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Reverse Procrastination: How to Turn Your Teen's Worst Habit Into a Strength · IMPACT: Parenting with Perspective

• 0:00
  Ben: I'm Ben Pugh and you're listening to IMPACT! Parenting with Perspective.
• 0:06
  Ben: This podcast is all about helping parents manage the mental and emotional drama that comes with parenting teens so they can focus on what's most important.
• 0:17
  Ben: Building rock solid relationships and having a powerful impact on their teen's life.
• 0:22
  Ben: Join me each week as I dive into real tools to help you and your teen turn struggles into strengths.
• 0:31
  I want to tell you about something I recently worked on with one of my teen clients.
• 0:37
  She had a pretty common problem.
• 0:40
  Most people would call this procrastination.
• 0:43
  Schoolwork would come in, and she would put it off.
• 0:47
  She'd think about it, but she would avoid it.
• 0:51
  And she would actually stare at it for a long time, just not doing anything.
• 0:56
  And she kept telling herself,"Well, I'll just do it later." Eventually, the deadline would get close enough that she had no choice.
• 1:04
  She had to decide,"Am I doing this thing or not?" And then something interesting would happen.
• 1:10
  She would get really focused, she would work really fast, and she'd crank through the assignment.
• 1:17
  And a lot of times she'd actually do a pretty good job.
• 1:22
  And as we talked about it, I realized something.
• 1:25
  Her strategy wasn't actually that bad.
• 1:29
  In fact, part of her strategy was actually really, really effective.
• 1:34
  She was just doing it in the wrong order.
• 1:37
  So instead of trying to turn her into a different person, instead of telling her that she needed more discipline, instead of giving her another planner or a checklist or another lecture about time management, we decided to take the strategy that she was already using, that was actually working, and reverse it.
• 2:02
  And the crazy thing is, it worked.
• 2:04
  She's now completely caught up in all of her classes.
• 2:08
  Our last session, she's like,"Man, school feels easier than it ever has." And maybe the most surprising part is she actually has more free time now than she did when she was procrastinating.
• 2:22
  Like, if you added up all the time that she spent procrastinating and looped that in with the free time, she has more free time because she's working more efficiently.
• 2:35
  And so today, I wanted to show you what I mean by reverse procrastination.
• 2:43
  I wanna show you why it works and how you might be able to use the same idea with your teenager.
• 2:52
  And there's one part of procrastination that parents usually treat like the enemy that I actually think we should keep that part.
• 3:01
  We'll get to that in just a minute.
• 3:04
  But for now, I want to talk about this young lady's old pattern.
• 3:12
  The old pattern was that she would get an assignment And then she would avoid doing that assignment.
• 3:19
  Sometimes she'd think about it, but she would just delay and put it off, and then she would start to feel pressure because the deadline's coming up.
• 3:29
  And then she would decide whether or not she was gonna do it, and sometimes she's like,"Well, it's not that big of a deal.
• 3:34
  I'm not gonna do it.
• 3:35
  It won't really hurt my grade." But sometimes she's like,"Man, this is huge.
• 3:39
  I'm deciding I have to do it." And then she would basically sprint, and she would finish the assignment, and she would have very limited free time.
• 3:52
  And so this might happen with your teen.
• 3:55
  I know this happened with me a lot as a teenager.
• 3:58
  I wish somebody could have taught me this back then.
• 4:01
  But I would get an assignment, and I wouldn't even decide to do it.
• 4:06
  Like mentally, I'd just assume that I would do it, but I wouldn't make the decision, and then I'd carry that load mentally.
• 4:14
  And I would remember that,"No, I need to do it," but I would avoid it.
• 4:19
  And then my parents would start reminding me, and this might be where it starts sounding like home.
• 4:23
  Like,"Oh my goodness, I have to remind my teen all the time." And then your teen starts feeling more stress, and then the deadline gets closer, and eventually the pressure gets high enough that your teen finally has to decide,"You know what?
• 4:38
  I'm not doing that.
• 4:39
  It's not a big deal," or,"Dang, I have to do it." And then they sprint.
• 4:44
  They take like a six-hour project and finish it in the last hour and a half And when they finally finish, they get this relief.
