Episode 11 – How to stop procrastination, with Michael Tefula

February 18, 2015 Podcast

Welcome to the 11th episode of the Graduate Job Podcast.

This week I speak with bestselling author Michael Tefula as we cover the topic of how to stop procrastinating in your search for a job. Michael shares his strategies for recognising the reason why you are procrastinating in your job hunt, and also tips for how you can overcome it. If you have been putting off applying for a job, or have several half-finished online applications, then this is the episode for you.

You can download the podcast to your computer or listen to it here on the blog. Additionally, you can subscribe via iTunes, or Stitcher radio.

MORE SPECIFICALLY IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT:

  • What exactly procrastination is and why you should be concerned about it
  • The 4 P’s of procrastination
  • The different reasons why you might be procrastinating and putting off applying for a job
  • The role of fear and probability as causes of procrastination
  • Strategies for how to begin writing online applications
  • How YouTube could be standing in the way of the job of your dreams
  • Top tips and hints for overcoming procrastination
  • The role of passion in combatting procrastination
  • How an egg timer could help you get a graduate job

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Transcript – Graduate Job Podcast #11 – How to stop procrastination, with Michael Tefula

James:  Welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast. Today we are speaking to Michael Tefula, author of the excellent Student Procrastination: Seize the Day and Get More Work Done and also, How to Get a First.

Michael, welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast.

Michael:  Thanks, James. Thank you very much for having me.

James:  Well, I’ve given our listeners a brief overview. So, before we dive into today’s topic of procrastination, why don’t you tell us a little bit more about yourself, what is it that you do and how you came about in becoming a bestselling author.




Michael: Well, thank you very much for the introduction, James.

I’m a bit of dabbler, so to speak, if that makes any sense; but in a nutshell, by day I work as a research analyst in the investment industry but then by evening, actually, I’ve got a big passion for writing and I’ve been writing for several years now and it’s something which I sort of do on a daily basis. So, that’s how I ended up writing my first book, How to Get a First. So, I wrote that immediately after graduating from university. I was fortunate enough to graduate with a first class degree and over the years while I was at university, I’d been researching and reading about ways to improve your memory, ways to not procrastinate, ways to motivate yourself and I had all this information and all these notes all over my laptop and in various places and I thought it might be worth pulling all these things I’ve learned over the years together and building a book around it that can help other students. And ever since I wrote my first book I thought, you know what? This is something which I actually enjoy and maybe I should do a little bit more of, and subsequently I ended up writing a second book which is on a topic all students will be familiar with in some way or form and yeah, so I ended up writing a second book called, Student Procrastination.

James: It’s a great book.

Michael: Thank you.

James: And one I wished I’d been able to read when I was studying ‘cause it’s definitely something that I struggled with over my university time and also, definitely, when applying for jobs.

Michael: We all struggle with procrastination. I mean, I’ve written a book on the topic but every now and then I do sort of go back to the book, pick up tips on ways to stop putting things off.   So, it’s something we all have to live with. I guess, this part of the book where I actually talk about the fact that you can’t, it’s impossible to eliminate procrastination all together but in some ways we can manage it and live with it, and hopefully reduce as much of it as we can. But it’s definitely something we all live with in various phases of our lives.

James: I’m sure there are countless listeners listening to this episode who have half finished applications that have been putting off for companies that they really want to apply to but haven’t started yet.

So, just starting at the very beginning–

Michael: Sure.

James: –-what exactly is procrastination?

Michael: Well, procrastination, I guess— If you’re looking to define something, one of the best ways you can define something is by defining what it’s not or, perhaps, defining the opposite of it. So, the opposite of procrastination is to be punctual and to be able to deliver something on time and to be able to work towards a certain deadline, and perhaps deliver something before the deadline or at the deadline. So, the opposite of procrastination is being punctual. So, I suppose procrastination itself is, basically, putting something off when you know that you’re going to be worse off by delaying whatever it is that you need to be doing. Just to be clear, actually, not all forms of delay can be defined as procrastination. So, just because you’re putting something off doesn’t mean you’re necessarily procrastinating but a key thing is, if you’re putting something off and you know you’re going to be worse off by waiting another day or waiting another week, then you are procrastinating.

