This week, after discussing some very important listener feedback, I summarize a study about evaluation threat and its effects on procrastination. The results may surprise you. Whether or not high evaluation threat makes you procrastinate more (which is what we typically might think) depends on whether you're high or low on trait procrastination.

You can find my original blog posting about this topic on my Psychology Today "Don't Delay" blog (including the reference for the study if you're interested in reading it yourself). 

If you want to learn more about procrastination, see procrastination.ca.

When we procrastinate, the most common emotion is guilt. It's an uncomfortable feeling caused, at least in part, by the dissonance between what we intended to do and what we're doing (not what we intended). This dissonance is uncomfortable, and we do a number of things to reduce it including distraction, denial, and trivialization to name a few. This week, I discuss the nature of cognitive dissonance in relation to procrastination as well as the various strategies we use to make ourselves feel better. Of course, I also suggest a strategy that's more effective in the long run.

If you want to read about this in addition to listening to the podcast, check out my Don't Delay blog on Psychology Today entitled, "Procrastination, guilt, excuses and the road less traveled."

Interested in learning more about procrastination? Check out procrastination.ca.

A recent study indicates that both behavioural and decisional procrastination are related to maladaptive beliefs known as metacognitions. In this podcast, I relate two listeners' comments to this study and discuss how our thinking can create problems for us in terms of procrastination.

Hey, a second podcast for November 10th. Yes, I'm trying to make up for my absence last week :-) In this short podcast, I discuss some summary statements related to neuroscience that describe what David Rock calls "quirks of our brains." I think these quirks of our stone-age brain in the modern world help explain why we're vulnerable to self-regulation failure.

If you want to read David Rock's original posting on this topic, check out his posting on Psychology Today for August 30, 2009. Here's my blog posting in reply to his writing. It may interest you, as I provide links to each of the topics I mention in the podcast (in case you want to follow up on one topic in more detail).

As always, you can keep up with our research at procrastination.ca

In this, the first podcast for November, I reflect on a listener's questions about advice to new faculty members by Robert Boice, and I answer a few short questions about why we procrastinate and what we can do about it. The emphasis is on practical knowledge related to self-change. I hope it's useful to you.