Do It Now: Overcoming Procrastination

by Fuschia M. Sirois

4 hours and 11 minutes

Procrastination is an almost universal human experience. While many people attribute procrastination to laziness or a lack of drive, our real motivations to push back and delay important activities and decisions are more complicated than personal weakness. The truth is that humans are well-adapted for basic survival, but they are not so great at managing the stresses and expectations of modern life without a little help.

If our own minds so often work against us, how can we get things done without the stress and last-minute panic so common in our hectic 21st-century lives? You’ll learn how in Do It Now: Overcoming Procrastination, taught by Fuschia Sirois, PhD. In 10 lectures, Dr. Sirois will help you better understand the way your mind works and how to overcome the bad habits that are holding you back. Using the latest scientific research on procrastination, Dr. Sirois will give you the insight and guidance you need to set and meet goals, manage your time better, design an environment that will help you succeed, and much more.

Best of all, Dr. Sirois makes it clear that procrastination is a natural impulse for most people - sometimes, it can even be beneficial. She encourages you not only to work toward better time management but also to get rid of the burden of guilt and internal pressure that so often accompanies this very common behavior. While the tendency to delay the things we need to do is a deep-rooted habit, you will be able to apply and re-apply the strategies and tools you will acquire in this course for the rest of your life.

Genres: Nonfiction, Self Help, Audiobook, Psychology, Productivity, Personal Development, Personal Growth

5 pages, Audible Audio

Published September 2, 2021

Reviews

[Jarrod · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll review this later.

[Phoenix Perpetuale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just do it; your future self will be thankful. Even more on procrastination, what are possible causes and methods of overcoming procrastination with knowledge of science in the lectures Do it Now: Overcoming Procrastination by Fuschia Sirois, The Great Courses Audible original—narrated by Fuschia Siroids. Lectures are structured and easily understandable to a reader.
Conclusion there is no ideal circumstances.

[Olivia Chapé · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don't ask me why I read this book back to front, but I started from the last few chapters of the book and then began from the front of the book. The end section was enjoyable, and I wanted to give it 3 or 4 stars. However, when I tried reading it from the beginning, I was thinking of giving it 2 or even 1 stars.

The beginning section felt like an emotional read, where it just sounded like excuses for why we procrastinate. But I decided to push through and continue, as it annoyed me that I hadn't finished the book. I was happy that I did go back to it, as chapter 2 was my favourite, where the advice here would be 5 stars. I enjoyed how the debate about why some people are more successful than others. How some people are calmer, yet more productive and less distracted.

The main message was that we procrastinate due to emotions and irrational thinking. Depending on our mindset, we can perhaps think something is going to take longer than it actually takes to do. This mentality is similar to the book, "Mini Habits". Our memories may be irrational as we ponder over how we have done it before, and thus lack the confidence to complete a task due to negative thinking. Or simply procrastinate over it, living up to our negative thinking.

The key is to complete tasks within a timely manner. For instance, avoid leaving things to the last minute and work on them bit by bit every day. That way more people want to work with us, because we are more dependable. We also, in turn, become financially more stable, as well as being happier and healthier, with fewer heart problems, like hyper tension.

Books to read that spring to mind to read with this one are;
- The 5 second rule (pre-frontal cortex)
- Living with our genes (nature nature debate)
- Four Tendencies, by Gretchen Rubin.

[Carla · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good companion to Procrastination: What It Is, Why It's a Problem, and What You Can Do About It.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Audiobook: Provided scientific reasonings as to why we procrastinate, why we get stuck in paralysis and what to do about it. Loved it!

[January · Rating 3 out of 5]

Do It Now: Overcoming Procrastination by Fuschia Sirois
The Great Courses
4h 12m narrated by the author Fuschia Sirois

Genre: Personal Development, Time Management

Featuring: Procrastination, Habits, Overcoming Anxiety, Negative Emotions and Moods, Heart Health, Bedtime Procrastination, Deadlines, Home Life, Health Care, Work Life, Genetic & Neuroscience Perspectives, Stress Response, Parenting Style, Negative Thought Paths, Metacognition, Procrastinatory Cognitions, Ruminating, Mindfulness, Perfectionism, Self-Critical Perfectionism, Self-Compassion Managing Moods & Thoughts, Growing Closer to Your Future Self, Structuring Your Environment, Action Paralysis, Fantasizing

Rating as a movie: PG

Books and Authors mentioned: Charlotte's Web by E. B. White, Stuart Little by E. B. White

My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️½📵🚳📌🕹

My thoughts: 📱21% 51:44 Lecture 3: The Role of Emotion in Procrastination - I am going to put off finishing this book because it is boring and affecting my mood. I'm going to lift my spirits by reading a fiction book. Working already.