James: And it’s a topic which has impact when you are applying for jobs.

Michael:  Absolutely.

James:  When looking through applications for the grad scheme companies I’ve worked for, there’d be a massive, massive spike towards the end of the deadline–

Michael: Oh, wow.

James: –when suddenly all these applications would come flooding in. But you’re doing yourself a disservice because if you get them in early, the recruitment team would have, say, maybe 20 minutes, half an hour to look at each application. But if you wait until the end when suddenly hundreds are arriving on the same day, it’s going to be very difficult to stand out from the crowd.

Michael:  Absolutely. Absolutely. And the interesting thing is, you’d think that okay, well, procrastination is something which affects mainly students because students tend to have coursework deadlines and all sorts of deadlines which are not really imposed on them as much. So, for example, when you graduate and you’re working at a job, you’ve got hard deadlines. If you don’t meet those deadlines, you’d probably get a bad review and who knows, you might get canned or fired from the job if you don’t meet these deadlines. But when you’re at university, you sort of have the freedom and you don’t have someone on your back telling you you have to meet this deadline otherwise you’re going to get fired or you’re going to be expelled from the university. So, you’d think that students, probably, struggle more because they’ve got these deadlines and have no one on their back pushing them; but actually, even in post University, people do struggle with it. The perfect example is people that have to file tax returns, or people who are self employed. The deadline for submitting tax returns, the 31st of January, and funny enough HMRC receives a massive junk of tax returns a couple of days before the deadline. People leave it too late and then towards the last couple of days people start to submit stuff. So, it’s a pattern which is common not only at university, but even after you graduate. So, it’s definitely something that’s always worth being able to manage; and just putting things off just tends to always put you in a very bad position.

James: I agree.   So, in your book you break down procrastination into four “Ps” which we’ll go through briefly. So the first one is, you describe it as the Probability of Payoff.

Michael: Yes.

James: Quickly run through what you meant by that?

Michael:   Yes. Just so I step back a little bit, the reason why I came up with this idea of the four “Ps” of procrastination is, there are so many different reasons why people procrastinate and it’s very easy to be overwhelmed by all the various causes and I thought it might be nice to have a sort of framework that’s easy to remember, that we can sort of use to get a better understanding of what drives procrastination. So, just going back to your question, James, the Probability of Payoff, actually, it’s a very simple concept. It comes down to the fact that we will do something if we think we’re going to be successful at that particular task and we’ll also only do something if we think the payoff of doing that thing is valuable to us and it means something to us. So, in a nutshell, we’ll do something if we think we’re going to do well at that particular thing, and also if the results of doing that thing actually mean anything to us. And the more something looks hard or challenging, or the more something looks like it’s a task where we’re not able to be successful, the more we’ll put it off.   The less valuable something is to us, the more we’ll put off doing it. So, I suppose in the context of people applying for jobs, if people have application forms to fill in and it’s for jobs that they are not really interested in, then they’re probably going to procrastinate about filling in those application forms for a long time. Likewise, if students have a job they’d love to get but they doubt themselves or they’re not confident in their ability to successfully apply for that job, then they’ll put it off and they’ll delay as long as they can.

James:  Thinking about, personally, two companies who ideally the companies sounded great and you feel, oh, I’d like to work there–

Michael: Yes,

James:  –but then in the back of my mind I’m thinking, well, you’re probably not going to get in. It’s not really worth the work. Hundreds and thousands of people are going to apply. So, in the end you just talk yourself out of applying because the probability of payoff, you think, is so low that you just put it off for so long that you miss the deadline.

Michael: Absolutely.

James: There’s no chance of getting in.

Michael: Absolutely. Sometimes the statistics and numbers don’t really help students. Because sometimes you’ll hear, oh, this particular job received a thousand applications and they’re taking 20 people or something like that. You know, hearing statistics like that can put people off and just make them doubt their ability to actually get through. So, I think a lot of procrastination, in fact, falls in this category because you’ll have people who are perfectionists, for example. They think that by— if they’re going to do an application, the application has to be perfect. So, we’ll end up spending ages trying to get our application to a perfect that we end up not getting very far. You know, stuff like that, it’s all related to the probability of payoff in the end.

