Name: Procrastination – 7 Steps to Cure
Uploaded: 2020-06-08T03:10:55.000Z
Duration: 8 min 53 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Procrastination sneaks up on us all, some worse than others.

In this video, we'll go over the science of procrastination and provide you with actionable

What's going on guys! Dr. Jubbal MedSchoolInsiders.com.

Piers Steel describes an equation useful in

He argues that Motivation = Expectancy x Value divided by Impulsiveness x Delay whereby motivation

is the willingness to do work, which is essentially the opposite of procrastination.

Breaking down the equation, expectancy refers to how much you expect to succeed at doing

the task and thereby getting the anticipated reward.

The more you expect being successful, the less likely you're going to procrastinate

Value refers to how much you enjoy doing a task, and how much you're going to enjoy the

The more value you derive from a task or the reward, the more likely you're gonna get straight

Impulsiveness refers to your tendency to get distracted by other things.

High impulsivity lures you to Instagram or Facebook instead of doing the work at hand.

Delay refers to the time-lapse until receiving the anticipated reward.

The longer the delay, the more likely you are to procrastinate, as you figure it's something

Now, we want to maximize expectancy and value, as they are directly proportional to motivation

and we want to minimize impulsiveness and delay, as they are inversely proportional.

Let's go over actionable steps on how to use the equation to our advantage and overcome

With any task you need to do, whether studying for an exam or completing a project, break

Doing so will increase expectancy in our procrastination equation, as smaller tasks seem much easier

While everyone has a different sweet spot, I find that being hyper-specific with timelines

For example, if I need to study for an exam next week and I have several lectures and

practice problems to go through, I will take a few minutes to think which lectures I should

complete on each day as well as how many practice problems.

I then put everything into Things 3 which is my personal to-do app of choice, but you should

You can see an example of a highly structured daily and weekly timeline I created in excel

This high level of structure works for me and for my personality but it definitely does

not work for everyone, again figure out what works best for you.

The hardest part in getting work done is just starting.

One of my favorite study hacks to address this is the Pomodoro Technique.

In short, you work in 25-minute blocks, each separated by a five-minute break.

During each block, you focus on just one small task.

In my Pomodoro technique video, I go over in more detail of what the technique is and

This was actually revolutionary for my study habits and we started using it in med school.

And you may be thinking, how does this actually help me get started on my work?

Going back to our equation, this increases expectancy.

If I sat down to study and told I myself I need to study for five hours, I would definitely

But if I instead tell myself, I only need to study 25 minutes on this one little task

it becomes far less daunting and it becomes much easier to not only get started but also

to stay focused for the 25-minute Pomodoro.

This is yet another trick to increase the expectancy in our equation.

Set the goal to something less than what you were actually capable of.

I have used this recently for my own meditation practice.

When I set out to meditate 20 minutes every day, I only get around to doing it a couple

It just felt like I never had the time to actually sit down and do 20 minutes of meditation,

Instead, I lowered my expectations by aiming to meditate just two minutes every day.

By lowering the bar, I found myself meditating most days and even though I set the goal as

just two minutes, I almost always exceeded it.

Number four, hack pleasure from the experience of studying.

Do you ever feel like studying is boring?

What if you don't actually support the immediate outcomes of the task?

Let's say you don't know what you want or maybe you have unclear priorities.

These examples all point to low value in our equation, increase in value will help us overcome

One way is by giving yourself a reward for completing a task.

For example, you can reward yourself with a healthy and tasty meal or by hanging out

with your friends after and only after you finish your chemistry homework.

If you need help with self-discipline like this, check out our self-discipline video.

Alternatively, you can improve the experience of the work itself.

As you progress in your medical education, the work gets more and more focused on material

However, at the beginning, you may have to grind through subjects that you do not find

To improve the experience of studying, consider mixing up your study environments or listening

If you want a taste of my own personal study music, check out the Insider Email Newsletter

where I share some of my favorite study songs every week.

You can sign up on the MedSchoolInsiders.com Website Number five, use Parkinson's law

The idea that you can complete your task at a later time can crush even the most productive

Parkinson's law states that work expands to fill the time allotted to it.

meaning if you have only 30 minutes of work to do, but you allot two hours of work to

do it, then you'll end up spending the entire two hours.

As I've stated in other videos, I use this technique frequently by creating artificial

deadlines that force me to get work done more efficiently.

These artificial deadlines decrease delay in our motivation equation, thus decreasing

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Procrastination – 7 Steps to Cure

specific

discipline

meditation

immune