Transcription
Everyone procrastinates, and that's okay. But if you are addicted to procrastination, it could legitimately ruin your life.
I do these workshops around the world and I talk to students and professionals, and I like to ask this question: "How many of you procrastinate?" And there's always a wave of hands that goes up. Everyone procrastinates. Doom scrolling on social media, binge-watching an entire season of Netflix, uh, staying up all night watching YouTube videos and then getting to 4:00 a.m. questioning your life decisions. These have become the 21st century human experience.
But this can be a problem because a procrastination addiction is different to just procrastinating. Back as a doctor and working in psychiatry, I had to learn the definition of addiction. And one of the differences between someone who's addicted and someone who just does something is that the person who is addicted is dependent on that thing to function normally. And when you take that thing away, you often see withdrawal. When you are addicted, your brain has rewired itself to need this thing to be normal again. And when you don't have it, it craves it. And this craving can be painful and cause real suffering.
For example, whenever I had a patient with a serious alcohol addiction, as one of my patients, I had to be very, very careful about managing it because alcohol withdrawal can actually cause death. Now, you won't die die from a procrastination addiction. However, it is still dangerous because if you're addicted to procrastination, you may legitimately struggle with anything meaningful for your entire life.
Let me explain. It's not just because you're falling behind on your homework, or because you were up all night and you didn't get enough sleep and you're sleep-deprived. I'm not talking about that. An addiction to procrastination damages your ability to focus and self-regulate.
Think about this: when you spend a lot of time on social, when you spend a lot of time on social media, your brain gets used to these very high-frequency, low-effort dopamine spikes. Dopamine is the happy hormone. So your brain is getting rewarded very often for doing very little. Over time, it, your brain gets trained and conditioned into understanding that social media makes it feel happy very easily. Unfortunately, this is a losing game because your brain starts requiring more and more of this just to to feel normal, and more of this just to to feel normal. The time it can go before it starts feeling these cravings becomes shorter and shorter.
And it's powerful because it affects all of us. I remember one time I affects all of us. I remember one time I was in lectures and I saw a guy, a couple was in lectures and I saw a guy, a couple rows in front of me on his laptop, on rows in front of me on his laptop on Facebook at the time. Uh, he closed Facebook and then took out his phone and opened Facebook. And I thought, man, that guy is addicted. But lo and behold, a couple years later, I saw the same thing happening to me. I'd be scrolling around on Instagram, I'd close the app, and then as soon as I see my home screen and the as soon as I see my home screen and the Instagram app on it, I just opened it again reflexively before I even realized what I was doing. The habit and the dependency had sucked me in.
But that is not all. The real problem is because that combination of high dopamine, high frequency, low effort does not really exist in our normal everyday lives. If you think about the things that most most people would consider as successful or having a fulfilling life, like getting their dream career, or getting their promotion, or maybe buying a nice house, or a fancy car, whatever it is, the process of getting there was probably not a journey of high-frequency, 30-secondly rewards that were low effort.
Me personally, I love my work. I find a lot personally, I love my work. I find a lot of fulfillment in what I do on a daily of fulfillment in what I do on a daily basis. And not that I'm particularly successful, but most of the time I am feeling pretty tired. There are days that are just a slog to get through, and there's a lot of times I'm feeling stressed and just trying to find a way through. This doesn't mean I have a terrible life. It just means I am alive. The ups and downs are a normal part of the ups and downs are a normal part of life. And it is very abnormal to have an life and it is very abnormal to have an up every 30 seconds.
If your brain is wired on a 30-second timer, it is very difficult to achieve achieve anything. And yes, there are strategies that can help you manage that and improve your focus and optimize things. But at the end of the day, there are many doors that are of the day, there are many doors that are closed to a procrastination addicted mind.
So how can you tell if you are mind? So how can you tell if you are addicted to procrastination? It's very simple, but it's going to suck. The first thing that you need to do is just try to thing that you need to do is just try to map out all of your distractions. A technique that I often teach, I've T it in other videos, I teach it in my program, in other videos, I teach it in my program, uh, is a distraction cheat sheet. You just sit down, try to study, do some focused work, have a piece of paper paper next to work, have a piece of paper paper next to you. And every time you get distracted, just write down what it was that distracted you. Try to be a specific as possible. Do this until you feel like you've got a pretty good list of all the you've got a pretty good list of all the things that are distracting you.
The next step, and this is the part that most people just don't commit to because it can suck, is to just remove all of those can suck is to just remove all of those distractions completely. When I was addicted to procrastination, what I did, and this is just going to sound so extreme, but this, I guess you guys are us extreme, but this, I guess you guys are us to this by now, it's just who I am. I to this by now, it's just who I am. I would just put my phone in a separate room on do not disturb. I would close the room on do not disturb. I would close the door, turn all the lights off, and just sit on the floor. I'd bring a notebook with me, and then I'd use that as an with me, and then I'd use that as an opportunity for me to reflect, uh, think about ideas, try to solve some problems, but just simple pen and paper.
If you're addicted to procrastination and you remove all the distractions and you try to do something, what you will notice is that you, you will feel that your mind starts to wander very quickly. And you will start seeking out something to procrastinate with. And because you know you can't get on your phone or do the you can't get on your phone or do the normal procrastination activities that you would normally do, you may even end up thinking about other ways that you can distract yourself.
I remember one time I was going co- turkey on all my time. I was going co- turkey on all my social media. I had an app locker, I blocked like everything, and I was like, okay, cool, there's no more distractions anymore. I'm not going to procrastinate. And then what I found myself doing is I, and then what I found myself doing is I would go on the App Store and just download new games. Like, not even good games, like those games that you see them like the ads for, that they don't even look like the real game. I would just download these games and play them, not even enjoying them, but just so that it keeps my mind distracted.