And the same thing applies to fear of failure. So, sometimes people stay away from applying for certain jobs because they think they’ll get rejected or they’ll think they’ll fail when they make the application. So, that is a key thing that really drives a lot of procrastination, people just being afraid or being unsure of themselves and we’ve all been there. Even now there’s certain things I procrastinate about because I’m not sure how well I’ll do if I take on this particular task.

James:   I completely agree. Perfectionism is something, again, which— Thinking back to my dissertations, it was easier to keep on researching and researching and researching than it was to actually start writing because once you start writing then you’ve got the fear of, is it going to be good enough.

Michael:  Exactly.

James:  And the same with the podcast. Before I launched I wanted the website to be perfect. I knew deep down it was an excuse because a website is never going to be perfect.  You’ve just got to get to a situation where you’ve got to start and get the application out there, get the content out there, whatever it is, draw a line and start and the rest will go from there.

Michael: Exactly.   You need to have a place to start from. So, one of the tips I use on a regular basis just to remind myself is that the first attempt will always be rubbish but you need somewhere to start from. So, if you’re writing a dissertation or if you are filling in a job application form and you’ve got to write 200 words about something, you might as well just write a first draft that is really rubbish and then work your way from there, as opposed to thinking, Oh, God, I need to actually write the perfect paragraph before I can get anywhere. So, it’s always worth to give yourself permission and just letting yourself, giving yourself permission to do something rubbish initially and then you can work from there.

James: That’s a really good point. One of my friends is a stand-up comic.

Michael: Oh, really?

James: Well, a want-to-be stand-up comic. One of the advices that he’d been given with the writing and writing jokes is to write for the rubbish bin. So, not even think about performing it but just write and write and write and get it down. Then you can skim through it, keep the 20 percent that’s good and get rid of the rest.

Michael: Exactly. Exactly. It’s a great way to overcome perfectionist tendencies.

James:  So, moving on then to the second “P” which is the Pursuit of Pleasure.  How does this tie in with procrastination?

Michael: Okay. This is an area that’s actually really interesting because I’ve been going back and forth with this particular concept the last couple of weeks and it’s down to the nature of being human. We are naturally impulsive beings. And what I mean by that is that we would rather have something that is certain today than have something that is uncertain tomorrow. So, if someone came up to you and said, I can give you 10 pounds now or I can give you 11 pounds next year, naturally you’re going to go for the 10 pounds today because that is more certain. You could probably put it in a bank and earn a bit of interest. So, naturally, we prefer things today, now, as opposed to waiting for things that are delayed.

So, any time you’re doing a piece of work if you’re phone goes off with a Facebook notification or Twitter notification or someone likes your Instagram picture, you’re going to move away from your work and you’re going to go and have a look and see, ooh, someone’s liked my picture. So, let me find out who that person is. So, Pursuit of Pleasure, actually, is the idea that by nature we like to get things that are pleasurable and immediate and nice today as opposed to putting off things into the future that might potentially give a better reward and might potentially be more fulfilling. It’s really difficult, actually, because today we probably have more distractions than previous generations. The fact that you can have a mobile phone in your hand and you can easily be connected to the rest of the world, this makes it significantly more distracting than generations ago where we didn’t have the internet and we didn’t have TV and those other things. So, the pursuit of pleasure is a massive thing today because there are just so many distractions and so many things trying to fight for our attention.

James:  Completely. I like in the book how you term it, destruction spiral.

Michael: Yes.

James: With one click leading to another click and ending up on video on YouTube leading to another video and so on, and you spend an hour.

Michael: Absolutely. We have to realize that all the—I mean, I love technology and I love apps. I love social media but we have to also understand that these things are designed to grab your attention as quickly as possible and distract you from whatever it is that you’re doing. So, YouTube is a great example. I talk about it in the book, actually, because you’ll watch a cat video and then on the side box you’ll have related video links. So, you’ll see the cat video and then in the sidebar you’ll see something about a goat attacking someone or, I don’t know, something hilarious and comical and you’ll click that and that will bring up other related links. It just turns into a downward spiral, into a whole mess of distraction. So, things like those, you know, the small things that might make you giggle or laugh a little bit but when you keep doing that, it doesn’t add up to much and this is how you end up, you look at the clock and it’s been hours since you should have been starting or since you should have been working and you wonder where the time has gone. And it’s all these little sort of pleasurable interesting things that distract people from their work and they end up taking a lot of time.

