The More You Restrict Yourself, the More You Procrastinate

In your efforts to become productive, have you ever tried to impose a rule on yourself? Maybe many rules, maybe withhold things from yourself or saying, right, no more of this, I'm cutting all this out, I'm not doing that anymore, hoping that that would get you to be more productive. Maybe you say to yourself, maybe you find yourself procrastinating and you're not doing what you would like to do and you notice you're playing all these video games or you're scrolling your phone all the time or you're doing all sorts of things. And you come up with a strategy and it's like, I need to cut out all this stuff here. That's going to be my strategy to become productive. Well, I want to make a video here today about how that is not a good strategy. In fact, it probably makes things worse, believe it or not. Withholding and punishing yourself in order to make yourself more compliant to take action on the task, it's not a good strategy. So I got a question, which is why I wanted to make this video today. It was Ben left a comment and he was saying, in response to the video I was making, the idea in my new book is that when you don't show up for something that you said you would do, how do you respond to that? So there's something you said you're going to do, you didn't do it, how do you respond, right? How do you reverse that or how do you correct that? How do you restore self-trust if that's the pattern you're in? But Ben's point was, he said that he's saying, there are certain things I'm telling myself I will never do that again or I'm cutting that out, but he does it. He maybe repeats doing those things and that's also corroding his sense of self-trust, which is a different issue, right? So I think what Ben's point is, and Ben, if I'm inaccurate on this, let me know, but I think what it might be pointed to is the idea of stopping doing certain things, right? I'm no longer doing that, I'm not playing the video games anymore, I'm not doing these things in order to become productive, right? So the rules are to not do certain things. And how effective is that being? In my experience, not very effective at all, because first of all, let me say this, there's a thing in healthy communication, non-violent communication especially talks about this. It's when you're asking yourself, let's say you wanted to ask somebody else for something, right? And you go and you say to them, I would really appreciate it if you did this, that's good. But if you go to them and you say, I really want you to stop doing that right now, there's a problem with that because that implies that what they're doing is wrong, okay? There's an implication of wrongness. Asking them to do something proactively is not implying wrongness. It's the same with ourselves, right? So that's the first point. If you're telling yourself to stop doing things, you're implying that what you're doing is wrong instead of proactively saying, actually, this is what I would prefer you to do, this is what I would prefer myself to do, right? The other thing is it doesn't work, right? I'm not doing the video games, I'm not watching any more movies, I'm not going online anymore until I get the thing done. It's the no ice cream until your broccoli is finished, right? Now, what it ends up being is really all it does is it creates more frustration and anger and it makes your life smaller and less enjoyable. And it doesn't actually guarantee that you'll do the thing. It makes it more likely that you won't, there'll be a resentment towards the task that you're going to do. And the other thing is too, you create those rules, like Ben was saying, and then you break the rules anyway. You find yourself watching TV, playing video games or doing whatever it is. So those rules actually don't work. So what do we do as an alternative? Well, you don't have to quit out those things from your life, right? Now, I'll talk briefly in a minute about a serious addiction problem or something, right? That might be one of the things you could say, right? I'm not doing that anymore. Fair enough. But most of the things that people describe to me about the problem, the thing that's making them procrastinate, too much TV, too much internet time, et cetera, et cetera, they are not the thing that's causing the procrastination. The problem is an inability to show up for the thing that you want to do. And my book is about, actually, it's what you do after you don't want to show up. That's the real problem. That's what sustains that cycle, right? So what I advocate for is instead of saying, right, quitting out all these things that will hopefully then make you be able to show up, it won't make you show up. Instead of doing that, we just stop trying to withhold and punish yourself and get good at the skill of learning how to show up consistently. Okay, so let's say you're working on your thesis, right? And you also have a life where you play video games and you do all those things. Get good at showing up for your thesis. You may still play video games, right? But you'll get good at this thing is being done, okay? And it's not about cutting it all out. Really, that doesn't have anything to do with the problem. That's making you not show up consistently. You're not failing to show up consistently to do the task because these other things are just so more