Taking Procrastination Out of the Equation

Hey Promise scholars.

It's Beth Braden, your first year promised coach and I'm here with KBc C.

Kalamazoo Valley Community College and the

Kalamazoo Promise services department and we're going

to be talking about how to take procrastination out of the equation.

We're going to get out of here. Um So what, what exactly does that mean?

That means that today we are going

to be talking about the procrastination equation,

what it is and we're going to learn more

about how the habit of procrastination is formed.

Once we talk about that,

we're going to talk about how you are not your procrastination, the habit is not you.

And then we're gonna talk about how we can break it

and then

last but not least we're going to talk a little

bit about being realistic and how Nike's just do it,

slogan is great marketing,

but not necessarily the most realistic in terms of beating procrastination,

but we are going to talk about a really great

tool that is and that is called a success viral.

So what is the procrastination equation?

Well, the procrastinate equation is a lot like the equation to find velocity,

if you remember back to high school and physical science or something like that,

velocity is the velocity equals distance divided by time.

Right?

And so with procrastination equation, like I said, it's pretty similar to that.

It is an equation that was developed or theory developed by

dr pierce steel and he has a whole book on it.

So just keep in mind that this is just a bite sized look at what that is.

So here is what the actual equation is motivation

equals expectancy times value divided by impulsiveness times,

the lay, What are those two things?

Good question. I'm glad you asked. So the first one,

these two, they're on the top. They are the ones that we like.

These are the ones that were cheering for.

These are the ones that the higher they are, the more motivation we're going to have.

Okay,

so the first one is expectancy and that is your confidence in

getting whatever it is you're doing as a test project or paper,

whatever that is, your confidence in getting it done basically,

it's your confidence that you have in yourself.

Okay,

now value

basically this is the question why is whatever I'm doing important.

This one can be really hard for students,

especially those things that are going to come in handy long term.

So the best way to do that is to create some now

value by really kind of thinking forward and understanding how that's going

to happen and there's two ways you can create value there is

that how am I going to use this in the future,

which I'm going to talk about?

But there's also the, if I do this thing, I get a reward,

that's a really easy way to create some now value

now unless you're really jazzed about that reward.

You know, it might not be the biggest motivator,

but here's the one where one place where I

really see it A lot of those general education

classes if you're a stem major and maybe you

feel like you don't need english or community communications,

like public speaking or maybe a sociology class

to understand how to interact with and um,

learn more about other people who are maybe doing things differently than you. Um,

let me tell you where you're

maybe needing to change your mindset a little bit.

So maybe you're really great at math and science.

Your game plan is to become an engineer and that's awesome.

You are already building the skill sets that you need for those things,

which is great.

However,

if you would like to email or write a letter to

your supervisor or boss to ask for a raise or promotion.

If you don't have the literary skills to create a well written,

composed grammatically and

spelling corrected

email,

then you might not get that raise

or promotion because that's not very professional to

have an email asking for a raise full of spelling errors or medical errors.

Right. And so that english class is really going to come in handy.

Maybe not for the rest of your undergrad experience,

but definitely in your job when you want more money.

Right?

And same thing with, with public speaking,

maybe you are a researcher and you're focusing on marine biology.

Okay.

And you have figured out something really cool about algae, right?

And you're going to present it at this huge conference,

but you don't know how to give a speech.

You didn't really pay attention in that class and you're super nervous.

You don't have any strength or skills that you know,

that you have in this and you've got no, um,

no ways to kind of practice and do this ahead of

time because this isn't something that you really did in college

that's gonna come in handy obviously later on down the line.

But that's something that would have really helped you if you paid attention in

that class and really soaked up as much as you could from it.

And last, but not least, sociology, um, say you have a really cool job,

but you have to move all the way across the country to find a place to work

that's going to pay like a great competitive salary

or maybe you get a really good opportunity,

right?

In Oregon? We'll say Oregon.

Um,

people there maybe don't do things the same way that we do here.

There's going to be a different weather.

There's be just different folks who lived

there had to have had different experiences.

Having that sociology class is going to allow you

to adjust and adapt and get to know people and

feel comfortable with the fact that they don't necessarily do

things the same way that you're used to here.

And so it's going to be really important to have taken

those classes because they're going to build you up for success,

but way far down the road.