James: As you said, people are hardwired to put off the things which are difficult for their instant gratification of the click of the phone, or who’s trying to message me.

Michael: Absolutely.  Absolutely.

James:   Okay. We’ll get to Preventative Measures later on. We’ll cover some tips and ideas for how people can minimize these, later on in the show.

So, the third “P” is the Prevention of Pain. How does this relate to procrastination?

Michael:   So, again, in its simplest form, this just comes down to the fact that we don’t like doing things that are hard. We don’t like— A, we don’t like doing things that are hard; and B, we don’t like doing things that initially seem very open ended. A great example of this, actually, is at university you’ll have a dissertation question where you have to write an essay about something. Now, lecturers, professors, they have this crazy ability to make things as open-ended as possible. So, you get all sorts of essay questions which are very open-ended and when something is very open-ended, it’s very hard to be clear about where you need to start. Maybe I can think of an example question. For example, you might— If you’re taking a, I don’t know, if you’re taking a physics class, they might ask, how do you calculate the mass of the moon; or how would you build a space elevator; something open-ended like that. Or if it’s something in the Arts or if it’s something in the Literature they might say, what does Lady Gaga tell us about society today? It’s really open-ended questions and Prevention of Pain is the concept that we don’t like doing things that are going to stretch us. We don’t like doing things that are going to take a lot of effort. We would rather do things that are really simple. So, the natural instinct for us is to just stay away from anything that’s going to take a lot of time or anything that’s going to make us think hard and work hard. Again, that’s something that crops up quite a lot. But interestingly, actually, sometimes a task might be really, really simple and you’ll still procrastinate about it. So, it’s not always the case that difficult things are procrastinated more than things that are simple, but certainly in most instances, if something is vague and open-ended and big, we just don’t like doing it.

James:  And applications where you’ve got 200 words to think of an example of where you’ve shown leadership, even though they’re quite specific, is still difficult to trawl through your memory and think of a specific example to use.

Michael:  Absolutely.

James: And it’s painful and difficult to do. So, you end up putting it off and kicking it into the long grass.

Michael:  Exactly, and that’s just the nature of being human. We rather take the path of least resistance and unfortunately, a lot of important work and meaningful work does have a lot of resistance and we just have to work out ways of overcoming that resistance.

James: Finally, the fourth “P” then, Postponement of Punishment/Payoff. What do you mean by this?

Michael: Yeah. This one is great, actually. A perfect example is— and I’ve got a little bit about this in the book — is if you like to go out and you like to have a bit of a drink, in the short term you’ll go to the bar and have a few drinks, and one drink leads to another and you’ll keep drinking without worrying about the fact that if you keep having a lot of alcohol, the next day is going to be a total write-off because you’ll be hanging like crazy. So, Postponement of Punishment is really about the fact that if you procrastinate now, the consequences of procrastinating and putting things off are not immediate. So, we don’t really worry about it. We think, okay, well, I’m just going to delay this job application for another day. I’m not going to think about working on my CV for another day and I’ll be fine. And rationally thinking about it in that way, it kind of makes sense because if you’re not going to get the consequences of not doing something now rather than later, if those consequences are delayed, then the thing about it, it kind of makes sense. You’re not going to worry about something in the future. But when it does arrive, then that’s when people will start panicking and getting into a horrible mess. So, Postponement of Punishment is really based on the fact that if we procrastinate now, the consequences of it are far from the future. So, it’s just easier for us to put things off ‘cause we’re not going to be punished for it today. We’ll be punished for it in a couple of weeks or whenever the deadline arrives.

James: Or as I know, people have been caught up with the previous company I worked for where a deadline for the graduate scheme was, say, the end of February but they received so many applications that they actually brought it forward from the end of February to the end of the year.

Michael: Oh, wow.

James: So, there are all these people who are putting off and putting off and then suddenly, oh, dear.

Michael:   That’s really interesting because you’re always going to be better off applying as early as you can rather than leaving things to later. The example you just pointed out, James, is perfect because there’s a lot of situations where if you’re applying for a job, sometimes yeah, like you said, they’ll have too many applicants and they’ll A; shift the deadline or they might just close entries all together. So, it always helps just to get in as early as possible.

