The Psychology of Procrastination: Why You Keep Getting Stuck.

Duration: 9:00 1480 transcript words EN summary

Video summary

The video explores procrastination not merely as a time-management issue, but as a deep-seated psychological cycle driven by self-esteem problems and unconscious beliefs. The speaker argues that what we often perceive as simple laziness is actually a repetitive loop consisting of four distinct phases that trap individuals in chronic delay. At the core of this cycle lies an unconscious sense of unworthiness and shame, where the individual believes they are defective, not good enough, or a failure. This foundational feeling creates a heavy emotional burden characterized by depression and hopelessness, which serves as the fuel for the entire procrastination mechanism rather than just a symptom to be managed. Once this feeling of inadequacy takes hold, the mind unconsciously generates a "covert contract" in an attempt to resolve the pain, leading to the second phase of extreme overcompensation. In this stage, the inner critic convinces the individual that they must achieve perfection and pull off miracles to finally be worthy of acceptance. This results in setting impossible standards, such as needing to be the most productive person or completing an unmanageable number of tasks daily. The conscious mind then enters the third phase, where it aligns with these unrealistic goals, leading to intense anxiety, stress, and frantic planning. Despite working harder than ever before, the individual inevitably fails to meet these impossible benchmarks because the standards themselves are designed to be unwinnable. The cycle completes itself in the fourth phase when the inevitable failure occurs, triggering a surge of self-directed anger, frustration, and irritation. This anger is essentially depression manifesting as rage against the self, which reinforces the original belief that one is defective and unworthy, sending the mind back to the first phase of shame. The speaker highlights that this loop is particularly dangerous because it feeds the inner critic with more ammunition for future attacks. By realizing that the struggle stems from these impossible plans rather than a lack of ability, individuals can begin to break the cycle. To overcome procrastination, the video suggests starting by recognizing the addictive nature of planning and the anger it generates, rather than trying to fix low self-worth immediately. The key step is to stop setting impossible standards that originate from the unconscious contract and instead focus on creating realistic, attainable goals. By understanding that the current approach is an unwinnable game fueled by a defective story about oneself, one can begin to dismantle the cycle. Ultimately, breaking free requires shifting away from the need for perfection and embracing manageable challenges that do not threaten one's sense of identity or worth.