Basically, most people procrastinate because the task evokes negative feelings, and by delaying it by doing something else you can improve your mood. To put it plainly, you don't feel like doing it right now and the consequences are a problem for your future self.

Recommend to others: Yes This book has good information, but it's a downer compared to other non-fiction books.

[Alex Shrugged · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very professionally done, but if one is looking for advice on how to stop procrastinating, this course will only be partially helpful. That is because the point of the lectures is not to help you stop procrastinating. It is to clarify why procrastination takes place. One might ask, "But isn't it enough to know?" For many people, yes. Knowing why one procrastinates can be very helpful. However, I doubt that self-knowledge will be enough for the chronic procrastinator... the one for whom procrastination is not only a serious problem... it is life threatening. "Oh, golly! I meant to go to the doctor, but one thing led to another..." You see how that can go. So, this course will be of limited value to that person, but it will be very informative.

I'm not sure if I will listen to this course again. Time will tell.

[Kayley Steele · Rating 4 out of 5]

Content - The content focuses on the understanding and emotions of procrastination and strategies to help fix these behaviours. Provides useful insights and practical advice on how to manage procrastination but there is no mind-blowing new information.

Audio Quality - Good, listened via audible. Broken down into a few “lectures”. Had to listen on speed 1.20 to get through as narrator was quite slow.

Overall - Was a good listen, simple to follow along with.

Recommendation -. Recommend to anyone wanting the basic level understanding of procrastination and simple ideas to help.

[Alexia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely helpful, but got really dry in the second half especially with studies upon studies, some with super obvious conclusions. There were some helpful tips in how to avoid procrastination and even motivating warnings against it, but I was hoping for a lot more helpful practical suggestions than there ended up being in this course, percentage-wise.

[Kace Boland · Rating 2 out of 5]

To me, Do It Now is situated in a bizarre "no man's land" in that it lacks the practical guidance to serve as an effective self-help book, but also the depth and scientific integrity to serve academics. If you know much of anything about procrastination already, you'll be bored, as I was. If you don't, you'll be bored because there's a lot of dry discussion of scientific literature. If you're a member of the scientific community, you're likely to be annoyed by Sirois, who makes too-far-reaching claims from the research she endorses. It's a shame, as some of this research is actually quite compelling, though other studies she mentions are lacking egregiously in construct validity. Her painting of procrastinations manifold causes and solutions was inappropriately narrow (and exclusive, I'd argue).

[Dru · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not too bad of an audio. I learned a lot, and now I think I have a better understanding of how procrastination works.

[A.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some good info here, especially the bit about putting yourself into the shoes of future you, and how it means that you are more likely to get started on a task, knowing that you are making life easier for future you.

4 stars

[Irena Pasvinter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Last Saturday I spent most of my free time listening to this short course about procrastination while poking around in my balcony garden. Instead, I could have been working on my second novel (with the fulltime job in software engineering, my last week's word count has been whooping minus 40 words). So what is this but an intricate form of procrastination?

I'm usually rather skeptical about self-help books, but do give benefit of the doubt to those produced by The Great Courses. The author of this course of 8 half hour lectures is a psychologist who does scientific research of procrastination, and the course if based on her and other scientists findings. Most of the content was well-formulated, interesting and useful.

Upon finishing "Do It Now: Overcoming Procrastination", I realize that mine is not an intricate but rather a typical and blatant case of procrastination. Contrary to what we often hear, procrastination isn't about the lack of will-power or poor time-managing skills, neither it's about being lazy and doing nothing. Procrastination is postponing an important task without objective reason, and its underlying cause is emotional response to stress (fear of failure, fear of boredom, fear of you name it...).