• 4:55
  And unfortunately, a lot of kids finally finish, and then it's time to go to bed, or it's time to hurry and get ready and go to school, and so they don't get to really enjoy that relief for very long, and they don't get to enjoy any free time.
• 5:10
  And here's the thing that's important to remember.
• 5:12
  For a lot of you listening, that pattern works.
• 5:17
  The sprint works.
• 5:18
  They get the assignment done in way less time than it should take them.
• 5:23
  The problem is everything before the sprint.
• 5:27
  This is where I think parents often get procrastination wrong.
• 5:33
  We look at the whole pattern and say,"This is bad.
• 5:36
  We need to get rid of all of it." But I don't think all of it is bad.
• 5:41
  In fact, there's a skill hiding in there.
• 5:46
  So let's talk about what is actually working.
• 5:51
  Once that deadline creates enough pressure that it gets your teen to decide,"You know what?
• 5:58
  I'm doing this," they stop overthinking, they stop putting it off, they focus, and they work with a sense of urgency.
• 6:09
  They often discover that the assignment that was supposed to take them a long time didn't actually take them that long.
• 6:17
  They find out that,"Holy cow.
• 6:19
  Turns out when I really want to, I can take a two-hour assignment, and I can get it done in half an hour." That's powerful.
• 6:29
  And they're motivated by the reward of finally being done with the assignment.
• 6:36
  So what I think we should do is I think that we should take the things that are working for your teen who is procrastinating- They're already good at sprinting and just working really fast and using that deadline to motivate them to get that done.
• 6:57
  So let's not throw that away.
• 7:00
  The problem isn't that your teen is procrastinating.
• 7:04
  Just like the problem with this client of mine wasn't that she couldn't work fast, it wasn't that she couldn't do the work.
• 7:12
  She totally could.
• 7:13
  The problem was that she wasn't finishing the assignments when she could have been finishing them.
• 7:23
  The problem wasn't, she can't do the assignment.
• 7:26
  It's just that she's letting all this stress and worry build up while she's procrastinating, and she's making that buildup of stress be the factor that pushes her into making a decision of whether or not she's doing it.
• 7:42
  But once she decided,"Hey, I'm actually doing this assignment," she was super effective.
• 7:48
  She could get it done really fast.
• 7:51
  So we sat down together, and we came up with a new problem.
• 7:58
  We wanted to keep the decision.
• 8:00
  Like, look, you get to decide whether or not you're doing this assignment because honestly, sometimes schools ask you to do stupid stuff that you don't need to do.
• 8:09
  That's fine.
• 8:10
  Think for yourself.
• 8:11
  So we kept the decision.
• 8:14
  We also kept the sprint.
• 8:16
  Look, if you can get a four-hour assignment done in an hour and a half, that's awesome.
• 8:22
  We also kept all the free time.
• 8:25
  All that time that she spent dreading the assignment, staring at her computer, or watching cat videos on YouTube, we kept that.
• 8:36
  But we moved the free time from the beginning to the end.
• 8:44
  We're like,"Look, we're just gonna make the decision early.
• 8:47
  We're gonna sprint, and then once we're done with the assignment, all the time that we used to spend procrastinating, now I can spend that on friends or YouTube or whatever I want." The real cost of the old pattern was all the stress, all the unintentional free time that was just being wasted so one of the things that teens don't realize is that undone work has a way of following you around.
• 9:20
  It stays in the back of your mind.
• 9:22
  You know you should be doing it.
• 9:24
  You start to feel like,"I'm behind." You start worrying,"Is my mom gonna pester me about this?" And then it all builds up, and you're like,"Oh, my goodness, I have three things to do tomorrow." And the problem is, all that time that you've spent procrastinating does not feel like free time.
• 9:41
  It doesn't have the same stress release.
• 9:43
  It doesn't have the same level of enjoyment.
• 9:48
  And there is a mental and emotional cost to procrastinating, and we just wanna help our teens understand that.
• 9:58
  The other cost is that your stress goes up.
• 10:00
  The closer that deadline gets, the fewer choices you have.
• 10:05
  The football team that I coach, we run something called the triple option, and you have different choices.
• 10:12
  The first one, do I want to hand the ball off to my fullback?
• 10:17
  The second one, am I gonna keep this and run it myself?
• 10:21
  Or the third choice, am I gonna pitch it?