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Instead of telling you what I think about procrastination, I'm going to show you procrastination. I'm going to show you what it looks like. Right, I'm going to show you it in symbolic form, at least. So, there are basically four phases to the chronic cycle we get into with uh procrastination. And if you can understand what they are, you can start to see it as a bigger picture. Um and you can bring a deeper understanding to what causes it. Because my belief is that when you understand what procrastination is, you will actually be able to do something to change it. Typically, we think we understand what it is. We have these simplistic labels for why we're doing it and around ourselves. It's actually part of the problem. So, my approach to overcoming it is firstly that we understand what it is. Okay, so I'm with that as the goal, I'm going to show you what it looks like. So, let's dive in and take a a closer look at what procrastination really is. So, what we're looking at here are basically four parts of procrastination. That's one, two, this is the third, and fourth. There are four four parts to it, right? Now, this this basically here depicts the mindset that we're in when we're procrastinating. What's driving it all. This part here is more unconscious. You could call it the shadow aspect. And this part here is more conscious. We will will have more will be more familiar with what that part looks like around our procrastination problem. So, what this is your mind, and the mind goes from the first into the second, into the third, into the fourth. And it typically recycles and repeats these four phases. Right? So, it's very repetitive. You might find yourself in this cycle for a long time. But again, I'm going to start off by really telling you what's going on underneath the surface in this more shadow aspect of the mind, because that's really what's driving it. And again, this is what you'll be more familiar with, but none of it's good, right? Our our goal is to understand what this is and find a way to break out of this cycle. But let's understand what it is first. So, I've often said in the past that procrastination is really a self-esteem problem. And that is incredibly true, because the first step here, number one, is all about unworthiness or shame. Or uh I call it the defective story we have about ourselves. So, I'm unworthy, I'm not good enough, I'm a failure, I'm a bad person, I'm a loser. That's a big one for a lot of us. It's all that unworthiness and shame. And that's where the depression is, that's where all the heaviness is, that's incredibly painful. There's an awful lot of pain around that. Disappointment, hopelessness, all those sorts of heavier feelings are there. This is typically we'll we'll encounter this at some point and it develops into a really bad procrastination problem later on in life. So, that is the deeper aspect of it, but it's not the only problem, right? It's not as simple as fix depression and this goes away, because there are again, there are other phases here, two, three, and four play a role and we need to know what to do in those phases also. So, but the mind will be in that position to begin with, right? So, it's like this, the mind comes down and it's going through this and then enters into it the next phase, phase two, shown here. And in phase two, because the assumption that has been taken as granted now, that's my identity. I'm unworthy, I'm not good enough, I'm a loser, I'm pathetic, I'm not a serious person, I'm not responsible enough, etc. etc. I'm weird, I'm not like other people. The This is more the unconscious part. It's the inner critic. Right? So, the inner critic comes up with a solution to sort of get you out of this depression, right? And it is This is where the term quote covert contracts come in, but it comes up with a strategy to deal with the reality of this. Doesn't question this. It takes this as granted. But in order to deal with that, so it comes up with by definition a contract or a plan or a strategy that is by definition extreme. So, yes, you are defective. Yes, there's something wrong with you. You're going to have to do something really impressive. You're going to have to pull off miracles. You're going to have to be super productive, the most productive person you know, more productive than anybody else. Uh you're going to be perfect in everything you do you do. Um you're going to have to be the best in everything that you do. Um you can't make a mistake. And if you can manage to pull all that off, well, then maybe you'll be okay. But until that happens, this is the reality for you. Okay, so we listen to that simply because this is all painful. And we're looking for some sort form way out of it, and this looks like the only possible option available to us. So, we take that on board. And the mind then goes out of phase two, and it goes into phase three, which is down here. At this point in phase three, what we will notice is the mind is now aligned with all these thoughts and experiences and the the what's in conscious awareness is struggle, planning, implementation, trying to achieve the impossible. It's showing here as a a sort of like at insurmountable odds, overcoming the odds, taking on huge challenges, huge weekly goals, huge monthly goals, yearly goals, etc. etc. Um usually the emotion at this point here, we will feel all sorts of um, anxiety. Right? Or we'll feel stress. Those types of feelings come in here. Now, usually what happens is more often than not, because the covert contract is so impossible to pull off, most of the time people were in this, they're they're working harder, trying, they're planning, they're doing all these things. And when they get into this phase here, they won't actually be able to pull it off. They won't actually be able to meet the standards here. Right? They won't be able to to pull off the impossible thing. They'll struggle and they'll have all the anxiety and stress down here trying. But when they get into the phase four, they'll realize I actually wasn't able to do it. And that will result in very strong feelings of anger. Right? Frustration, irritation. And that is usually, almost always, it is self-directed anger. So, the anger gets directed at the self. And another word for self-directed anger is depression. Something's wrong with me. And then we're back into phase one again. So, it goes around and around. Yes, I've just proved that I'm even more unworthy. Well, what I need is a bigger plan, a more impressive thing. Try and pull it off, all this anxiety and stress. Doesn't work. You feel anger. You're rationalizing why it didn't work. It didn't work cuz I didn't follow follow that plan well enough. Etcetera, etc. So, our goal in procrastination is to realize you'll be easier to start here, actually. Because you'll be able to notice, my god, I'm addicted to planning. And I'm so angry and irritated at myself all the time. This is the easiest place to start, believe it or not. It's not actually easy to start here with this the low self-worth. But you can certainly start looking at how are all these big plans serving me? Well, it's making me angry. It's feeding into the depression, and it's leaving the inner critic with even more ammunition. So, I'll leave it there for today on this video. But, keep that in mind. It's the big plans that are getting us into a lot of trouble with this. The huge, you know, 15 tasks a day thing. That is almost set up because remember, this has never been questioned. When you're in this mindset, that is taken for granted. That doesn't change in this mindset. And if you want to get out of it, this is one of the first things you can start doing, which is start noticing that this is an unwinnable game. And one of the first things I can start doing is not setting impossible standards. Yes, having standards yourself, goals that you want to work towards, but not these impossible standards that is coming from this unconscious contract. Hope that's useful. And I'll talk with you guys again very soon in the next video. Bye [music] for now. >> [music] [music]