Overcoming Low Motivation and Procrastination
The biggest myth around if you're struggling with procrastination is that you're just lazy. You're just not trying hard enough. You just need to buckle down and make it happen. It must not be that important to you if you're not getting it done. But this isn't true. Procrastination is an active process. It's the brain telling you, current me is not willing to experience this discomfort right now, so I'm going to pass it off to future me. But the problem is that we usually don't identify with that future version of ourselves. So when that future time comes, we just kind of get stuck in the cycle of passing that obligation off to our future selves, and this actually exacerbates that feeling of discomfort because the thing is still there. It's still moving over you. It's still hanging around. It's just being put off.
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Melissa Wesner, LCPC: Hello and thanks for joining us today. Today I'm talking with Makayla Waldhauser who is a mental health therapist at Lifespring Counseling Services and today she's going to be talking with us about motivation and myths about procrastination. So even if this is not a huge struggle with you, motivation and procrastination I'm sure are things that most of us can identify with on some level. So thank you for being with us today Mickayla. Yeah, thanks for having me, Melissa. I'm happy to be here. So, Mickayla, I know that this is the topic that comes up a lot in your work with clients.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC: Tell me a little bit about some of the themes that show up in your office around motivation and procrastination.
Mickayla Waldhauser, LCPC: The themes that I think I see the most around this are in this idea of, you know, when we start therapy, one of the first things we do is look at your goals and, you know, what you want to get out of therapy, things that you want to see change on. And from the big things to the little things. We just always find this this challenge that we find obstacles that are getting in the way of achieving your goals, you know, getting to those places where you want to be so. Very often we come kind of face to face with this question of like, like, I want to do this thing, but I'm not doing the things I say I want to do.
Mickayla Waldhauser, LCPC: And yeah, those questions of motivation and focus come up a lot, discipline and procrastination, you know, all of that plays into it. So overall in the grand scheme of things, I think that is something that, you know, quite often in some aspect we do see.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC: Yes. And around motivation and procrastination, what are some of the myths that you hear around procrastination?
Mickayla Waldhauser, LCPC: So the biggest myth around it is if you're struggling with procrastination, you're just lazy. You're just not trying hard enough. You just need to buckle down and make it happen. It must not be that important to you if you're not getting it done. But this isn't true. Progress nation is an active process. It's, you know, the brain telling you, current me is not willing to experience this discomfort right now. So I'm going to pass it off to future me. But the problem is usually we don't identify with that future version of ourselves. So when that future time comes, we just kind of get stuck in the cycle of passing that obligation off to our future selves.
Mickayla Waldhauser, LCPC: And this actually exacerbates that feeling of discomfort because The thing is still there. It's still moving over you. It's still hanging around. It's just being put off.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC: Can you say more about that you're not lazy piece? Because I think that there are a lot of people who have been told growing up in school if they weren't doing something. And even though they're adults now, I think growing up, people have heard that language that you're just being lazy. And people come to accept that message that I am just lazy. I must be lazy. And you're saying, no, that's not the case.
Mickayla Waldhauser, LCPC: Right. Right. Yeah, people do hear that a lot. I think, you know, from traditional educational systems and, you know, upbringings, there's just this idea of, you know, if something is assigned to you, you have to get it done in the traditional way as expected. And Yeah, if you don't do that, it's like you must not care enough. And, you know, if you're someone who struggled with something like this, you'd be able to attest, you don't, it's not that you don't care, you do. But there is something getting in the way of that. And, you know, oftentimes there's this element of like distress tolerance that comes into play where, you know, again, we're not willing to be uncomfortable or into endure that sense of, you know, momentary discomfort in order to get something done.
Mickayla Waldhauser, LCPC: And yeah, that's what we come up against a lot.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC: Yeah. So, you know, there are different perspectives on procrastination, right? For example, I've heard some people who have a very unique take on procrastination saying, if you feel if you find yourself procrastinating on something, that probably means it's something that you need to be delegating to other people. which maybe is a luxury that not everybody has, right? Not everybody has the ability to say, you know what? I don't love doing this task. Let me delegate it to a colleague or let me delegate it to someone else in my family because this is not something that I love doing, right?
Melissa Wesner, LCPC: Like if you're a student in school and you find that you are procrastinating on doing your homework, that cannot be assigned to anybody else. And if you try doing that, you're going to be in hot water. So for the people who do not have the luxury of saying, you know, this isn't my zone of genius. Let me delegate this task. What are some of the strategies that you recommend to people to help them overcome procrastination?
Mickayla Waldhauser, LCPC: Yeah, so when you have to do the thing yourself, like nobody else is going to be able to do it for you, you have to do it yourself. There are, you know, quite a few things that I find myself recommending. And you can just use the example of like, maybe you need to clean your room or you need to clean your house, something that we probably all come face to face with at one point. So maybe, you know, your whole house is a mess. I would try to break it down into little steps. So start by perhaps, you know, taking everything that seems out of place and put it all in one pile.
Mickayla Waldhauser, LCPC: On the floor, this is actually something that i've been doing since I was very little and I think it works like a charm. But you know you put everything in a pile and then you have that one pile to tackle, so it makes everything seem visually a little bit less overwhelming, which is sometimes part of why we don't. get started on those things and then you just start with whatever seems the easiest, maybe you look at that pile sort out all the trash throw that away and then move on to close and just take it one thing at a time.