• 10:23
  As choices pass you by, you are left with fewer, you are left with fewer and fewer choices.
• 10:30
  That makes stress go up.
• 10:32
  That's part of being a human.
• 10:36
  And then another cost is that your parents get involved.
• 10:41
  Parents, they're like,"Look, I gotta remind you about your grades, about getting the assignment done." And it turns into naggy- nagging and arguing, and then sometimes you rescue your teen.
• 10:51
  Another cost is that your teen loses freedom When you're behind that last day before things are due, your whole day is now controlled over- is now controlled by all the things that are overdue that you have to get done.
• 11:11
  And this is the weird thing about procrastination.
• 11:15
  As human beings, we usually procrastinate because we want to be free right now.
• 11:21
  And I would imagine if you're anything like me, you know exactly what it feels like to procrastinate.
• 11:27
  I still do it, and I teach teens how to not do it all the time.
• 11:31
  But procrastination actually steals your freedom.
• 11:37
  It gives you a fake sense of freedom up front, but it takes it away later.
• 11:43
  Like, one of the things this young lady told me, like,"Sometimes when I'd procrastinate, I would watch YouTube, but it wasn't even enjoyable because I was stressing out, and subconsciously I was thinking about the assignment that I had to get done." Well, now she can enjoy watching YouTube because the assignment is done.
• 12:02
  She knows it's done, and she doesn't have to waste part of her mind worrying about that.
• 12:07
  She can just enjoy the free time.
• 12:11
  So this has a new pattern.
• 12:15
  I like to call it reverse procrastination.
• 12:19
  Whereas the old pattern had a bunch of extra steps in it, by the way, but it was basically they would get the assignment, and then they would avoid the assignment, and then they'd think about it, and then they'd wait and avoid it some more, and then they'd feel some pressure, and then they'd get to the point where they're like,"Oh my goodness, am I doing this or not?" And then they would sprint, and then they would finish the assignment.
• 12:43
  But they have no time for free time.
• 12:47
  The new pattern makes way more sense.
• 12:50
  Your teen is going to get the assignment, and on day one, when they get the assignment, they're going to decide,"Am I going to do this or not?" And I think it's important that your teen has that choice because this young lady, at one point, she was trying to do everything, and it would be overwhelming, and she would procrastinate everything.
• 13:12
  And she's like,"Sometimes I don't get things done, and it doesn't even hurt my grade." Yeah.
• 13:17
  So let's just decide not to do those things in the beginning.
• 13:21
  And then she'd be like,"Now I have more time to do the things that are actually important that are going to impact my grade." So the new pattern, you get the assignment You then decide,"Am I going to do this or not?" If you decide not to do it, go enjoy your free time.
• 13:38
  Awesome.
• 13:39
  If you decide that you are going to do it, sprint.
• 13:42
  Don't waste your time.
• 13:44
  Don't delay.
• 13:44
  Just get it done.
• 13:46
  I teach the concept of challenging yourself to do things in less time than you think they should take, and so far, I have had high school students and even college students tell me that this is overwhelmingly positive in their life.
• 14:04
  I had one college student, he's going to Wisconsin, and he's like,"Yeah, my teacher says we should be spending about two to three hours a night doing homework for his class." He's like,"I decided to cut that in half," so that was one to one and a half hours.
• 14:19
  He's like,"It didn't hurt my grade, so I cut it in half again.
• 14:23
  Now I'm doing homework for, like, half an hour, 45 minutes.
• 14:27
  Still didn't hurt my grades." He's like,"I tried to cut it in half again." He wasn't able to fully cut it in half, but he's like,"I realized that I can...
• 14:36
  If I do homework for half an hour a night, I can get as much done as I used to be getting done in three hours a night." That's powerful.
• 14:47
  So when your teen decides to sprint, tell them,"This is what you've been doing anyways.
• 14:53
  You've been waiting until the last second, and then you do a homework assignment in 45 minutes that should've taken you two or three hours." That's sprinting.
• 15:01
  That's awesome.
• 15:02
  And with the new pattern, where step one is you get the assignment, step two, you decide,"Am I doing it or not?" Step three, you sprint, and you get it done.
• 15:12
  The last step is you have free time.
• 15:16
  And I let the teens know,"Look, when you're done, all that time that you've saved, go enjoy it.
