Procrastination is one of the biggest issues that my PhD student and academic clients talk about. And so it probably shouldn't have been a surprise that when I came to do an episode about how to manage your procrastination, it didn't all fit. I recorded it. I didn't even notice that I'd been talking for over an hour and when I came to process it, I thought, you know what, this is two episodes. So I split it into two episodes.
Last week I talked about the NICE model that I've come up with to help you in the moment stop procrastination. So you're noticing, investigating, choosing and embracing. If you haven't listened to that episode already, go back, check it out. Today is the second half of that episode and here we're really going to be thinking about how we can set ourselves up to avoid procrastination a little bit more in the future.
These two parts were, as I say, recorded as a single episode, so we are gonna dive straight in. I hope you enjoy.
I run a lot of workshops on a lot of different topics. I have lots of individual clients at the moment, and this is something that's coming up with lots of different people.
And on my dog walks and all of that, I've been reflecting a lot on the nature of procrastination. And one of the things that's really struck me is procrastination is a breakdown in the relationship between the current us here, today, current me, past me, who set the plan, and future me, who wants me to have done the plan.
Now, you may not have thought about yourself in that kind of way before, in this sort of past, current, and future you. But it can be a really useful headspace to get yourself into. Because often we think about ourselves as just being, we're, we're just us, aren't we? And we're going through life and we're making plans and we're doing some of them and not doing other ones and achieving some things and not achieving other things.
Whereas actually, if you could separate it out a little bit, and almost have a separate past me, is one person. Current me is one person and future me is somebody else. Then what we can do is we can start thinking about the relationship that we have with those versions of ourselves. Now, just to really emphasize, when I'm talking about separating these things out, I'm not imagining, I sometimes fall into the gap of like, future me is going to be amazing.
You know, next year's Vikki's going to do so much stuff. No, past me is very, very similar to me, especially near past, you know, just in the last few days. And future me is going to be pretty similar to me too. Now, hopefully we might modify a few things here and there, but future me is going to be pretty similar too.
But thinking of it as a relationship, that I have a relationship with past me, and I have a relationship with future me, can help us create environments where procrastination is less likely. And that's because I want you to think, if we think about these as a series of relationships at the moment, I want you to think what procrastination does to that relationship.
Let's think about it when we're planning what tasks we're going to do, because people often forget this bit. They think about procrastination as being implementing in the moment, but actually one of the things I realized is one of the reasons I never implemented my to do list the way I intended is because I made stupid to do lists.
For years and years and years and years and years, I made to do lists that I knew even at the time there was no way I could do. Completely unrealistic, completely unachievable, made them anyway. Fit of optimism, fit of denial, and then beat myself up because I couldn't do them. And for years I thought that I was somebody who couldn't deliver, who didn't do the things she intended, and I blamed myself for that.
And it took me ages to realize that it wasn't a problem of implementation. It was a problem of stupid planning, which is still me. It was still, um, something that I was doing that I could change. So I still took responsibility for it, but it meant I'd been looking in the wrong place all this time. I'd been working, trying to work out how could I make myself do all this stuff that I had planned rather than going, let's plan more sensibly.
So let's start with the planning you. So at the point you're, current you is planning, and when we're planning, we've got kind of near future, so the me I'm going to be tomorrow, this week, and future future me, okay, far future. And so when we're planning, we need to think, am I coming up with something that is clear, that is realistic, that they are able to do, i. e. near future, and we need to think, am I planning something that is going to get me where. far future me wants to be. So there's the me in the next few days that's going to have to actually do these things, and there's the me at the end of the year that wants these things to have been done. And often when we're in that planning mode, we're not really thinking straight about near future me.
Sometimes, I don't know about you, but suddenly we think near future me, tomorrow's me, is going to be an absolute genius. She's going to be able to smash through all of this. She's going to be so much more motivated. She's going to get so much done. We come up with unrealistic things.
Or in the moment, current me doesn't want to have to choose between things. That was always my problem. I'd look at my to do list or my ideas of the things I could do, and I didn't want to pick because I liked them all. And so I sort of just scheduled them all in, in an over optimistic way, and let it be future me's problem. But I didn't really think about it like that. I was like, well, we'll make it work.
But if we can think about these relationships, then when we're planning, we can think, okay. What is realistic? How can I make it clear for them? How can I make it understandable and achievable? And this goes back, again, if you haven't listened to the How To Be Your own best Supervisor podcast, go back, listen to that.
It's really important. This, this planning mode is almost when you're in boss mode and you're planning for the future you that has to do the work. So we're thinking Is it achievable? Can I do it? And we're thinking, is it going to get me where I want to be?
Now, a little bit of time's gone past. We're in the implementation phase now. So we're in the phase where we actually have to do the things on our to do list. Now we're thinking about past me, who set this for me, and we're thinking about future me, who wants this to be done.