James: We’ve talked through procrastination and some of the ways it raises its head.

So then, moving on then to how we can beat it and one of the ways you talk in the book is through confidence. How is confidence, then, linked to how we can beat procrastination?

Michael: Well, confidence, actually— And I tie confidence and competence together because it’s one thing to be confident about something but then without having substance of competence to back it up, you can get yourself in all sorts of funny situations.   So, confidence and competence is really linked to the Probability of Payoff. So, if you’re going to procrastinate about something because you’re not sure whether you’re good enough to achieve success in that particular task, then the best way around that is to build up the skills necessary that will increase your chances of success. So, again, just looking at it from a job perspective, if people are, if you find yourself delaying a job application because you’re not sure how to write a good paragraph on an example of leadership or an example of working in a team, the best way to beat procrastination around that is to go out there and research and to find out what makes a good example of leadership and what makes a good example of working on a team, and there’s all sorts of resources you can find online. So, really, the best way to overcome that fear of failure is to, basically, just work on your skills and try to become competent at whatever task it is that you’re doing.

James: And I like in your book how you mentioned about getting a coach and the benefits of getting a coach. I mean, thinking if you say to people who are applying for jobs, would you pay 200 pounds to get the job of your dreams, a lot of people would say, yep, I’d pay that. But then if you say to them, well, would you go and get a career coach or someone who can guide you through the process? They’d be, oh, well, I can’t afford it.

Michael: Yep.

James: And speaking to the previous guests who we’ve had on the show from Jon Gregory, Denise Taylor, Richard Maun, David Shindler and Lis McGuire — they all do coaching — they’ll all have specific coaching practices aimed at guiding people through the application process, from interviews to application forms, and the opportunities are out there for people to use and reach out to and it’s not expensive if it will help to give you the skills that you are currently lacking or you feel you are lacking. It’s definitely money well spent.

Michael:  Exactly. The thing is like sometimes having a mentor or having a coach, as you say, having a person there can actually cut the amount of work that you have to do to develop your skill set. So, it’s definitely something that’s always worth considering, having someone a little bit more experienced and someone a little bit more knowledgeable to guide you as you develop your competence, that can save you a lot of time as opposed to researching and reading everything you can and then trying to figure out which are the best bits to use and which are the bits you want to discard.

James: I like also what you said in your book, “A good application is better than a perfect late one.”

Michael:  Exactly.   Absolutely.

James: It’s very true.

So, another tip you have relates to motivation, how can people get motivated to make sure that they beat procrastination?

Michael: Well, one of the quickest and easiest ways, actually, to be motivated is to simply just do what you’re inherently interested in. So people have a misconception. I certainly had a misconception of motivation; motivation is like a tap that you can just turn on and off. But the reality of it is, is one of the easiest ways to be motivated is just do something that you are inherently interested in. So, when it comes to applying for jobs, if you want to be motivated with your job applications, look for jobs which you are really interested in. That is by far the easiest way to actually become more motivated. Don’t think that motivation is something you can force yourself to have regardless of whether you’re interested in something or not. Motivation is something which is driven, mainly, by your intrinsic interest in something.

And another misconception with motivation often is, people sometimes wait until they’re motivated to do something; when in reality, actually, sometimes you become more motivated after you start acting or doing something. I think that’s where Nike’s slogan, “Just Do It”, comes to mind here because sometimes you won’t be motivated until you start putting in the work.

James: I think that’s very true. Starting is tough but you get to the point where you just need to start writing the first words, start writing the first sentences and then once you start you’ll find that you get the momentum and you keep going.

Michael: Exactly. Once you get going you get that rhythm and you can just keep it going and you’ll find yourself become more motivated because all of a sudden you’ve produced something interesting, something amazing.   So, if it’s a job application, once you have a few forms filled in, you’ll have that rhythm and you can just do a whole bunch of other applications while you’re driven and motivated.

James: And if you find you really can’t get the motivation, then you might want to take a step back and question, do I really want to apply for this job?