• 15:22
  Go spend it with your friends.
• 15:24
  Go hang out with your family.
• 15:26
  Reward yourself and enjoy it, because you're not stressing about the thing that you're putting off." The new plan is simple.
• 15:37
  Keep it simple.
• 15:38
  That's how it's supposed to be.
• 15:40
  Get the assignment, decide if you're doing it or not, sprint, get it done, and then enjoy your free time.
• 15:47
  That's it.
• 15:48
  I wish I would've learned about this when I was a teenager.
• 15:50
  I really struggled in high school.
• 15:53
  It wasn't until I was an adult going to school full-time, I was a high school principal at the time.
• 16:01
  We were doing some school accreditation stuff.
• 16:05
  I also had homework for my master's that I was working on.
• 16:11
  And it was then that I finally learned, oh, I can do this in half the time.
• 16:15
  And you know what?
• 16:16
  Sometimes A's are great, but I don't need A's.
• 16:20
  And so I would take a four-hour project and do it in two hours, and guess what?
• 16:24
  My grade usually didn't go from like an A to a B or an A to a C.
• 16:29
  It usually went from an A to an A-minus, or usually just still got the A.
• 16:36
  The goal is that when your teen gets a homework assignment, that they realize,"No, I can make the decision early.
• 16:44
  I can make it right now.
• 16:46
  And then I can guess how long this should take me.
• 16:50
  And if I think it's gonna take me two hours, I'm gonna try and cut that in half." And then start immediately.
• 16:58
  Sprint through the assignment.
• 17:00
  Work fast.
• 17:02
  And then when you finish, enjoy the free time without that mental and emotional baggage of that assignment following you around.
• 17:11
  You're going to enjoy your free time so much more because now you have a side of pride, a side of this sense of completion.
• 17:20
  That's awesome For this teen that I worked with, it was powerful when she would ask herself,"Well, how long do I think this would take?" Sometimes it was an hour, sometimes it was two hours.
• 17:35
  And then when she explored,"Well, can I cut it in half?" Not every time could she cut it in half.
• 17:41
  That's okay.
• 17:42
  But sometimes the assignments took way less time than half, and it's okay.
• 17:49
  It kinda turns it into a game.
• 17:50
  It makes it fun.
• 17:51
  It increases the sense of urgency.
• 17:54
  It also prevents perfectionism, and it keeps your teen's attention tighter.
• 18:01
  They're focused on the project, and it makes the work feel like it has an actual ending, rather than something that could go on and on and on.
• 18:13
  So the new pattern for this young lady that I was working with was as simple as get the homework, decide if I'm gonna do it, sprint, get it done, enjoy my free time.
• 18:26
  It's the same kid, the same classes, the same brain, the same desire to get out of schoolwork as much as possible.
• 18:34
  We didn't try to make her love her homework.
• 18:38
  We didn't make her become the kind of kid who spends three or four hours color-coding a planner and making sure that they get everything done.
• 18:47
  We used what was already working in her life, and then we just changed the order.
• 18:57
  So let's talk about why this reverse procrastination works so well.
• 19:03
  There's a handful of benefits.
• 19:05
  Number one, way less mental clutter.
• 19:08
  Once it's done, it's gone.
• 19:11
  It's out of your mind.
• 19:12
  No unfinished assignment is sitting in the back of your mind because remember, one of the steps is you decide,"Am I doing it or not?" When it's done, it's out of your mind.
• 19:24
  If it's one of those things that you're like,"You know what?
• 19:26
  I'm not doing this one," no problem.
• 19:27
  It's out of your mind.
• 19:29
  Benefit number two, it actually gives you more freedom, real freedom.
• 19:35
  The real freedom that doesn't come with the baggage while y- like, while you're procrastinating and you're watching YouTube but feeling guilty about it.
• 19:43
  Real, actual freedom.
• 19:45
  And it feels so much better when something is complete.
• 19:49
  There's no guilt, there's no sense of pressure and panic, no thought in the back of your mind that,"Man, I should really be doing school." A third benefit is that you get more choices.
• 20:04
  Being caught up gives you options.
• 20:07
  This is one of the strongest parts behind reverse procrastination.
