Don't Delay! Anti-Procrastination CBT Strategies to Help You and Your Patients
Discover practical, evidence-based strategies to tackle procrastination head-on in this recorded webinar presented by Richard Lam, LMFT—a Master Therapist, TEAM-CBT trainer, and host of “The Feeling Good Therapist” on YouTube. This session breaks down the most effective Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) techniques to help therapists and individuals transform procrastination into productivity. You’ll learn to spot “tempting thoughts,” set realistic goals, and apply the Devil’s Advocate Technique to challenge self-defeating narratives. Richard also shares clinical vignettes, pitfalls to avoid, and accountability methods that empower both you and your clients to get things done.
IN THIS VIDEO:
Jill Levitt: Okay welcome everyone to our monthly Wednesday webinar series with Feeling Good Institute. This month we're presenting to you don't delay, anti-procrastination CBT strategies to help you and your patients presented today by Richard Lam and Sue Kessner. I'm going to tell you a little bit about who we are at Feeling Good Institute and a little bit about myself and then I'll introduce you to Richard and Sue. So let me take a moment to just give you a quick snapshot of what we're all about here at Feeling Good Institute and to share with you our mission to make a difference in people's lives through elevating the practice of therapy. Our story started with one big goal which was really to make therapy better and to help people who are going through tough times and we achieve this by training and certifying therapists in effective therapy techniques. We have clinics in California and New York and we offer video therapy across the US and Canada and we offer regular traditional therapy weekly hour-long sessions as well as intensive therapy where patients join us for several hours a day several days per week in one-on-one therapy to speed up their treatment. And now I'm going to tell you just a little bit about who I am as we get started today. So I'm a clinical psychologist and I'm also the director of training at the Feeling Good Institute and I was originally trained by some of the world's most prominent CBT leaders in our field over on the East Coast. But my effectiveness as I think really dramatically increased when I started working with David Burns out here in California over 17 years ago and the framework that he created which is called TEAM-CBT really changed the way that I practice. It taught me step by step to make therapy really exceptionally effective and so I feel really excited to share Dr. Burns's approach to CBT called TEAM-CBT with all of you in these monthly webinars and if you'll share the next slide Richard just to let you all know when I started learning from David Burns back in 2008, the only way you could get trained in TEAM-CBT was to learn directly from David at Stanford or to attend one of his intensives 4-day intensive that would occur in different cities. And learning this model took really honestly years of training and my colleagues and I have worked really hard over the years at Feeling Good Institute to develop a comprehensive therapist training program that helps you to become an excellent therapist in a fraction of the time. So on this slide you can see the journey that we hope you might be interested in joining us on and today you're joining us for a 1 hour free CE webinar and we hope that maybe you'll join us in our next day-long workshop at the end of March which we'll tell you about at the end of the hour or maybe our asynchronous course skills training and many of you also have continued training with us and joined us for the fast track to level three course. So just wanted to lay out a possible journey for you on this slide and now I'll get into the content of today. So if you're here for your one free CE then please make sure you stay till the end of the hour and you will see in the chat box we will drop the link for you to fill out your CE survey so make sure you do that today and then within a week after you can watch the webinar and then complete your CE survey within a week you'll get your certificate of completion via email so don't expect that today but we'll send it out to you within the week.
And then now I'm going to introduce your awesome presenters. So Richard Lam is here with us today and Richard is a marriage and family therapist and a TEAM-CBT Ambassador and educational speaker with the Feeling Good Institute and Richard's clinical specialties include OCD, panic disorder and relationship problems and Richard also teaches TEAM-CBT to therapists worldwide and hosts the Feeling Good therapist on YouTube which provides helpful descriptions and roleplay demonstrations of various TEAM CBT techniques. And we also have Sue Kessner with us and Sue has been a licensed professional clinical counselor since 2014 and she has a really deep commitment to creating safe compassionate spaces where clients feel truly heard and supported. Sue specializes in substance abuse codependency, anxiety, depression and supporting women through transitions and she's a certified level three TEAM-CBT therapist. Sue has also spent many years as a school counselor in the Bay Area giving her unique insight into the needs of diverse clients. And so now I'm going to turn you over to Richard.
Richard Lam: Great thank you for the introduction here hi everyone. I just want to share a really quick story just to better understand the topic for today and understand who I am a little bit more. So when I was a young therapist in grad school I got very curious about this model of therapy called TEAM-CBT and I got the opportunity to join a group at Stanford to learn more about it and then I got this really amazing internship at the Feeling Good Institute where I was supervised by Angela Krumm and I remember every supervision was amazing I felt like I learned so much and Angela helped me add so many tools to my toolkit and she helped me really obtain my level three certification and everything was going very smoothly but then I attended one of my most memorable supervisions. Angela said to me that this is all I can teach you and now you have to start teaching others because if you want to learn more you have to start teaching because you start to learn the more you teach and initially my internal thought process was no there's more that I can learn from her. I mean there's so many tools and techniques out there I am not ready to teach so really I did whatever it took to put off the teaching and you'll learn more about tempting thoughts today which drive procrastination and the thoughts that I had were maybe next week or maybe after I get my license then I'll start teaching or I'll do it when I feel more ready and these were the thoughts that really helped me procrastinate the teaching process and then week after week of procrastinating Angela finally asked me if I wanted to do something called The Habit Addiction Log which is something that you'll learn today. Some of the self-control thoughts that I came up with was teaching will help me learn more of the things I didn't know that I didn't know and this is an opportunity where I can not only help others but I can help myself grow as well so there's a dual benefit. And then lastly I had this thought is I always say later but later really never comes. I'll start now and I'm sure everyone knows how the story ends as I'm here teaching you today about procrastination and I'm feeling really grateful because not only will I learn and grow in this process but I'll also be able to teach you as well so it's definitely going to be a collaborative process today. So I'd love to hear a little more about your questions at the end which will help me understand especially if I feel stuck around it too. So that being said here's a picture of me with David Burns right in the center here and some of my colleagues wearing this little silly Feeling Good Institute cape just thought I wanted to share at the beginning of my process of becoming a TEAM-CBT therapist.