So how does this realization help me? Well, if I'm honest with myself, it points at the underlying reason of why I wasted my time on listening, gardening, cooking and cleaning, until it was too late to write anything except GR reviews: I'm afraid of failure, of the daunting task of completing the first draft, and especially of, after some five drafts, being as unsuccessful in finding a literary agent for this second novel as I've been for my first one, until now. And does it help to know the root cause of the problem? Perhaps. Know thyself and all that...

Of course, besides discussion of the nature and causes of procrastination, this course also contains some practical recommendations on how to overcome it. Meditations, mindfulness and even thought experiments involving imagining your future self are presented along with the confirming research -- they all sound quite promising, but are so not my thing. So what's left? The most powerful of all methods, discussed at the end of the course: the good old JUST DO IT, NOW. It looks like it's my only hope, and somehow after listening to this course, the overcoming of the eternal P-curse seems a tiny bit more likely.

So far, still procrastinating on writing, but with a spark of anti-procrastination hope in my heart, for better or worse.;)


Image credit:Vic, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have historically seen procrastination as a shameful character flaw which causes me distress but which other people might dismiss, judge or ridicule. Or I’ve seen it as a symptom or feature of other problems that warrant more attention.

It was refreshing for me to listen to this book which focuses on procrastination as a problem worth considering in its own right. Sirois highlights difficulties with emotional regulation as the cause, rather than putting procrastination down to laziness, indifference, distractibility or poor time management. The links between procrastination and anxiety, low mood and perfectionism really resonated and I wish there had been more awareness of this in my younger years.

Sometimes this book was more detailed than I liked but in general, I appreciated this exploration of procrastination and its impact, the science behind it, and the strategies that can be used to tackle it. The narration could have been more fluid but I didn’t find that an obstacle to absorbing the content.

[Diginaut · Rating 3 out of 5]

Approach was more academic and analytical than practical. Not really what I was looking for, and not what I was expecting based on the description. But in itself the researches mentioned in the lectures and its outcomes were sound, interesting and promising.

The conclusions in the last lecture, though, were downright disappointing. I've just listened to a pretty nuanced analysis of the causes of procastination and end up with nothing more than platitudes like "just do it," "it's not as big as you think" and "break it into little parts". How insightful, that really helped. The author could have done so better here, especially considering the promising run-up in the earlier lectures.

So a bit disappointing, didn't bring me what I was hoping for, but it has set me on the path of cognitive behavioral therapy, which is mentioned in passing. Am going to look into that now, so I did get something out of it.

[Blake · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good overview of what procrastination is and some approaches to avoid it. Honestly, I've already forgotten most of the approaches, but two things stood out to me that have helped me reduce procrastination in the past couple weeks.

1. Procrastination is primarily an emotional response. We don't feel like doing something so we do something that's more pleasurable in the moment. Often the thing we do (like scrolling Facebook) gives us a temporary and fleeting emotional boost.
2. Procrastination prioritizes short-term over long-term.

In the past weeks I've caught myself being tempted to procrastinate, but when I consider the above facts, I have resisted the temptation. Not 100% of course, but it has definitely helped. We'll see whether it sticks in the long-term. I do intend to listen to this again to glean more tips for avoiding procrastination.

[Eliza Bacelar · Rating 4 out of 5]

[3.5] This is a solid read and probably a 4-5 stars if you've never read/listened to anything related to the subject. I've read my fair share of productivity books, watched videos and lectures and consumed a lot of content on this topic (probably for way way way longer than I should, paradoxically), and there's just so much of what you can say in this subject, so a lot gets repeated. But what I really liked the way Fuschia Sirois delves deep into science, rationalizing and really going from ground up to understand behaviors, and I found myself relate to many situations portrayed. Also really liked the main tips and fully understood why they were helpful in more ways than one. Really good book/audible!