attractive. That's not what's going on. It looks like that. People think, well, people have the sense that when they're playing the video games and they're not doing the task, I'm really goofing off here and having fun with the video games. There's nothing you could think of that's further from the truth. When people are doing that, they're playing the video games and they're in their avoidance, right? They're not doing it. Are they actually really enjoying it? Or are they carrying deep-rooted feelings of guilt that are contaminating it? I would say the latter. So they don't actually enjoy it at all. But when you get good at showing up, my experience has been that you get good at showing up to do a task, all those other things that you thought were a real problem or they were too excessive, you'll still do them. But you'll probably, well, first of all, you'll be doing them without any guilt. And also you'll find yourself doing them probably over time less often. They're less compulsive. So it's less of an escape, really, emotionally, trying to just carrying that guilt and not knowing how to deal with it. So you find yourself falling into those things as a way to deal with those emotions. So it's not about punishing yourself. I've even heard people say things like, no more socializing until I do X. There should be a few alarms going off there when you hear something like that, because that's obviously something that's healthy. How will doing something, stop not doing something that's healthy create more health in my life, psychological health. But even the things that are, you know, the bad things that we're all told with all these, the hacks and the hustle stuff and the optimization culture we have, you know, scrolling your phone, that's a mortal sin now, apparently, that must be eradicated from your life. We're pathologizing everything in our life. Everything becomes this real problem. Again, there is a problem, but it's not that, right? There is a problem, but it's not what you think. The problem is a lack of self-trust and an inability to follow through on something that you've decided you want to do. If you can get good at that and understand why you can't do it, right? Which is what the book is about. You will find those other things are like, they're still there, but they're like a non-event or they just fade away. You just lose interest in them, right? But they're non-event. They're not blocking you from doing the thing that you want to do, but they never were blocking you. Those things, I know this sounds bad. Like, I feel like as a therapist or a psychologist, people expect me to say things like scrolling your phone is toxic. It's not, it's neutral. Scrolling your phone, just the act of scrolling your phone is neutral. Playing video games, what a waste of time. Well, that's a judgment. It's neutral. It's the story you're telling about it that makes it good or bad. So my whole issue is it's besides the point. The point is the lack of self-trust and the inability to not knowing why you can't show up when you said you would, right? And that's what the book is about. After you don't show up, those moments afterwards, really effectively what I advocate for is you stop re-promising, you stop re-committing and you give yourself time to really try and understand why you didn't show up instead of scrambling to save the day. So now I mentioned there are certain things in life that it is okay to say, yeah, I need to stop doing that. But those are usually really obvious and really damaging. Like it could be an addiction or like an alcohol addiction or something, right? Yes, certain people have certain things in their lives. We all have compulsions to a degree, right? But there are certain things that are like, yeah, I'm not going to do that anymore. And yes, failing to stick to that pledge and not do it anymore does erode self-trust. But there's a different protocol for that. And I use something called the addictive voice recognition for that, which is very effective. And it's about making a commitment to not doing that thing. But I'm only mentioning that briefly here because that's not the topic of this video is. The topic of this video is the much more pervasive and common problem of people thinking they have to eradicate anything fun from their life in order to get something done or to be consistent in things. And that's not the way I see it. I'll give you a brief story of my experience, right? When I was really procrastinating terribly in university, I was watching, my thing were movies, right? I would watch movies. And so I'd intend to do work on my studies and failed to do it, couldn't do it, was procrastinating on it, promising and re-promising and whatnot. And I'd find myself watching movies. And I would watch, when I say I don't mean watch a movie, I mean watch movies, like four or five movies. That's what my day would sort of turn into. And it would be very easy to look at that situation and say, this guy's got a real movie addiction problem here. It's ruining his life. But when I realized, well, actually, first of all, this entire experience, every time I do it is just mired in guilt and shame. And I'm actually not fully enjoying the movie. I'm not really even present for the movie at all. And I could have said, right, that's it, no more movies. Would that threat or that withholding have solved my