Self Worth Theory: The Key to Understanding & Overcoming Procrastination | Nic Voge | TEDxPrincetonU (1)

Translator: Tanya Cushman Reviewer: Peter van de Ven

About two decades ago, when I was a PhD student at UC Berkeley,

I found myself in a seminar taught by a psychology professor

who was renowned for his research on self-worth theory,

on motivation, teaching and learning.

I'd no business being there;

it had nothing to do with my research interests,

but I found it had everything to do with my academic life.

What I learned in that seminar

and in the myriad of discussions over the last two decades with Marty

has been a real gift to me.

It changed my understanding of the human condition.

It made me think back to those 20 years before that in school

where I'd mastered the craft and art of procrastination:

the mind games,

the rationalizations, the justifications -

anybody know about these?

Oh, some experts in the room.

And so that gift is something that I'd like to share with you today,

at least some of that.

This quote captures a certain perspective, a way of thinking about procrastination,

lots of ways to approach it.

We can think of it as a bad habit, for instance,

but I want to ask you to consider more deeply, to introspect, look inside,

and look for the deep motivational roots of procrastination

so that we can overcome that and flourish and truly thrive

in our lives and in our work as teachers and as learners.

So my hope for you is that you'll take away from this talk

a very different understanding of what procrastination is.

And this is important;

it's not just how we think about it

in terms of conceptual frameworks and theories,

which I'm going to teach you,

but also to understand it in a different ethical or moral sense.

I want you to think that procrastination isn't shameful.

It's not a sign of weakness.

It's not a flaw.

It's actually pretty predictable.

It's something we can really expect

if we understand the dynamics of motivation

and the circumstances under which it arises.

It's not surprising that we see procrastination a lot at Princeton

because you can't spell procrastination without P-R-I-N-C-T-O-N.

Anybody notice that before?

So what is about a circumstance,

a place like Princeton or colleges in similar circumstances,

that leads to procrastination?

Well, one is that we're highly selective.

And schools, all schools, evaluate us.

So it's an evaluative environment where it's competitive.

We're often competing with one another.

Often, there's limited rewards and recognition.

More people want A's than can reasonably expect to get them.

In those circumstances,

we can fully expect that people will seek to protect themselves,

the meaning of not getting that reward,

the meaning of not getting that recognition

for their self-concept and their self-worth.

It's not just the grade that's on the line.

It's more than that, and I think as we introspect, we realize that.

So today I want to explain that,

and, again, I want that so you have an idea,

but I want you to apply it to your own life

as I've applied it to my own.

Whether you're a teacher or a student or a parent -

all of this can be helpful

in understanding the dynamics that happen in schools and around schools.

So I want to tell a little story,

and if you procrastinate, this will be a familiar scenario for you.

So here's the setting.

It's 11:00, you're in your dorm room, and you have a paper due in a day or so.

And so, it's been a kind of long, busy day,

maybe not too productive.

So you sit down at your desk, you open up your laptop

to get started to tackle this paper,

and then you think,

"I'm going to check my email, just for a minute,

get that out of the way."

Anybody ever done that?

So 45 minutes later, you've checked a lot of email.

You've done a really good job of that.

But now you realize, "You know what? I'm pretty tired.

I'm kind of exhausted, as a matter of fact.

You know, tired, exhausted - not conducive to writing a good paper.

What do I need?

I need to go to sleep.

Yeah, that's what I'll do.

I'll go to sleep, get rested, wake up tomorrow refreshed,

tackle that paper, ready to go."

So what do I do? I set my alarm.

I feel kind of bad, so I overcompensate: I set it especially early, right?

to make up -

(Laughter)

You're thinking right now,

"How did he know? Does he have a camera in my dorm room?"

(Laughter)

This story's about me. That's how I know.

And so I wake up extra early -

or I shouldn't say I wake up extra early - the alarm goes off extra early,

I hit the snooze, and while I'm laying there,

I think, "You know, the whole point was to be refreshed, and I'm not.

I'm tired."

Not only do I hit the snooze again,

I turn off the alarm because I need some sleep.

Because if I'm going to be productive, I need my rest.

And so time passes.

I wake up an hour before my first class,

and I think, "You know what?

That's not quite enough time to get started on this paper.

What can you get done in an hour?"

So what I start to do, I think to myself,

"You know, I have that thing to do; it's really important.

I need to do it now.

And I really just need something to cross off on my to-do list

so I can feel that satisfaction."

Sound familiar?

So I knock that off my list just in time to get to class.

I have a full day, maybe a little longer lunch than I should have.