So yes, you can add the value of now like, okay, I did this, I get a king size snickers.

Absolutely, yes, you can do that.

But it's going to be helpful if you,

if you kind of think about what is the full long term value, Why am I doing this?

Okay.

So the next to these are ones are on the bottom and these are actually going to higher.

They are, the more they deplete your motivation. So boo we don't want these ones.

The first one is impulsiveness. Okay?

And this is going to be those distractions around you.

And frankly we live in a world full of distractions. Right?

Just off the top my head through smartphones or smartwatches,

there's netflix and hulu and all of this stuff.

Right? All these apps, Tiktok,

uh, instagram, all that stuff right?

There's also siblings, parents, Children, partners, animals like pets and stuff.

Who knows? Maybe you've got a really noisy raccoon living outside.

I don't know, you know what happens.

And and so you've got all these

different distractions that are happening outside traffic,

right?

Just people driving by people who

who knows

those things can really pull you away from

what you're trying to do and decrease motivation.

Another thing is delay and that is the amount of

time we have until something has to be done.

We as humans don't like stress and discomfort.

You know, I think most other animals also don't like stress and discomfort.

So if we can push it away and get it away from us, we're going to,

which means that we put off our future stressors.

Absolutely.

So if something is not due until the end of the semester,

you're less likely to feel like it's important to work on it right now,

then if something was due in a week.

And so one way that you can help to fix delay and create

urgency, which is another thing that I think you could call delays urgency.

A lack of urgency would be a lack of

motivation is to create checkpoints along the way.

Now this is a really cool moment where you can combine

value and delay our urgency to create a ton of motivation.

And this is how

you've got a Nintendo switch or some sort of game system that

you really like or maybe it's a musical instrument or tv control,

I don't know whatever, right?

You've got a younger sibling who really wants to use

these things because they're yours and they're younger sibling.

And basically what you can say is all right,

younger sibling, if I don't get my stuff done that,

I need to have done by this checkpoint.

You get my switch for a week. I can't play it only you can play it

all yours for a week,

a you're going to create value in getting the thing done

because then it's your switch and your sibling can't utilize it,

right?

And you get to use it

b you're also going to create urgency because all of a sudden this

amount of work has to be done by the end of the week.

So you kind of,

you are going to bring down the delay because you've moved up the deadline.

So that's going to increase your motivation cause you're bringing to lay

down and you're going to increase the value of getting it done.

So you're going to again even further increased motivation,

which is awesome with impulsiveness.

You can also combine this with the value in the

delay by getting your family members and partners and things

like that and getting them to sort of be a

part of that value or decreasing the delay right?

By utilizing them to help you with those things. Maybe it's that we all have a, okay,

you've got kids who like to watch tv. Maybe it's a we have a reading challenge.

If you can read more pages in your books that I can read in my textbook,

we'll have ice cream after dinner or something like that, you can create uh you know,

sort of this value thing and everyone not distracting you and you know,

if it's if it's a smartphone, if it's your watch and maybe you know,

you have a parent or a sibling or a partner take those things

and just kind of take them out of the room with them.

So they aren't a distraction to you.

So you can use some of those other distractions to remove more of the distraction.

Here we go.

So it's going to be really important.

Again, looking at this equation that the top to the expectancy in the value.

You want those to be high and you want your impulsiveness and your delay to be low.

That's how you're going to have high motivation.

If your belief in yourself and the understanding of

why what you're doing is important are both low,

then the impulsiveness and delay that's going to take

over and you're going to have low motivation.

And so we

want to try and beat that because we don't wanna procrastinate.

I want to get stuff done.

All right. I'm sure a ton of us have said this. I'm a procrastinator.

I procrastinate. Right wrong. You are non procrastinator.

You do procrastinate because it's just a habit. It's not who you are.

And one really great thing about your habits is that you can change them

and in order to do that,

we're going to try and understand how our brains work a little bit.

Okay,

so there's a reason that you've developed the habit

of procrastination and we are going to talk about

some strength training that you can do with your

brain to help you break it before that.

Let's understand why you're so susceptible to this habit,

basically your prefrontal cortex is the part of your brain that

makes has a big part of motivation and rational decision making,

right?

So your amygdala is the part of your brain that

plays a big part and impulsiveness and emotional decision making.