Michael: Exactly. Exactly, and that kind of filters through later on as well. So, if you apply for a job that you are not really interested in, that will show when you do end up being interviewed. So, the easiest thing to do is just go for things that you genuinely have an interest or passion for.

James: Definitely. It’s one of the top tips that one of my earlier guests, Richard Maun, had. You can’t fake passion and if you go to a company and you’ve got that passion, you really want to work there and you know everything about them. You can teach people skills but you can’t teach them passion.

Michael:   That is so true. That is really true.

James: Moving on next to Willpower.  You talk a lot about willpower as a tool to help beating procrastination.

Michael: Absolutely.

James:  How can you use this?

Michael: Well, the really, really interesting thing about willpower, actually, is that there’s quite a lot of research around and quite a lot of studies, a lot of studies are suggesting that willpower is actually very much like a muscle; the more you train it, the stronger it gets. But likewise, the more you use it, the more exhausted it becomes. So, in terms of using willpower to power your way through various tasks and in order to overcome procrastination, one of the things you can do to train willpower is simply by having a routine, having a routine you can stick to and follow through on a daily basis. That alone can actually get you very far. And what a lot of psychologists are finding is that if you have discipline in one area— So, for example, let’s say you go to the gym three times every week. Regardless of how you feel, every week you go to the gym three times. That same discipline, actually, permeates through the rest of your life. So, you might find yourself simply having discipline in one area can go on into another area.

But the other thing about willpower, actually, the fact that it does get exhausted, it means that there will be times which you just can’t push your way through procrastination and you can’t power your way through the same bit of work because we do get exhausted. The more you kind of discipline yourself and work persistently at something, the more you need to actually make time for rest and times where you can just basically relax a little bit. Fair enough, if you’ve got a piece of work that you need to do, focus on it for a couple of hours but make sure that you make time just to relax and have a bit of downtime afterwards.

James: Like you said about just making it a habit. One quote – I’m not sure who it’s from – I like is, what you do for anything is what you do for everything.

Michael: Wow, yeah.

James: So, each individual choice you make, whether it’s to check your phone or just to go on Facebook, these build-up and they have cumulative impacts.

So, you talk in the book about just putting your phone on flight mode so you can just concentrate on working. I mean really easy stuff. Minimize WhatsApp notifications, so they don’t—

Michael: Yeah. That is so useful. Like I’ve got WhatsApp notifications on my phone and you know when you have like group chats on WhatsApp, your phone just never stops ringing. So, that is so helpful, just being able to turn that off and being able to focus for a couple of hours and switching it back on later.

James: Also in your book you talk about just setting aside specific times a day. So, whether it’s 30 minutes where you could just set out, I’m going to spend 30 minutes a day writing one application question, and over the course of the week you’ll pretty much have the application nailed.

Michael: Exactly. Exactly. Thirty minutes, that is not a long amount of time but when that adds up cumulatively over the course of a week, that’s a good chunk of time that you’re dedicating to something that’s meaningful to you.

James: And you also talk in your book about goals. What are goals and how do they work best?

Michael:  Well, goals— There’s a lot of research around goals, actually, and a lot of that research basically concludes that people that have goals end up performing better than people that don’t have any goals. But goals are also a little bit tricky because it’s now, we’re now in February. So you’ll have a lot of people who have New Year’s resolutions and all sorts of things that they want to achieve through the year and in January you will find a lot of people in the gym working out hard and then by the time it comes to March there’s no one left in the gym.

So, I think the key thing with goals is they help direct your effort. So, if there’s a place you want to get to, it helps if you have a map or route or schedule on how you want to get there. So, what I’ve found is that if you’re setting yourself a goal, it helps to be really specific in terms of what that goal is and where you want to get to. So, as an example, when I was writing my second book, the book on procrastination, I broke down the tasks into a lot of mini goals and that meant that I knew exactly what I needed to work on and how long for as opposed to having this massive goal of, oh, I’m going to writing a book. I had a massive goal but then had loads of mini, sort of, achievements on the way to getting to the big goal. So, writing a section within a chapter and then working on the chapter, and then working on a section within the book, and then bringing the whole book together. So, goals are really powerful in directing our work and directing the things that we should be doing, but I think we also have to be really specific about what it is that we want to achieve.

James: And a classic acronym for anything goal related is SMART.

