Iprocrastinate Podcast

Dr. Joseph Ferrari's new book, Still Procrastinating? The No Regrets Guide To Getting It Done, was published this week by Wiley. Today, I interviewed Joe about his book. He describes his philosophy behind the book and provides an outline of the various chapters. You can learn more about procrastination at procrastination.ca or download The Procrastinator's Digest: A Concise Guide to Solving the Procrastination Puzzle

This week the tables are turned. I'm interviewed by Alan Kearns, Canada's Career Coach, of careerjoy.com. Alan asked me to discuss the role of  optimism, confidence and managing emotions in the career search process. We did this interview quite awhile ago, but Alan had problems with the sound, so he hadn't posted it. I think this is a good follow-up to last week's podcast about fear of failure and how competence/confidence is important in understanding our response. Do we procrastinate to cope with negative emotions or work hard to avoid a possible negative outcome? Learn more at procrastination.ca or check out The Procrastinator's Digest: A Concise Guide to Solving the Procrastination Puzzle.

This week, we review a recent study on fear of failure and procrastination. Mohsen Haghbin, a senior doctoral student in our research group, explains research that he helped Adam McCaffrey complete as his honours thesis (and which Adam presented this past spring at the Canadian Psychological Association conference). Their study shows that our sense of competence and autonomy are important to consider, as these basic human needs affect the relation between fear of failure and procrastination. This is an interesting and important study that brings together research issues and clinical insights to help us understand when fear of failure may be related to procrastination and when it may actually foster action to avoid potential negative outcomes. To learn more about procrastination, visit procrastination.ca.

A very short podcast this week with some reflections about how any strategy for change must be evaluated in terms of your own personal context and needs. Although one strategy may work for some of your procrastinated tasks, just the opposite strategy may be required in other areas of your goal pursuit. To learn more, visit procrastination.ca

This week, I interview Emrah Eren, a graduate student in our program at Carleton University. Emrah discusses his recent research about intentions, temptation and procrastination. His results are very interesting in terms of what can actually break the link between temptation and procrastination. To learn more, visit procrastination.ca. To order my new book The Procrastinator's Digest: A Concise Guide to Solving the Procrastination Puzzle, use this direct link to Amazon.com or visit procrastinatorsdigest.com to learn more about the book.

If you have been struggling with exercising more or eating more healthily, this podcast is for you.  In this interview with Dr. Peter Hall (University of Waterloo), we are introduced to a way of thinking about what influences our behaviour. Peter is a clinically trained psychologist who does research on health behaviours. He and his colleague Geoffrey Fong have proposed an important new theory to explain the processes that affect our behaviour choice including our intentions, habits (pre-potent responses) and self-regulatory capacity (executive function). Please, don't be put off by the theoretical focus or the terms here! Peter does an excellent job of explaining the theory, as well as how we can make sense of our own procrastination from this perspective. He includes strategies for change as well. You can read the paper "Temporal self-regulation theory: A model for individual health behavior" as a pdf at this link. If you want to learn more about procrastination, see procrastination.ca or check out my new b

In this podcast, I respond to a listener who wrote, ". . .when I'm deep into procrastination, I don't do things that make me feel good, sometimes I seem to fly deep into some sort of personal crisis to avoid my work. Often I don't even realize I'm doing it. . . I think some of my friends see this trait in themselves as well." Today, I discuss why we might do this with a focus on emotions and procrastination. To learn more about procrastination: procrastination.ca or The Procrastinator's Digest: A Concise Guide to Solving the Procrastination Puzzle.

Today, I interview Professor Mark D. White (Professor, Department of Political Science, Economics, and Philosophy, College of Staten Island and The Graduate Center, CUNY). Mark discusses his chapter in the recent book The Thief of Time: Philosophical Essays on Procrastination. His chapter is entitled "Resisting Procrastination: Kantian Autonomy and the Role of the Will." Using examples as common as the temptation to eat a donut, Mark does an excellent job of explaining how current theorizing from the perspective of behavioral economics falls short of explaining procrastination and how we need to consider the issue of "will" in this instance of self-regulation failure. In short, Mark explains how we have to "try harder" in order to resist procrastination. Check out Mark White's blog on Psychology Today: Maybe it's just me, but . . . You can learn more at procrastination.ca. Check out The Procrastinator's Digest: A Concise Guide to Solving the Procrastination Puzzle.

Today, I summarize an excellent new piece of research by Jeffrey Paulitzki (University of Waterloo). Jeffrey just defended this research for his doctoral degree. He did an outstanding job. The focus of his research, and my podcast, is how we need to understand both habits and self-regulatory ability in goal pursuit. Although intentions do predict behaviour, both our habits and our executive function (self-regulatory ability) are crucial to our success. I also introduce listeners to Temporal Self-Regulation Theory. You will hear more about this in future podcasts as well, because it is a good framework for thinking about goal pursuit and the gap between intention and action that we know as procrastination.