And the nail and the coffin is, if you resist those urges, you don't procrastinate with something, you will feel very uncomfortable just sitting there. You will feel very restless. So if you have removed distractions and then you are seeking procrastination and feeling withdrawal, then you're probably addicted to procrastination.
And by the way, this is not the same thing as ADHD. ADHD is a is not the same thing as ADHD. ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder which changes the way that the brain functions. But procrastination addiction creates a lot of the same symptoms as ADHD. And researchers think that there may be a chance that social media use can actually cause ADHD too. The jury is still out on that.
So if you did that still out on that, so if you did that test and you find out that you're addicted to procrastination, all is not lost. You can retrain your brain to be less distracted and more focused, even if you've been procrastinating for your entire life. And I can say this so confidently because of the fact that I teach techniques on how to manage your focus, how to reduce distractions at my program at i.com. We teach the learning skills and time management skills, everything that a learner needs to be successful. And I have received dozens of emails from students and professionals that have been worried that they have ADHD cuz they're always getting so distracted. And after using these techniques, their symptoms just kind of magically disappeared. It doesn't happen overnight, but it can be trained.
By the way, if you're interested in joining the program, you can learn more and enroll at icinstudy.com. As soon as you join, you'll have access to the diagnostic assessment, which part of it evaluates your ability to manage your focus and gives you some recommendations. I'll put a link in the description below.
But here are some of the techniques that I teach that I know help most people. First of all, I do recommend just going cold turkey to start with. If you are addicted, just reduce it down to zero. You cannot die from procrastination addiction withdrawal, so there is not really a risk here. It's just going to feel a little uncomfortable, but it is faster and easier to do it that way. You can always easier to do it that way. You can always jump back on social media later and kind of control and moderate your consump assumption. But I have not seen gradually winning yourself off to be very effective for people that are seriously addicted to procrastinating.
Okay, step number one is we have to remove our triggers and our distractions. So those are the things that you might have written down on your distraction cheat sheet. These are other things that you might think of that will distract you and are entry points into procrastination. For me, it was seeing the actual Instagram icon on my phone. Some of you may just have been triggered from me saying the word Instagram to you right now. If you don't want to delete the app, you can use app blockers like Clear Space or Focused Work to just block the apps. For some of you, that alone is actually going to be enough, and you're going to start seeing that you're slowly starting to settle your mind down and become a little bit less distracted, just from that. But for those serious addicts out there, that's not going to be enough.
So step two is a dopamine detox. Dopamine detox. There's a lot of other videos talking about this. I personally, what I like to do is like literally just, what I like to do is like literally just take myself into the mountains. Like I go somewhere where I'm not contactable because I have no signal. Like I seriously have a locator beacon that I take with me because there will be no other way for me to get in touch with another human. And this is going to sound incredibly hippie, but when I'm out there in nature, kind of getting into the rhythm of just the natural world, I can feel my mind just sort of world. I can feel my mind just sort of slowing down. Even just like two days in that kind of environment, completely cut off from all the normal artificial distractors, I just feel my mind clearing up and I feel myself settling down. Uh, but you don't have to jump into a forest. But you don't have to jump into a forest to do this. I'm sure there's other videos out there about how to do a dopamine detox. Do whatever feels good for you, because at the end of the day, a dopamine, because at the end of the day, a dopamine detox should actually feel good as well. I think it's very important that it's something that you look for to, not something that you're going to dread.
But for many of you, just like with some narcotic substance, it's not going to be enough just to do that. Because as soon as you come back into society, or you look at your phone again, those same things that created the addiction in the first place are going to reactivate that addiction. And so here, this is where step number three comes in, which is mindfulness meditation.
Now, I think meditation actually has kind of a bad rep in some places because of the fact that it seems like a very, uh, like almost that it seems like a very, uh, like almost religious practice. But it's completely not. Meditation is literally just sitting there, letting your brain do what it does, and just learning not to fixate on those things. If you have a distracting thought come in, you're basically saying, "Cool, that's an interesting thought. Just watch it drift by." It is the ability to not it drift by. It is the ability to not actively engage in pursuing every intrusive thought or distraction that enters your head. And a lot of people think that to meditate successfully, you have to be sitting there and not be distracted, like you cannot have Str stray thoughts coming in. And if you do, that means you failed. But it is actually completely the opposite. The point of meditation is to give yourself the opportunity to have those stray thoughts coming in and then to practice the ability of letting go of them.
If you're new to this, what I would recommend, and what I used for years as well, is the what I used for years as well, is the Calm app. I believe it is the best way to Calm app. I believe it is the best way to get a good guided experience into meditation if you're doing it for the first time. But I do strongly recommend it because meditation trains the focus muscle, which means that outside of the meditation session, in your daily life, whenever you have a distraction or an intrusive thought, it is much easier for you just to let it go. FYI, most people you just to let it go. FYI, most people need to do around 20 to 30 minutes of need to do around 20 to 30 minutes of meditation every day for at least around two to three weeks to start seeing some of two to three weeks to start seeing some of that benefit. Because again, it is retraining your brain, especially if you've been addicted to procrastination for like 10 years, is then it's going to for like 10 years, is then it's going to take a little time to retrain that. But it is well worth it because the alternative is that you just stay addicted forever.
If you want some more strategies or frameworks that you can use, then again, check out iid.com. There's a whole range of additional techniques related to self-management and focus and time management, as well as learning skills that you can pick up. And there's also a already supportive community of people overcoming the same struggles as you are, helping you to stay motivated and accountable. Thanks for watching. Watching, I'll see you next time.