Mickayla Waldhauser, LCPC: You know, any way to try to break it down into small or manageable steps that feel a little bit less overwhelming. Yeah, and I also would recommend committing to just five minutes or 10 minutes. However much you can put in to getting that thing done. So maybe set a timer and then when that timer goes off, you give yourself permission to stop, right? You know, sometimes you might just find that you want to keep going like you already have that momentum going because now you've gotten the ball rolling and you just feel like, oh, this isn't so bad.
Mickayla Waldhauser, LCPC: But even if you don't, even if you choose to stop after that five minutes, you're five minutes closer to being done. And thank you for five minutes, right?
Melissa Wesner, LCPC: Yeah, and I think all of those are really practical. I heard you say that sometimes people feel really overwhelmed. And I think that that's a thing that can happen if we have gotten into a habit of procrastinating, right? If we have become part of the tomorrow club, I'll do that tomorrow, I'll do that tomorrow. When we pass those things on to the next day, eventually things pile up. And oftentimes when we look at that pile of things that have accumulated, we start to feel overwhelmed. And that sometimes is when we just decide we're just going to throw the towel in because it's just too much.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC: And so I hear you saying there are some strategies that we can use to break down these tasks. So we're doing something rather than nothing. And so we're making progress towards our goal, even if it's incremental progress.
Mickayla Waldhauser, LCPC: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And going along with that idea of like feeling overwhelmed, A lot of my clients, we've kind of found that another thing that keeps them overwhelmed and, you know, from starting is a little bit of time blindness, you know, like looking at all the things that need to be done and thinking, you know, this is probably going to take hours and I don't have hours to contribute to all of this. Something that I'll do sometimes is challenge them to, you know, do whatever they can, maybe do one or two of the things that are kind of outstanding.
Mickayla Waldhauser, LCPC: And it could be house chores, it could be work things, you know, whatever is still there and time themselves to see how long it actually does take because you know often they're surprised that. they can make lots of progress and actually finish things in much less of a time than they thought, like a fraction of the time. And that usually helps put things in perspective too, make things feel a little bit less overwhelming.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC: Yeah. And it's funny that you say that. I think I saw a post on social media recently where someone was saying that something that would normally take them hours, that they can get it done so fast in like 10 minutes, if they suddenly find out that someone's coming over their house to visit them, that they can suddenly get all these things accomplished in like 10 minutes.
Mickayla Waldhauser, LCPC: Yeah, that's true. And that's what happens all the time when you hear procrastination. You hear the last minute hustle with students. It's always like finishing everything the night before when you get that burst of almost anxious motivation.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC: Yeah, that little boost, that little fire that gets lit under you. Yes. So you had mentioned the environment someone's in that sometimes our home environment kind of gets to a place where we start feeling overwhelmed, right? And whether that's the chicken or the egg, my home looks the way it looks because of my overwhelm or maybe I'm overwhelmed because of the way my home environment is looking right now. I think it can go both ways. But for people who may find that their home environment influences their overwhelm, I'm wondering if you have any thoughts or strategies that people could use to help with motivation, to help with task completion, if their home environment is playing a role.
Mickayla Waldhauser, LCPC: Yeah. And that was actually one of the other ones that I had here. And you can let me know if I don't really get the essence of this one. But I think that's where a lot of the self-talk comes in. So, you know, a lot of times with the home environment, sometimes we find ourselves saying, oh, I don't need to clean my room. It's actually not that big of a deal if it doesn't happen. Like I'd much rather just lay in a messy bed. I do challenge them to say, I deserve to be in a clean space.
Mickayla Waldhauser, LCPC: I deserve to live in an environment that's good for my mental health.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC: Yeah, I love that self talk right because what what am I saying to myself if I'm not doing these things what messages am I sending myself and how do I send myself a more compassionate message. Yeah, so I think that that's really important. I'm also wondering in terms of like procrastination or motivation, the role that habits might play in getting these things done. For example, I believe you may have told me at some point that you, or maybe it was in a video you did for us, I don't know, that you make your bed every single morning.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC: That's a habit that you have. And I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on the role that habits can play in helping us keep up with these things and maybe prevent us from getting to a place of overwhelm or where tasks are just building up and not getting done.
Mickayla Waldhauser, LCPC: Oh yeah absolutely habits are a huge factor and all of that I do make my bed every morning in some capacity, you know it's not always perfect. But I decided once that you know that was just going to be something I would do to help make my space at least feel a little bit more cohesive, I know that it brings me a welcoming that to you know come to later that night. And you know when we break things down habits can be something that are very small like a very small step in the right direction.
Mickayla Waldhauser, LCPC: And if they bring us kind of like 1% closer to where we want to be, it can really have such an impact on things. I'm thinking of the book, Atomic Habits, which I feel like half of us have read, which is really, really great in that way. So like looking at what habits we currently have that might be keeping us stuck and just making those very small changes in the right direction to set ourselves up for that surge of you know, uh, productivity or even if it's, you know, motivation around resting, I talked to a client yesterday about how we have to make habits around rest even, you know, because otherwise we kind of tend to go on autopilot.
Mickayla Waldhauser, LCPC: We tend to fall into what is already a habit for us. And when we have positive habits that push us towards our goals, it takes a lot less brainpower, a lot less, you know, this internal wrestling every time we're coming face to face with this task and it's more, automatic, a little bit more easy every time we do it. So I think it's absolutely, you know, really beneficial to be having those big things easier.
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