problem? No. Now, what probably would have happened is something else would have taken the place or I would have just broken the rule, which, by the way, happened many times. I would have said that to myself. I remember saying that to myself. I'm not watching, okay, no more movies, knock it off. And then 10 o'clock the next day, I think I'll watch a movie, right? And just feel worse about it because it doesn't solve the problem of showing off. Now, when I did start to understand what was going on with this procrastination problem, why can't I follow through? Why can't I be consistent on doing the thing I wanted to do, which was my studies at the time? I figured that out. I was becoming consistent with that. And I was still watching movies. Now, maybe slightly less movies. But I remember at the start, it was like I was still watching a lot of movies. I didn't have to cut movies out of my life, right? I was still watching a hell of a lot of movies. The only thing that changed was I was now showing up consistently to do the task that I wanted to do, I thought was important. And with that, that felt good. But also watching the movies felt great. I was actually enjoying the movies without any feelings of guilt anymore. In fact, what I really did, one of the first things I did was, instead of trying to become productive and doing the thing, I said, okay, I've been watching movie after movie here every day for the last three weeks. I'm watching five movies a day. And they're all without permission and all covered with guilt. Okay, tomorrow, I'm going to intentionally watch four movies, right? That's what Neil Fury calls guilt-free play. So you sanction the thing you're doing. Now, the inner bully in my head was saying, that's completely unacceptable. But I was already watching. I could see it in my own behavior. This is going to continue. There's no point fighting with this, right? There's something I don't understand here. And that was such a big help. And doing that, guaranteeing it and making that guilty activity have no guilt in it anymore was a huge step in overcoming procrastination and be able to show up. I think what it does is it meets a need for play and also relaxation. And that basically means that you have no guilt in it. And once you have that, there's less resistance to taking action and doing the thing. And it's non-negotiable guilt-free play, by the way, right? It's not contingent on whether you do the task. It's whether you do the task or not, you'll be doing the fun activity, right? So there's no guilt involved. So the bottom line of this video is that if you've tried that thing, if you have, leave a comment, right? Tell people maybe what you try to withdraw or withhold from yourself. And write if it worked. Maybe it did work. In the majority of people I talk to, it doesn't work. I think in the book, I talk about someone who was video games, right? And no more video games and he kept trying it again and again and didn't work. But now he is consistent and he still enjoys the video games much more than he ever did, right? Now, I would also say that in the book, that example mentions he's kind of losing or beginning to play less, which is natural, not because of any self-imposed rule he has. But if you've tried it yourself, you've tried the withholding or the punishing thing, right? If there's a serious enough threat, maybe I'll take action. Withhold this, withhold that. If you've tried that, leave it in the comments below. I'm extending a different approach here, right? Which is all about what happens when you promise yourself something and you don't do it. It's about what happens after the promise is broken. Not about beforehand, about getting teed up and motivated and making a plan and being perfectly ready. None of that. It's about what happens after you don't do it, right? Because it's in that little space where all the damage is done and this issue becomes a chronic procrastination problem. Okay, so please be open-minded to the fact that you don't have to start taking things away from yourself. You don't have to make... If you're already struggling with something, which is when we struggle with procrastination, it's a psychological struggle. You're already struggling. Why make life even harder on yourself, right? That's my philosophy on it. It's like, this is already tough enough. Maybe don't take away the things in life that are actually making it bearable, dare I say it, right? The enjoyable things in life are not the problem. And it becomes excessive through the guilt we have in them. Guilt has a very magnetic pull to it. If you do something, believe it or not, it sounds like the opposite, but if you do something and you're mired with guilt all the time and you're doing it, you're far more likely to do it a lot. Believe it or not, that's true. There's truth in that, right? Take the guilt out of it and it's like, well, it's neutral. It's neutral again. There's no judgments going on. So keep that in mind. Try and get rid of that philosophy that you need to punish yourself or withhold things from yourself. It doesn't work. It won't help you overcome the procrastination problems you have. There's a much simpler and much more direct way of dealing with it, right? And check out the book below if you think it might be interesting. Hope that's a useful video and I'll see you guys very soon. Bye-bye.