Vox

Leitura de 11 min

Beating Procrastination

Summary

Procrastination is a common human experience, often misunderstood through an overly simplistic lens. This episode delves into the complex reality of why we procrastinate, framing it not merely as a failure of willpower or time management, but as a fundamental disconnect between the tasks we need to do and the value we associate with their outcomes.

Research indicates procrastination is most likely when two conditions are met: we don’t value the outcome of a task, or we fail to connect that valued outcome to the specific task required to achieve it. The host discusses how large, distant career purposes can be difficult to link to the small, immediate actions needed today, creating a gap where procrastination thrives. This is contrasted with managing energy levels, suggesting the core issue is often one of motivation and perceived value rather than sheer capability.

The episode proposes a concrete strategy to combat this. Before starting your most important task for the day, take a moment to vividly imagine what it will be like when that task is complete. Consider the benefits, the appreciation from colleagues, and what it enables for you, your customers, or your team. This act of “premeditation” aims to forge a stronger neural connection between the effort of the task and the positive emotions of its outcome, making the work itself feel more meaningful and less prone to delay.

By consciously tying the emotional and practical benefits directly to the tasks we tend to avoid, we can reshape our perception of the work. The episode concludes that overcoming procrastination requires moving beyond viewing tasks as mere obligations and instead actively linking them to their valuable consequences, thereby transforming our approach to difficult and important work.

Recommendations

Tools

  • Sentry — Sponsored tool for application error monitoring. It helps developers find and fix bugs before customers encounter them by providing details like user impact, stack traces, and the related commit.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:00 — Introduction to procrastination as a complex human behavior — The episode opens by challenging simplistic views of procrastination, framing it as a complex issue with multiple causes. The host, Jonathan Cottrell, introduces the show’s goal of helping developers connect to their career purpose and mentions that purpose is a key long-term element in beating procrastination.
  • 00:02:11 — The two psychological conditions that cause procrastination — The host cites studies showing procrastination happens when two things are true: not valuing the outcome of a task, or failing to connect a valued outcome to the task itself. He illustrates this with an example of procrastinating on launching a new feature despite wanting users to see it, highlighting the disconnect between the desired future state and the immediate tasks.
  • 00:05:34 — Distinguishing between managing energy and managing motivation — Returning after a sponsor segment, the discussion shifts from energy management (like breaking work into chunks) to the core issue of motivation. The host reiterates that procrastination often stems from not seeing the value in a task or not connecting the value to the task, rather than a lack of ability or willingness.
  • 00:07:10 — A practical strategy to connect tasks to their value — The host proposes a simple experiment: before starting your most important task, take a moment to vividly imagine what it will be like when it’s done. He instructs listeners to consider the benefits, appreciation from co-workers, and what the work enables, focusing on the feelings and total experience of completion to strengthen the mental link between task and outcome.
  • 00:09:25 — Conclusion: The necessity of tying benefits to tasks — The episode concludes by emphasizing that to fight procrastination, we must find a way to directly tie benefits to the tasks we typically delay. This moves beyond viewing work as just part of the job and actively creates a connection between effort and valuable outcomes, transforming our approach to important work.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2019-02-06T10:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:10:21

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] We all face procrastination. This is something that is human. It’s something that we do

[00:00:12] for complex reasons. Unfortunately, a lot of the time, we understand procrastination

[00:00:19] through a limited lens. We compress the meaning and perhaps the causes of procrastination

[00:00:28] down into very simplistic terms rather than understanding it for the more complex reality

[00:00:36] that it is. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss procrastination and a specific

[00:00:42] reason why you may face procrastination in your work on a day-to-day basis as well as

[00:00:50] a way to perhaps overcome it. My name is Jonathan Cottrell and you’re listening to Developer

[00:00:56] Tea. My goal on this show is to help driven developers connect to their career purpose

[00:01:00] and do better work so they can have a positive influence on the people around them. Purpose

[00:01:06] is maybe one of the most important elements of beating procrastination in the long term.

[00:01:16] Purpose being some kind of thing, some kind of outcome, some reason, some motivation for

[00:01:25] you to do whatever it is that you’re doing. We talk about this meta-level purpose on this

[00:01:31] show, finding your career purpose is what we call it on the show. That’s a larger, more distant

[00:01:39] outcome. This is not something that you typically can affect directly. To achieve those kinds of

[00:01:48] high-level purposes, it may be difficult to trace that down to individual actions, to avoid

[00:01:57] procrastinating for the next hour and instead chip away that tiny piece of the block that leads

[00:02:04] towards that greater purpose. Studies about procrastination show that procrastination happens

[00:02:11] when two things are true, and of course when both of these things are not true, then procrastination

[00:02:18] is less likely. But the things that seem to cause procrastination is not valuing the outcome of

[00:02:27] whatever the task is. And then similarly, even if you do value the outcome of that task, you’re

[00:02:36] not connecting the value to the task itself. At a basic level, this means that you want some kind

[00:02:44] of future state to transpire, right? You want something to be true. You have a task that will

[00:02:51] lead to it, but for whatever reason, you haven’t connected that future state to the task that would

[00:02:59] lead to it. You want your users to see this new feature, and so the tasks that lead to the user

[00:03:06] seeing that new feature include something like, for example, QA and actually launching that feature.