That conversation in the hallway goes a bit longer,

and I find myself back in the same spot, at the same time:

it's 11:00, and I haven't done anything toward my paper.

So now, not only have I not made progress,

I'm behind, and I feel pretty bad about myself.

But nonetheless, I know what I have to do:

make that sprint into the wee hours of the night

to finish this paper.

And at some point, I just say to myself,

"You know what? I just have got to get this done

because if I don't, that's bad.

The humiliation of not completing it

is worse than not writing the best paper my professor has ever read."

So what leads to these dynamics?

We could look at the surface level,

but I want to look more deeply, what's going on underneath.

And self-worth theory of achievement motivation

gives us a tool for doing that.

So self-worth theory asserts, or posits, first and foremost

that the paramount psychological need that all of us have

is to be seen by ourselves and others as capable and competent and able.

So in a school environment, that means we need to be thought of as smart:

as good at math if that's our identity,

as the excellent writer,

bound for science.

If we're a valedictorian, we come to expect that.

So self-worth theory says

we need to be seen as capable and able and competent.

That's what we need to do.

And because it's the primary paramount need,

we will actually sacrifice or trade off other needs

to realize or achieve or meet that need.

And that's where procrastination comes in.

So here's a way of thinking about it

that kind of captures some of the dynamics,

a simple model.

Now, first I want to say that this is a model of people's beliefs

about performance and ability, self-worth, achievements.

I'm not saying that this is how we should be;

I'm saying that this is what we've discovered through research.

Basically, we have this kind of simple model in our head

that my performance determines my ability for the most part.

Effort has a role in it,

but ability, my innate capability and skill and knowledge -

excuse me, not knowledge -

my innate skill at doing something, largely unchanging,

that's what determines my achievement level, my success.

And those achievements, those successes or not,

determine my sense of self-worth, how I think about myself.

So in a sense, then, these things become equated with one another.

So people who are particularly fearful of failure,

people who procrastinate a lot -

I put myself in that category, at least in the past -

have a kind of simplistic equation in their mind.

Their performance is equal, or equivalent, to their ability,

which is equal, or equivalent, to their worth,

their self-worth as a person, as a human being.

So we go from a grade on a test to ourselves in the world

and to the people we love and care about, our teachers, our friends.

So with that understanding,

we can see how procrastination isn't just a matter of a habit,

"I don't like this activity or this assignment."

"I never liked physics although I'm a physics major."

That's probably not the case.

Often, people procrastinate about things they love.

They're fascinated by physics,

but when it's 11:00, and the piece is due at midnight -

you're not loving that.

You're just trying to get it done.

So it's important to understand

a couple of things about procrastination in this simple model.

One of them is that we can't simply forego the opportunity to achieve.

We can't just pick easy tasks and say,

"Well, I've achieved. That's great. I feel good."

So what this model shows is a key insight from self-worth theory.

We used to think, in psychology,

that if you really wanted to achieve, say, for success,

then you would not automatically really want to avoid failure.

But in fact, that's not the case.

So not one dimension, one spectrum; there are actually two.

You can approach a task, really want to do a task,

and at the same time really not want to do a task.

You can want to succeed on it;

you can also really fear failing on such a task.

So these are actually two different dimensions.

And many people at Princeton, and at Berkeley,

where I used to work and where a lot of this research was done,

actually are high on both dimensions.

We really, really want to achieve.

It's very important to us; we're driven.

Maybe you've heard that word used to describe you.

But we're also fearful of failure and what it means.

So we have two sources of motivation.

So, in fact, procrastination, in many cases, and the cause of that

is we're overmotivated.

We're overly striving both away and towards something.

And that's what we've learned,

that procrastinators

are actually not less motivated than the average person,

although that's what they say

or "I'm lazy" or "I don't have time management."

Those are really not typically the causes.

What it is is a feeling of stuckness,

two countervailing forces:

we are driven towards success on the one hand,

but we are strongly and powerfully motivated

to avoid failure on the other.

And we feel this stuckness, these countervailing forces.

And many people describe procrastination as being stuck or against a wall,

an obstacle they can't get over.

Does that sound right to you?

The phenomenon of it: what does it feel like?

We are often agitated.

We can't sleep, but we can't work.

Right?

So we have these countervailing forces, and we're unable to move forward.

Until some moment where we have this insight,

and we say, "If I don't start now, I won't get this done."

And the fear of not getting it done -

I see the nod -

exceeds the fear of doing less than perfectly

or to an exceptional standard

or to as good as I did it last time.

Because those of us

who are perfectionists and procrastinate,