Michael: Brilliant.

James: So, making them specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time constraint.

Michael: Absolutely. That’s a very powerful way of setting goals and I think it’s really, really useful to keep that in mind.

James: You talk around some counter-intuitive tips of helping people conquer procrastination and one I liked – a couple I liked – are the scarcity mindset and the kitchen timer technique.

Michael: Oh, they’re both brilliant. They’re both brilliant. I mean, the kitchen timer technique, for anyone that hasn’t heard of it before, it’s literally the — you don’t even need a kitchen timer; you could use your phone — It’s just a way of setting your timer to, I don’t know, 20 minutes, perhaps and then focusing 100 percent on working on a task for those 20 minutes. When the 20 minutes run out, you can then go and do whatever you want to do, for maybe 10 minutes; go on Facebook, Twitter, whatever, have some tea and then come back and set the timer again to 20 minutes and just work hard core. So, that is really powerful and I use that technique a lot, even today.

Just touching on the scarcity one, that’s a really interesting point because I came across it from another author, a guy named Nassim Taleb, who is a philosopher/investor/banker and he came across the observation that if you ever want to get a piece of work done, give it to the person who’s the busiest. And the reason why that is, is when people are short on time they value the free time that they have a lot more than people who have too much time on their hands. So, the busier people get, the more, sort of, resourceful they become with the time that they have. Those are two really powerful points and, I mean, did you get a chance to try either of them?

James: Yeah, I’ve actually been using the kitchen timer technique I use for my A level revision. So I used to do 45 minutes on a timer and then reset the timer for 15 minutes break.

Michael: Brilliant. Wow.

James: So work for 45 minutes, 15 minute break and try and do that over the course of the day and I found it worked for me. I know some people recommend maybe 25 minutes as how long you can concentrate for but I found that 45 minutes works well. It’s a really good technique.

With the scarcity mind-set, at my desk at work I’ve got ‘Time Flies’ such as a little aide memoir to try and keep focused. Another tip I have at work as well is — to make sure I can remember what I’m focusing on — I’ll just write on post it notes each individual act and have that stuck on the monitor. So, if I’m focusing on planning, then you’ll have planning written on there. So, if your mind wanders, you go, oh no, planning. I’m actually doing planning. If you can just keep in mind that time is precious and once you lose it— You don’t use it, you lose it. Just helps to focus the mind.

Excellent. Well, thank you, Michael, for those. So, now moving on to the quick fire questions, what one book would you recommend for listeners?

Michael: Oh, wow. It’s so dependent on context. I think, maybe, from a career perspective and from a job hunting perspective, there’s a book I recently read by a guy called Chris Hadfield, I think, and he wrote a book called An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth. The guy that wrote the book, Chris Hadfield, he was the first Canadian astronaut to do a space walk in space. So, he wrote this book which is actually really, really powerful for graduates and he talks about things like how to work under pressure. I mean, you can imagine being in space and having all sorts of risks; how they have to deal with pressure. He talks about how to work in teams; how to prepare for a really successful career even when you’re not sure where you think you’ll end up; how to manage that; and how to, basically, have a productive attitude when you’re working in a very difficult or challenging environment. So, I think that’s the book I’d recommend if you’re looking for a job or you’re trying to figure out what to do with your life.

James: Excellent. I’ve not read that one. So, I’ll add that one to my list.

Listeners, all the books and everything we’ve talked about today can be found in the show notes which will be on the website.

Moving on, next, one internet resource that will help people in their job hunt. What would you recommend, Michael?

Michael: Ooh, that’s a difficult one. What I’d say, maybe not necessarily an internet resource but there’s an app called Pocket which allows you to bookmark various websites, whether you find the website on your phone, whether you find the website on your laptop. You can use this app to basically bookmark your favourite links in the Cloud and you can access them from anywhere. So, if you’re looking for a job and you come across a job posting, you could bookmark it in the Cloud with this Pocket app and you can always come back to it on your phone or you can come back to it on your desktop. So, categorize all the different job findings that you have. So, I think that’s something I use on a daily basis, not for jobs but just for various links I come across in the internet and it’s great because you can refer to stuff on your phone or you can refer to stuff on your browser on your laptop.