My new book - The Procrastinator's Digest: A Concise Guide to Solving the Procrastination Puzzle -  is now available at procrastinatorsdigest.com.  In this podcast, I explain the history of the book as a project for my sabbatical including why I created such a short book and how it is structured. I also add some important notes for non-U.S. orders. I invite your comments at feedback@procrastinatorsdigest.com Learn more at procrastination.ca

This is the last podcast of my sabbatical year. Don't worry, I will continue my regular schedule for the summer. This week, I am summarizing a key idea from a chapter in a recent book entitled The Thief of Time: Philosophical Essays on Procrastination. Chrisoula Andreou, a philosopher from the University of Utah, argues that we can use self-control in one area of our lives where we don't procrastinate to help us achieve goals in other areas of our lives where we seem to lack self-control. I explain how this works with the notion of local traits.To learn more about procrastination, see procrastination.ca​

Donna Karlin, Founder of  A Better Perspective, has pioneered the specialized practice of Shadow Coaching with global political, business and senior organizational leaders in the public and private sectors.  By entering the client's environment, she works with them in translating awareness into practice, essentially fostering the emergence of the Shadow Coach in the clients themselves. In this podcast, Donna and I talk about one of my favourite topics, giving in to feel good. Our conversation provides insight into her coaching process and things we can do ourselves to implement this approach in our own lives.Want to learn more about procrastination? See procrastination.ca.

It's easy to put off goals for which we don't feel a strong commitment. This is part of the procrastination problem. We can lack strong goal intentions. In this podcast, I discuss how we might strengthen goal intentions and why this is important. I provide some common examples of how this happens in our lives, and I stress the importance of strengthening goal intentions within the context of other strategies that we use to ensure more effective goal pursuit such as implementation intentions and the strategic use of our willpower. Sound too complicated? It isn't. In any case, it's how I got to flossing my teeth more regularly! It's worth a listen.More information about procrastination is available at procrastination.ca

JOIN ME LIVE IN A CONVERSATION ABOUT "GIVING IN TO FEEL GOOD." In this very short podcast, I announce an exciting upcoming Virtual Conference and a FREE pre-conference conversation session. These events are being sponsored by The DESARA Group. The DESARA Group specializes in business process improvement, and during this time when we're all asked "to do more with less" and to "work smarter, not harder," the DESARA Group is providing an opportunity to step back and "reset" ourselves and how we approach things. The event  is called the The 2010 Productivity Reset.Taking an opportunity to pause and reflect while benefiting from the expertise of an amazing group of presenters will certainly help to shift and improve on how we are working. I believe that the event will help energize participants and provide new ways of thinking and doing that will enhance personal productivity.Next Tuesday, June 15 at 11 a.m. Eastern time, I will be participating in a 1 hour, online discussion with Leadership Coach, Donna Karlin. D

This podcast is a little different than my typical post. Today, I use a personal example to discuss the nature of distractions, the subjectivity of procrastination and how the irrationality of procrastination can affect our perceptions of self. Be forewarned that this is me rambling a bit as I think out loud about how we manage our goal pursuit as we muddle through our day-to-day tasks. In the end, I think you'll see that I integrate a great deal of the principles that underlie self-regulation failure and procrastination.

Here's another new book! The author, Dr. Bill Knaus, has been a regular guest on iProcrastinate Podcasts. Today, he discusses his newest book Fearless Job Hunting: Powerful Psychological Strategies for Getting the Job you Want  We discuss how we can become our own worst enemy in the job hunting process from the preparation of the resume through to social networking and interviewing. If you want to read more about Bill's book and his perspective on this "fearless job hunting," you can read this blog posting on PsychologyToday.If you want to learn more about procrastination, check out procrastination.ca

This week, I interviewed Dr. Joseph Ferrari of De Paul University (Chicago) about his upcoming book entitled, Still Procrastinating? The no regrets guide to getting it done. Joe, a colleague and friend, turned the table on me at different points to interview me about my upcoming book, my podcasts, blog and teaching. To learn more about procrastination, check out procrastination.ca

Here's an interesting study about how the characteristics of a task affect our procrastination. I summarize this interesting new study, providing a summary of how task characteristics (e.g., task difficulty) as well as our motivation (e.g., I do it only because I have to) and self-control (e.g., I am good at resisting temptation) help explain why we might procrastinate on the task at hand.You can learn more about our research and resources at procrastination.ca

A short podcast this week about a new book,  The Procrastinator's Guide to Getting Things Done (by Dr. Monica Rameriz Basco, The Guildford Press). I explain how it may be useful as a guide to a cognitive-behavioral approach. I also review one of my points of disagreement with the focus on "types" of procrastinators.To learn more about procrastination, see our research group at procrastination.ca.

This week, I interview someone who is becoming a regular guest on the podcast, Dr. William (Bill) Knaus. Bill has just published his new book End Procrastination Now: Get It Done with a Proven Psychological Approach (McGraw Hill). We discuss what readers will find in his book as well as specific tips on how to deal with procrastination.For more information about procrastination, see our Research Group at procrastination.ca.