we procrastinate.