• 20:12
  I wish every teen understood this, and hopefully you can teach this to your teen in a way that will make it easy or bring them to me.
• 20:20
  Hop on a free game plan call.
• 20:22
  I can teach them this.
• 20:24
  But it gives you more choice.
• 20:28
  Once you decide,"I'm doing this, and I'm getting it done quick," once you start to be caught up, you get more options.
• 20:36
  Now you can go hang out with your friends.
• 20:39
  When you're behind, everything feels like it's urgent, like,"Oh my goodness, it needs to be done now." You have no choices.
• 20:46
  Your friends are like,"Hey, you wanna go hang out?" And you're like,"No, I can't.
• 20:49
  Sorry, I procrastinated.
• 20:50
  I gotta finish this assignment." And the consequences, they always come.
• 20:55
  But when you're caught up, you can now decide what assignments matter and what assignments don't.
• 21:01
  This young lady, she's like,"Man, I used to have to do some of the stupid assignments because I had missed other things, and I had to do everything." She's like,"Now, some of the dumbest assignments that take the most time but I get the least amount of points towards, I just decide not to do it." When you're caught up, you can make that decision.
• 21:19
  You can decide how much effort something deserves.
• 21:23
  You're managing your school instead of letting school manage you.
• 21:30
  And this part surprised her.
• 21:32
  She thought doing schoolwork sooner would mean that she would spend more time doing schoolwork and that she would lose her freedom.
• 21:39
  But it did the exact opposite She applied this new pattern.
• 21:46
  reverse procrastination.
• 21:49
  Within a week, she was completely caught up.
• 21:51
  She says school now feels easier than ever.
• 21:54
  She has more free time than she did before, and that doesn't mean that every assignment is fun.
• 21:59
  She's like,"Sometimes it still sucks, but now rather than spending four hours in that feeling of suckiness, I can usually get it done in an hour." She simply stopped following the old pattern and created a new pattern that worked better for her She's thriving.
• 22:21
  She is enjoying her free time rather than being stressed while she's procrastinating.
• 22:29
  So here's a bigger lesson for you as a mom or as a dad.
• 22:36
  This is where it comes into parenting.
• 22:40
  Parents often feel like they need to fix their kids by replacing a whole entire system.
• 22:47
  Like,"Man, we gotta buy you an organizer or a planner, and you need more discipline, or you need to care more, or you need to stop being lazy, and we need to get rid of video games." And instead, I want you to just look at the pattern.
• 23:01
  What is already working well for your teen?
• 23:04
  If your teen can do four hours' worth of homework in the last hour, they can probably do four hours' worth of homework in the first hour.
• 23:16
  And if your teen was motivated by like, man, if you can get four hours' worth of homework done in one hour, you can have the remaining time to play video games or to hang out with your friends or to go get ice cream.
• 23:27
  You can build on a pattern that already exists.
• 23:31
  You can build on parts of that pattern that already work, and you can create a new pattern incorporating the parts of the old pattern that work.
• 23:42
  But to do that, you need to study the old pattern.
• 23:45
  You need to ask yourself,"What is already working here?
• 23:49
  What is he doing well?
• 23:52
  When does he finally decide to take action?
• 23:54
  Like, what motivates him?
• 23:56
  What happens before he gets the success?" And then can we move some of the useful parts of the old pattern earlier in the set of patterns?
• 24:09
  Before you try to replace your teen's whole personality, look for what's already working because sometimes the answer isn't a brand-new system.
• 24:20
  Sometimes the answer is take the existing pattern and then put it in a better order.
• 24:25
  Take the components of the pattern that are already working and highlight those.
• 24:31
  Let's put a little bit more energy there.
• 24:34
  Don't turn this into an effort to control your teen.
• 24:39
  Don't be like,"Oh my goodness, I heard this awesome podcast.
• 24:43
  You're behind in school, and this is gonna help you get caught up." I wouldn't really...
• 24:48
  I, I don't want you weaponizing this against your teen.
• 24:54
  Don't walk into your teen's bedroom and say,"Look, Ben says you're procrastinating wrong." Don't force your teen to use timers or sprints or immediate completion.
• 25:04
  Instead, get curious.
• 25:07
  Ask,"What usually happens when you wait until the last minute?
• 25:11
  How does that make you feel?
• 25:13
  What part of this homework do you think would be really easy?