So basically

your amygdala develops faster than your prefrontal cortex because

have you heard of fight or flight response as part

of that emotional decision making and that happens from

a young age because flight or fight is a survival

response, right? Two different things.

So you're going to have that a lot younger than a rational, calm,

motivation based decision making thing.

Your prefrontal cortex doesn't really develop,

think it's like right here doesn't really actually

develop until you're in your late twenties,

mid to late twenties.

So if you're 18 or 19 you're coming into college and you're thinking

just having a really hard time keeping focused on this thing,

I just keep wanting to get pulled away.

It's because that part of your brain is not as

strong as your amygdala because your amygdala is more developed.

No,

does that mean that you can say, hey,

this is just my brain.

So I get to totally just ignore the rational

decisions and the things that I have to do.

No, because now you know why that's happening and it's going to make it much easier

to be less nerd and more rebel.

And what I mean by that is rebelling against all of these companies who know that

and they create algorithms and flows to appeal to your

Magdala and just make your prefrontal cortex quiet down.

But we can fight back because now we know, so it's like a netflix right?

You start watching a tv show, you're like, I'm just gonna watch one episode,

I'm just gonna watch one episode and then I'm gonna, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna do

my homework.

Well you finish one episode and all of a

sudden another episode starts playing in another episode,

starts playing and you finish the season that they have and all of a sudden

a whole other show that is similar to the show that you just washed,

starts playing.

You've never, you haven't had to touch a computer mouse or remote at all.

It's just doing it for you.

So it is feeding off of the positive responses that it's getting from that a big deal.

If I like this show, I like this show, I like show. Well this is new.

Oh it's really similar. I like this show now.

It's feeding off of those emotional responses and basically shushing your

prefrontal cortex because it's engaging

with those positive emotional responses.

Right?

Tiktok does the same thing,

You just swipe swipe swipe and it's all of this really

cool content and a lot of it is a trend.

So it's the same people doing the same thing that seems

to be enjoyable over and over and over and over again,

right?

So here's how we're going to beat them at their own game.

We train our brains and we do that with

a success spiral. Argy appear steel. He is back and this time he's here with a tool.

So let's break it down a little bit. What is a success spiral?

Usually when you think of spiraling it's something that's really not that great,

but a success viral is like the opposite.

It's going up. It's helping you build up. Okay,

so a success viral is basically a way to practice and train your motivation muscle.

The goal is to start small and work your way up just like exercise.

So a really great way to create a success viral is to think through what

are the things you need to do or the things you want to do?

Tell someone your plan because you're going to be more likely

to follow through because we don't want to be embarrassed.

Remember we push away discomfort.

And so if we tell someone that we are going to do something

and it's going to be uncomfortable to tell them that we failed.

We're a little more likely to do it because not doing

it's going to be uncomfortable doing it gets to be comfortable.

Right. So we're going to do that And you want to start really small.

Start really confidently and start really realistically.

And what I mean by small is tiny.

If your goal is to read out of your textbook more often,

then your first time reading out of your textbook.

I'm not talking about reading for 10 minutes.

I'm not talking about reading for five minutes for 20 minutes.

No, I want you to set your goal of I'm reading a paragraph

Tuesday,

Wednesday and thursday I will read at least one

paragraph if you want to go further than that.

Fine, but at least just read one paragraph. Why? Because that's easy.

It's three or four or five sentences.

You can do that and the more you do that and then more easy it becomes.

Then you increase the time that you are focusing on building something.

So not only are you literally like building endurance to reading a dry textbook,

you're also increasing your motivation because you know,

you can get it done and you're increasing your confidence.

A success barrel is going to create that that confidence

muscle that you really need to have that motivation.

So quick summary of everything that we just talked about.

All right, procrastination is a complicated thing, but it is not who you are.

Companies know the science behind procrastination and they're going

to use it to get you hooked on shows,

apps and all that bad stuff.

Well, good stuff, but bad for motivation and for getting stuff done,

but you can rebel.

Breaking a habit is not easy. Okay? And Nike's motto. Just do it.

Not a great way, but you want to start small.

Start confidently and just watch yourself grow with time and practice.

So don't just do it. Just started.

And always, you can give us uh,

give us a call or reach out to us via email if you have any questions.

Thanks so much.

Taking Procrastination Out of the Equation

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