[00:03:12] And yet we continue to procrastinate on these simple tasks even when they have high value

[00:03:20] outcomes. So what can we do about this procrastination problem? We’re going to take a moment to talk about

[00:03:26] today’s sponsor, and then we’re going to discuss some ways that you can fight against procrastination

[00:03:32] and get the work done that you want to get done. Today’s episode is sponsored by Sentry. Your code

[00:03:40] is probably broken. Fix it with Sentry. Relying on your customers to report the errors in your

[00:03:47] application is basically like treating them as an offsite QA team without paying them. This is a

[00:03:55] terrible strategy because those customers very often, instead of telling you about those errors,

[00:04:00] they’re just going to leave your platform and never come back. Now, ideally, we could avoid all

[00:04:06] of our errors by testing and trying to run all of the QA scenarios before we release it to the

[00:04:13] public. This is cost prohibitive though, right? We are not very good at running tests. We’re not

[00:04:18] very good at writing tests. We’re not very good at predicting how people will interact with our

[00:04:23] applications. We’re really bad at a lot of this stuff. So we need a multi-tiered strategy. Yes,

[00:04:31] you should write those tests. And yes, you should still perform your QA. But beyond that, Sentry

[00:04:38] can step in and give you a new set of eyes, a new layer in your testing strategy and in your QA

[00:04:46] strategy. Sentry tells you about errors in your code before your customers have a chance to

[00:04:53] encounter them. Not only does Sentry tell you about the errors, but they also give you all the

[00:04:58] details that you will need to fix them. For example, how many users have been impacted by

[00:05:03] this bug? That way you can prioritize which bugs to fix first. You probably have more than one.

[00:05:08] Beyond that, you get the stack trace and even the commit that the error was released through. So you

[00:05:15] can talk to the developer and figure out how to fix it most appropriately. Go and check out what

[00:05:22] Sentry has to offer. Head over to sentry.io to get started today. Thanks again to Sentry for

[00:05:27] sponsoring today’s episode of Developer Tea. So we’ve all faced this problem, this problem of

[00:05:34] procrastination. And there’s plenty of scenarios where you’re more likely to procrastinate than

[00:05:41] others. For example, when you start losing energy, especially in the slump of the middle of the day,

[00:05:48] which research has shown is kind of the worst time to work. If you’re trying to summon the mental

[00:05:55] fortitude to go on a five-hour coding spree, you’re likely to fail at that. You should be

[00:06:04] breaking that work up into smaller chunks if you want to achieve the highest likelihood of

[00:06:10] continuous focus during those chunks. But what’s interesting about all of the discussion around

[00:06:17] procrastination and even these past few points that I’ve made is that the discussion is more

[00:06:24] focused on managing energy than it is managing motivation. Very often when we are procrastinating,

[00:06:34] it has less to do with our ability or even our willingness to complete some task, to do some

[00:06:43] work. Instead, our procrastination is a result most often because we either don’t see the value

[00:06:52] in whatever it is that’s in front of us to do, or we don’t connect the value to the thing that we

[00:07:00] have to do. So here’s a very simple experiment that you can run as a strategy to stave off that

[00:07:10] creeping sense of procrastination. When you’re developing your list of things to do, whatever

[00:07:17] method you use to develop that list, when you’re looking at something in front of you, perhaps you

[00:07:25] do this in the morning, that’s what I would suggest, that you have a list, a prioritized

[00:07:31] list of things that you want to do and you start on that list as early as you can in the day. But

[00:07:37] before you begin, before you start on that list, I want you to look at that first item, whatever that

[00:07:46] most important item is, and take a moment to imagine what it will be like when that thing is

[00:07:56] done. What benefits will you experience? What kind of credit will you gain? What kind of appreciation

[00:08:08] from your co-workers might you stand to receive? What does this chunk of work enable for you, for

[00:08:17] your customers, for your co-workers? Why is it valuable? I don’t want you to just write down

[00:08:24] the mechanical answer of why the company wants this done. I want you to really think about

[00:08:33] the feelings and the emotions and the total experience of completing that task. Now,

[00:08:40] you’re not going to be able to sit and meditate on every single task that you have to do,

[00:08:45] but for the tasks that are truly important and for the things that we tend to procrastinate on,

[00:08:52] large chunks of difficult work, this kind of premeditation can have a profound impact,

[00:09:01] potentially, on the way that your brain perceives the connection between that task and the outcome.

[00:09:09] Before you did this, you probably had a very loose understanding of the benefits of completing a given

[00:09:17] task on a given day. Perhaps we view these things as just part of our job. In order to

[00:09:25] fight off procrastination, we must find a way to directly tie benefits to the tasks that we

[00:09:32] typically procrastinate on. Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of Developer Tea.

[00:09:38] Thank you to Sentry for making today’s episode possible. Head over to sentry.io to get started

[00:09:45] fixing your bugs before your customers see them today. Thanks so much for listening to the show.

[00:09:51] Developer Tea is a part of the Spec Network. The Spec Network is built for designers and

[00:09:56] developers just like you who are looking to level up in their career. Head over to spec.fm to look

[00:10:01] at the other podcasts and content that we have available for you. Another thank you to today’s

[00:10:08] editor and producer, Sarah Jackson. Thank you so much for listening, and until next time, enjoy your tea.

Visão de gráfico