Hayden Finch

Their procrastination may show up with other things in life.

There is definitely something to that.

You would think that if I do something and I get a less than ideal outcome, that I would learn from that experience and change my behavior the next time.

And that is true in some areas of life.

For a certain group of people, and especially people who are habitual procrastinators, that tends to not follow.

And so for people who just kind of like periodically procrastinate, yes, like that is probably what keeps them in that periodically procrastinating group of people.

The folks who struggle with this habitually probably aren't learning from that experience.

And my hypothesis is because they're actually learning something different.

So rather than learning like, oh, like that was that didn't turn out well, I should do that next time.

They're actually learning something different, like, well, at least I didn't have to deal with that for a month in prepping for this project or this performance.

At least I just had to deal with that for a week or something.

And so there's some other message that they're learning or some sort of like very strong emotional experience that's keeping that behavior pattern alive, even though it doesn't make good rational sense.

Yeah, and that's probably because in your life, you've figured out how to manage yourself and your time in a way to keep those catastrophic consequences from being part of your life.

Some people aren't able to manage the procrastination that well, and so they do end up with some pretty significant consequences.

even catastrophic consequences in front of them.

So you're right, like it's a spectrum, you know, from people who really don't struggle with this at all to people who are struggling with it so much that they're filing for bankruptcy or they're losing their jobs or they're having other catastrophic consequences.

Yeah, it's a great question.

And my thesis is that it's less about time management.

and more about emotion management.

So poor time management, to be clear, poor time management can certainly affect procrastination and improving those skills can definitely be helpful.