[Miss Chocolate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kako sam naslov govori - knjiga o prokrastinaciji, autorica je znanstvenica pa se često poziva na eksperimente i istraživanja i ulazi u same uzroke prokrastinacije. Po meni za ovakav pristup knjiga mora imati više stranica i pomnije obraditi područja koja je otvorila. Jako puno toga mi se čini "započeto", ali ne i do kraja određeno. Također, nedostaje mi konkretnosti u meni najzanimljivijim dijelovima (perfekcionizam, prokrastinirajuće okruženje itd.). Ipak, u knjizi se nalaze neki konkretni i primjenjivi savjeti, a i osnovne o podlozi prokrastiniranja. Od mene ocjena tri uz napomenu da je ovo prva knjiga na tu temu koju sam pročitala (poslušala) pa ne mogu usporediti s drugim knjigama iste tematike (a ima ih, ono, malo more).

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like how they clearly define both what Procrastination is and what it is not. I also  liked how they pointed out the differences between procrastination and delay.

I listened to the audio version of this book and while the narration was good it was quite slow. I used the speed increase feature as a result.

The first lecture has quite a negative tone as it repeats over and over again how irrational and damaging procrastination can be. I don't think this was intentional though. It takes on a more positive tone in the second lecture.

I was frustrated by the lack of acknowledgement about neurodiversity and the role this can play. In fact neurodiversity wasn't mentioned at all which was disappointing.

[Amy Futterman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok so this book actually really helped me.
I'm not going to lie though, it's hard to get through. If you make it through the first lecture, you'll be fine after that. She is a working psychologist who is actively studying these things and posting her findings.
Which are, possibly revolutionary.
If you or someone you love struggles with procrastination especially related to shame or depression, I HIGHLY recommend this book.
I listened on audible (where it's free!) and that's the only way I got through it.
But I'm glad I did.

[Jamin W. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was procrastinating to read this book but I did finish it. This had a lot of clever and practical applications on how to better yourself into not procrastinating. One thing that I thought, was very interesting is the mindset of "talking to your future self" as it was worded in the book. Basically, it's the idea of thinking of where you will be if you do put this task off or responsibility. And more importantly, what that would do for yourself in the future. Overall is very helpful and insightful.

[Iron · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nothing new under the sun. Serious and evidenced based but doesn’t go any further than that. Looking at procrastination mainly as a problem with regulation of negative emotions misses a lot of the subjective experience. Also, the practical part is kind of basic and unimaginative. Usually the great courses deliver something else, but I will say that most writing about these subjects leave something to be desired.

[Firdaus Aris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Do It Now: Overcoming Procrastination by Fuschia Sirois is an Audible Original that explores the real reasons behind procrastination and how to break the cycle. Instead of just pushing discipline, Sirois dives into the psychology of why we delay things and offers practical, compassionate strategies to get back on track. It’s insightful, easy to follow, and perfect for anyone looking to overcome procrastination in a smarter way.

[Mandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately I got very little out of this. I did get more out of it towards the very end (lecture 8 and 9) … but too much of yeh beginning and middle of this was spent on “what is procrastination” and “why do we procrastinate “ which I didn’t care to read and felt it was unnecessary and boring to get through. It was alright overall.

[Fabio De Bernardi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading (well, listening) for everyone. Procrastination is a form of self regulation failure that involves prioritising short term mood repair over the long term pursuit of intended actions. Once you unpack this definition, it hits you in the guts without much mercy. And that's a good thing, in the path to stop procrastinating.

[John Crippen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Huge overlap between this and Procrastination: What It Is, Why It's a Problem, and What You Can Do About It, but that's what I wanted!

[Ana Lopes · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5 half stars, really.

Great tips and the feeling of being deeply understood. There are real reasons as to way we procrastinate and it feels good to learn it’s nothing to do with laziness.
Good read and one of those books one can read once a year - at least!

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

I procrastinated finishing this book. It wasn't what I expected and wasn't tremendously helpful except that I now know the difference between real procrastination and just postponing a task. I wasn't trying to major in the subject, too sciencey for my liking.

[Juan Pablo Soto · Rating 3 out of 5]

Muy bueno para entender el origen de la procrastinacion. Sirve para hacer conciencia. Los consejos de cómo abordarla son simplones, es casi un "no procrastines". Recomiendo echar un vistazo, es gratis con suscripción de audible.

[Miranda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Procrastination is less about the task and more about our emotional state. We generally procrastinate to bring an improvement in mood, even if it’s only temporary. To reduce procrastination we need to develop better self awareness, emotional regulation, and practice self compassion.