And of course, we're thinking about ourselves. And what's happening when we're procrastinating? This is the zone where we procrastinate in this implementation phase. We're saying to ourselves, I don't want to though. I don't want to because when I do it, I'm going to feel uncomfortable, I'm going to feel bored, I'm going to feel guilt, whatever it is.
So I don't want to. And often we start to justify it by saying, well, past me, when I planned this, I didn't know that I was going to be poorly, I didn't know that I was going to be on my period, I didn't know that this thing's going to happen, whatever it is. Or, oh yeah, I was a bit unrealistic when I planned this, so yeah, I'm just going to readjust.
We sort of discount the wisdom of past us and use that as a reason that we're not going to do the thing. We're not honouring what past us had planned and intended. Sometimes, as I say, that's because past us planned something stupid, unrealistic, bless their little heart. Other times, it's because it just feels a bit uncomfortable now and we're using that as an excuse not to have to do it.
And we're also often not thinking about the future us. Other than, again, having this really optimistic thing that future us is going to be loads better. Okay? So we're thinking, oh, silly past us. They thought that I'd be able to do this, but actually there's just not really time, so I'm not going to. And I can do it tomorrow.
Future me's got it. Okay, so we're being dismissive of past us and we're being over optimistic about future us. And the irony is that when we shift and we are now future us and we're trying to implement now, we're probably going to do the same thing. We're going to go, oh, past us was super over optimistic because she was, by the way, but I'll try again tomorrow because I'll be better tomorrow.
And so it just keeps shifting down the line. Instead, what we want in this moment, when we're in the implementation phase, is we want to be able to say, I trust past us. They had a plan. They had a plan where they tried to be clear, where they tried to be fair, and they tried to be realistic. I am going to do my best to implement it.
Because the irony is, if somebody else had asked you to do this, you would probably do it. That's the relationship that we want to build with past us and future us is that we are as accountable to past us and future us as we are to other people. All of my clients and me say, I will always do something if my boss asks me to do it.
I'm never going to say to my boss, Oh yeah, I just didn't. You know, I find that really hard to do. Obviously sometimes it happens, but rarely do we do that. When somebody else is waiting for it, I need to get this done or they're going to think badly of me. We're really happy. We're perfectly fine.
Apparently, for future us to think badly of us, to past us to think badly of us. I want us to build accountability to past us and future us as the most important accountabilities in our lives. Because then we get to go, Okay, past us. This is what we decided. I'm not sure I'm convinced, because I don't know that we have time.
But I'm going to do everything I can do to prove you right. I'm going to try and get as much done as possible. So when you hear the thought, I don't have time for this, we can say, I know, but this is the time that past us gave us for it, so let's see how much we can get done. I don't know that I can write all this in this. No, but I can use every bit of this hour. Because that was what past us decided.
So we get to honor past us and do our best to implement what they planned. And the more past us took future us, I mean now, into account, the easier it is to say, you know what? I trust her. She made okay decisions based on the information she had at that stage.
She made okay decisions and I am going to do my best to honor them. Now. We can then build that knowledge into future planning if we realise, ah, past us is still giving us too many tasks, really. We can build that into our next planning session. Okay, I remember I often give myself too much to do, so let's think about that and plan more realistically. But in this moment, we're not just going to write her off as an idiot, we're going to do our best to do the things that she said we could do.
The other thing we're going to do in this implementation phase is be kind to future us. Once again, most of you would go out of your way to help a friend. You would put yourself out there to do something if it would help them out and make their lives easier.
We need that relationship with future us. You know what? I'm going to do this now so that tomorrow's me doesn't have to. She is going to be so grateful to me that I've done this and she doesn't have to. She's gonna be so proud when she opens up this document and sees that I've written another couple of paragraphs. That's wicked. I'm gonna do this, but so that she doesn't have to. I'm gonna do this because I know that she is still very similar to me and it's not gonna be any easier for her than it is gonna be for me. So we're gonna go with it now. Okay, so that's the implementation phase.
And then the final one is the review phase. And often we don't have a formal review phase, but we do think in our minds, I should have done that already and I didn't. We start looking back to past us. And what we commonly do at the moment is we judge past...
so now we're in that phase where the current us has Is now looking back at what we have or haven't done and we can look back and go, we can judge far past us that made the plan and be like, well, she made a stupid plan anyway, we can look at the near past us. So the one yesterday who didn't do it and go, Oh, you should have done it. You're so lazy. You procrastinated again. We can be judgy. Or, much more helpfully, we can be compassionate and curious and be like, Ah, that's interesting. We came up with a plan. You didn't implement the plan. I wonder why that is. What was it that made it difficult to implement? What thoughts didn't we overcome? What circumstances made it feel more difficult than it was? Okay, and we get to review with that sort of compassion.
Because we know that when we don't build that compassion in at this stage, and we start blaming past us, we should have done this before, all we're doing is inducing feelings of shame and guilt in ourselves, which make it much harder to get on and do tasks anyway. So the more we can be like, okay, that's interesting, she didn't do it as implemented.