• 25:20
  What part of sprinting at the last minute actually works for you?" That was one of the things with this young lady.
• 25:26
  She's like,"Oh my goodness.
• 25:27
  I'm already doing homework in less time than it should take.
• 25:31
  If I do that in the beginning, I could even have a little extra time to make the homework better." Yeah, totally.
• 25:40
  Get curious.
• 25:41
  Some more questions are,"Hey, when you finally start working on this, what is it that prompts you to start?
• 25:47
  Like, what changes here?" Or once you find that out, you could ask,"What if you moved that part to earlier?
• 25:57
  Would you rather get it out of the way and be completely free?" The beauty is you can let your teen own this process.
• 26:06
  You can let them experiment and find out what works for them.
• 26:11
  The goal isn't to take reverse procrastination and use it as one more way to control your teenager.
• 26:17
  The goal is to help your teenager notice his own pattern, the parts that work, the parts that don't work, and then decide whether he wants to make it work better So here's what I want you to try.
• 26:34
  Pick one place where your teenager procrastinates.
• 26:37
  Maybe it's homework, maybe it's a chore, maybe it's getting ready for school, and don't start by telling him what he should do differently.
• 26:46
  Don't dive in and be like,"Look, Ben says reverse procrastination." No.
• 26:51
  Start by getting curious about the current pattern.
• 26:56
  What happens from the moment you know this needs to get done until the moment that it finally gets done?
• 27:03
  And stay curious.
• 27:04
  Find what parts of this pattern work and what parts don't.
• 27:09
  And then you can involve your teen in this.
• 27:12
  "Hey, I notice that when you get this big homework assignment that should take four hours, you wait until the last hour to bust it out.
• 27:22
  What would happen if you tried moving that to the very beginning?
• 27:25
  When you get the homework, just bust it out in an hour, then you can reverse...
• 27:30
  Or, I mean, then you can enjoy your free time." That's reverse procrastination.
• 27:35
  They'll probably be like,"Wait, so I can still procrastinate, but it'll work for me?
• 27:40
  Hallelujah.
• 27:41
  Yeah, let's do it." If school has turned into one of the biggest sources of stress in your house, this is exactly the kind of thing that we can talk about on a free game plan call.
• 27:57
  Maybe your teen is behind.
• 27:59
  Maybe he's failing classes.
• 28:01
  Maybe he waits until the last minute for everything.
• 28:05
  And maybe you're constantly checking his grades, reminding him about assignments, emailing his teachers, and wondering how much you should step in and how much you should let him manage.
• 28:17
  Or maybe you've tried backing off, but now you're scared that he's going to just let everything fall through the cracks.
• 28:24
  We can talk through your actual situation, not some perfect parenting theory.
• 28:30
  Your teen, your situation, the pattern happening in your house, and we'll figure out what belongs to you and what belongs to your teenager, and where you might be able to make small, simple changes that create a much better result.
• 28:50
  Sometimes the answer isn't getting your teenager to try harder.
• 28:54
  Sometimes it's helping him use what he already does well in a smarter way.
• 29:01
  And if you want help figuring that out, go to benpughcoaching.com/mini and book a free game plan call with me.
• 29:10
  This is basically a free mini coaching session.
• 29:15
  Benpughcoaching.com/mini.
• 29:19
  And remember, before you try to change your teenager, study their pattern.
• 29:25
  The solution might already be there.
• 29:28
  It might just be happening in the wrong order.
• 29:33
  Remember, this young lady, she had this old broken pattern.
• 29:37
  She'd get the assignment, she would avoid it, she would stress about it, and then she would finally decide whether she's doing it or not.
• 29:44
  And then she would sprint.
• 29:45
  She'd get it done.
• 29:46
  And then she'd have barely any time to enjoy her free time.
• 29:51
  Her new pattern was as simple as,"I get the assignment and I just decide right there, am I doing this one or not?" And then she sprints.
• 29:59
  She gets it done.
• 30:01
  And then she can enjoy all that free time Remember, your team probably already has parts of the pattern that are working.
• 30:13
  They just are probably in the wrong order.
• 30:15
  And if you want me to help you and your team figure that out, simply go to benpughcoaching.com/mini.
• 30:24
  I'll talk to you soon