James:   Excellent. That sounds like a really useful one.

So everyone, make sure you get the app and then make sure you bookmark The Graduate Job Podcast.

And finally, what one tip would you give people that they can implement straight away?

Michael: I’d say, just going back to the concept of probability of payoff, the human nature of procrastinating and delaying things because we’re not sure whether we’ll be successful or not. I think the one tip I’d give is that if there’s a job you’d like to get or a career you’d like to pursue or an industry you’d like to get in, the biggest tip I’d give is figure out a list of five to 10 skills that would help you get into that industry or get that job, research and find out what those skills are and dedicate – I don’t know — maybe a year developing that skill set because that will give you the confidence to apply for the jobs that will give you the confidence to get into the industry and if these are skills that you’ve researched and know for sure that these are skills that will help you get into a particular sector, they’ll increase your chances of getting in if you develop them.

James: Super. That’s really, really great advice.

Michael: Thank you.

James: So, Michael, it’s been a pleasure to have you on the show. Before we close, what is the best way that people can get in touch with you and the work that you do?

Michael:  Brilliant, James. So, I’m always on Twitter. I’m always on social media. So, I suppose the easiest and best way to reach me at is on my personal website. So go to my personal website called michaeltefula.com and on that website you’ll find my Twitter, you’ll find my Instagram, you’ll find my SoundCloud, and you’ll find my LinkedIn. I’m fairly active online. So, if anyone asks questions, just reach out on Twitter; reach out on Instagram. I’m always more than happy to interact with graduates and students.

James: Super, Michael. Thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure to have you on the show.

Michael: Thank you, James, it’s been an honour.

James: Thank you again there to Michael for his time and insight today. The first key takeaway for me is on awareness. Awareness that you are actually procrastinating, and the reasons why you’re procrastinating. Once you start to recognise why you are doing it then you can start to put remedies in place. Read Michael’s book and examine the four P’s and give yourself a better idea. Looking back for me personally, it was probably fear that was holding me back, firstly a fear that I wasn’t good enough to get the job, and then perversely a fear that if I did get the job that I wouldn’t be good enough to do it. I think that stopped me from applying to quite a few companies that I probably would have liked to apply to. The second factor was, job applications are difficult. They take time, lots and lots of time if you’re going to do it properly. And since it’s difficult, you just find other easier things to do. It’s easier to keep searching for jobs than it is to sit down and apply to them. If you do procrastinate a lot definitely do check out Michael’s book. Other books I recommend are Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill, and the The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, both of which are excellent.

The second takeaway for me is on stimulus’s, what are the stimulus’s that are stopping you from working? Recognise what they are and tackle them. If it’s your phone then simply turn them off, or put it on flight mode, or one that I do at work is to simply put it out of sight. Out of sight is definitely out of mind. If it’s the internet just go somewhere where is no reception, if it’s too noisy find the quietest part of the library. If internet addiction is holding you back then check out a programme called Freedom. With Freedom what you do is you download it to your computer, then you specify how long you want freedom from the internet for and then it blocks you from getting any internet access for that time period, which is a very useful program to have.

The final takeaway for me is that everybody is different. Explore the strategies that are going to work for you, is it setting yourself a daily job application goal? Is it going to be the egg timer method of setting yourself half an hour, or 45 minutes or an hour. Where you just set that timer and then work work work with no distractions at all. As long as you are actually trying something you will get there in the end.

Right number 11 all sorted. Don’t procrastinate and visit the show notes at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/procrastination. Where you can find a full transcript of today and everything that we’ve discussed. Follow the lead from listener Jesse in Wollongong down under in Australia, g’day Jesse and get in touch on Twitter @gradjobpodcast, and also if you’ve enjoyed the show please leave a review on Itunes or Stitcher radio, we will love you forever and it also helps other people to find the show. If you’ve not already subscribed via Itunes or Stitcher radio, or on Soundcloud, you need to sort that out, it’s the easiest way to get each episode delivered to you for free and to make sure that you don’t miss a thing. Join us next week when we speak to brand expert Jennifer Holloway and cover the topic of personal branding, and talk about why even as a student you need a personal brand. I hope you enjoyed the episode today, but more importantly I hope you use it and apply it. See you next week.

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