It is what it is, so we can get curious, or we can just accept, it's what it is, I am where I am, what's next? And then the cycle continues. We now get to plan, we get to implement, we get to review. And at every stage, we think about building this relationship, honouring this relationship between past us and future us.
If that feels really difficult, really alien to you what I would really suggest is that you just keep it on the kind of really small timescale. So anytime any task feels overwhelming, shrink it down until it feels like something you can manage. So in this case, I want you to think about yesterday's you as past you, today's you as current you, and tomorrow's you as future you.
What did yesterday's you think that you should do today? I want you to do your best to honour what yesterday's you thought you should do in the interest of building that relationship. Past you needs to trust that you will do the things you say you'll do and current you needs to trust that past you had a decent plan. So let's try and honour that.
Let's also, in this moment, think about future you. How can we be kind to them? What will they be grateful is done because we did it today. When we're planning, how can we plan something that is as easy and straightforward and helpful and positive for future you to do as possible?
How can we, when we're reviewing, how can we look back and be as kind and mindful and compassionate and curious as we can be about our past self. So we slowly build these relationships over time. And these are exercises that I'll introduce to you in later podcasts. Over time, you can build a stronger relationship with the future you, who's maybe a year down the line, five years down the line, so that you can kind of use her as inspiration, maybe even as a source of information and a source of ideas, but at the moment, let's just stay with yesterday's, today's and tomorrow's and we build a relationship where we trust that we are going to do what yesterday's us wanted us to do and we are going to plan so that tomorrow's us has a really nice day where they do the things that they want to do.
Because Thing I find fascinating when we think about this as relationships, relationships with our past self, relationships with our future self, is how completely illogical it is. And this is not to beat up on anyone because we all do it, but I want you to notice how illogical it is. We think that past us was wrong for putting these things on our to do list.
We shouldn't be doing these things today that past us said we should. So there's something wrong about past us. But I'm also going to beat myself up about the fact that I'm not doing it. We don't just go, Oh, okay. Yeah. Yesterday's me thought I should do that today, but actually I don't think I should. So I'm not going to and leave it there.
We simultaneously say, Oh, I shouldn't be on the list. I should never have said I'll do it today. And guilt ourselves about the fact that we should be doing what past us said. So we've got this really weird relationship with past us. And then similarly, future us, we have this situation where we're telling ourselves that they're way more capable than us because, Oh, I'll do it tomorrow. I'll do it tomorrow. It'll be easy tomorrow, da da da. They're way more capable, but equally we're not willing to do anything for them. We're not willing to say, you know what, I'll take that for the team. I'll get that done today so that you don't have to tomorrow. So we kind of really respect them as amazing, but not enough to actually make their lives a bit easier.
And then current us, when we think about our relationship with our current selves, so often we're telling ourselves there's no way I can do this today. I don't feel up to it. I'm too tired. There's not enough time today. I'm, you know, poor little me. I'm all incapable. But we're also prioritizing us and our comfort over all the other versions of ourselves. So we're telling ourselves that today's us is a bit useless because we're not doing the thing we should be doing. But also, the most important thing I can do is make today's me comfortable. You know, I cannot force poor little today's me to do these things that I intended. So it's a very strange combination.
And one of the good things about it is when you notice what a strange combination it is, something almost automatically shifts. So when you realize that you are thinking things that are just contradictory to each other, it's called cognitive dissonance, where we believe different things, but where actually you put them on the table together and they don't make sense as a whole, that feels really uncomfortable.
That's naturally uncomfortable when you realize that. And while that's uncomfortable, that's also a good thing because it makes us go, All these thoughts I thought were true, literally can't all be true, because it's contradictory. And that's when our brain starts to figure it out, and our brain starts to go Oh, okay. Past us was doing their best. Current us is capable of doing this stuff. And it might be a bit uncomfortable, but I'm willing to do that so that future us doesn't have to do it. And suddenly it all gets a little bit clearer.
It doesn't happen overnight. Don't worry, you're not going to listen to this and just go away and be like, Oh, don't procrastinate anymore. But I want you to keep this stuff in your mind when you notice, when you go through that NICE model. I want you to notice what you're thinking about past you, what you're thinking about current you, and what you're thinking about future you. And use that awareness when you're planning, when you're implementing, and when you're reviewing.
Let me know what you think. I'd love to hear where is your procrastination breaking down? Which bit, is past you unrealistic? Is current you refusing to follow what past you did? Is future you sort of held up as this like icon who will do absolutely everything? Which bit of this breaks down for you and which bits do you want to strengthen in the future? Let me know. Let me know on social media, join my community.
If there are other topics you want podcasts, I have a million ideas always, but if there are specific topics that you want, let me know. One of my community has requested one on peer pressure and that thing where you look around and think, Oh my goodness, everybody at my level is further ahead. So that is going to be coming up. I'm going to do that. Thank you for that suggestion. If you have other suggestions, get in contact. Let me know. I love doing these more responsive episodes. So thank you all for listening and I will see you next week.
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