So that being said I just want to share a little bit more about the agenda today. So today we'll be learning about identifying tempting thoughts and I'll go into more depth in each one as we go or Sue as well when she covers the positive distortions and then we'll be doing a demo of the Devil's Advocate technique today and then followed by a really amazing vignette that Sue will be bringing to us to really consolidate the learning a bit more. Lastly of course definitely want to answer any of the questions that come up because I can imagine there might be a lot when it comes to this. So one of the things I want to go over is when it comes to CEs we have learning objectives and some of the ones that I want you to really familiarize yourself with or pay attention to rather is identifying tempting thoughts that drive procrastination and also applying The Devil's Advocate technique to challenge distorted thoughts related to procrastination. So let's jump into procrastination a little bit. I feel there are so many definitions when it comes to procrastination I just want us all to be on the same page today so let's all use this universal definition of procrastination which is the action of delaying or postponing something. So a few examples of that might be putting off going to the gym or wasting time watching reels or YouTube TikTok whatever it may be putting on off going to bed on time saying you'll start work at 9 but not getting around to until 10 or maybe even emails my personal procrastination. So this is going to be our definition today and I want you to remember this because our next slide will actually go over a poll today. So what I want you to look at is how often do you procrastinate personally for me I do procrastinate so I'm definitely in this category here it's very common so I just want to know how common it is. So feel free to answer this often do you procrastinate not at all, less than an hour, daily 1 to 5 hours daily, 5 to 10 or 10 plus hours daily. Let's take a moment while people answer to this poll and then I love this part because then we can sit in awkward silence.
Jill Levitt: I'm just running the poll Richard sorry I just hid myself so I wasn't distracting people but let me see I can put myself back on here. You might need to spotlight myself and Sue. Oh I just got rid of you guys okay give me one second here everybody hold on let me fix that okay. And let me end the poll and share the results with all of you today. Richard can you see the results?
Richard Lam: I can yeah I love these results and everyone can see it as well is that right?
Jill Levitt: Yes.
Richard Lam: Great. So as you can see wow I'm very impressed by the 2% of people who put not at all I wish I was in that category. But as you can see the two top main categories are less than an hour daily or 1 to five hours daily between 61 to 31% which is actually fairly accurate when it comes to the data behind it. If we look into this data you'll see that when it comes to college students a lot of them do believe that they're procrastinators where 75% of them consider themselves procrastinators while 80 to 95% admit to procrastinating at least occasionally and when it comes to adults and I'm imagining all of us here are adults maybe not but when it comes to the percentage here about 20 to 25% of adults are chronic procrastinators. 42% of adults procrastinate often or daily and at the end of the day the time spent procrastinating is fairly accurate in terms of 1.59 hours when it comes to what we were looking at in terms of the data here and on a yearly basis what that estimates to is 55 days spent procrastinating on average. Just think about that that's that's going crazy right 55 entire days procrastinating here. So really the impact of this especially when it comes to the workplace environment is 88% of workers procrastinate for at least one hour daily. So just keeping that in mind that this is super common, something that I experience and majority of people here experience as well. So that being said now that we have a little bit of data behind this I want to see a little bit more about what we can do about procrastination if you're wanting to help with it of course. So that being said we'll jump into identifying tempting thoughts and something called the HAL which is the Habit Addiction Log and if you don't have a Habit Addiction Log that's totally fine there are definitely alternatives where you can well let me explain this and I'll explain the alternative later. So with the Habit Addiction Log this is a picture of how it looks on the here and essentially what it is is it gives us a snapshot in time and it's going to be really important that we identify moments where we struggle where we're really not feeling this is ideal.
For example if someone who's playing sports and they have let's say Tim who's playing tennis and they have a coach and the coach is going to identify the specific time when you didn't do things perfectly so you can focus on improving that one moment. Very similarly is we can use this to coach ourselves where we have this Habit Addiction Log where we identify the specific moment where things went wrong and that's why the specific moment in time is so important and the thing about this is we want to be very specific. So when I think about moment in time maybe there's that moment right before let's say at 9:00 a.m. I wanted to check my email and I have thoughts I'll do this later so that's a moment in time but then maybe there's 30 minutes later after I watch some YouTube videos and there's this different moment in time where I'm actually feeling bad and guilty of oh I didn't watch it or I didn't check my email rather I watched YouTube. So two very different moments in time and generally the moment I want to focus on when it comes to the Habit Addiction Log is that first one that I talked about the moment where I feel tempted to avoid doing what I want to do checking my emails. So that's the specific moment in time here. So after we identify the specific moment in time there are a few things we have to do after that. One of the things is identifying emotions and I find emotions to be very helpful to understand why we procrastinate if you're feeling stressed exhausted or overwhelmed of course you want to put that off right. This helps us understand this moment to a deeper level and the thing about emotions is the Habit Addiction Log isn't intended to change emotions, it's intended to change behavior however sometimes there is an indirect indirect change that comes with it or some sort of correlation that comes with it too where when you change your behavior sometimes you feel better but it's not guaranteed. Just putting it out there so everyone's aware of what this is intended for.
So I wanted to talk a little bit more about what's the difference between a tempting thought and a negative thought. I think often times people are fairly familiar with what a negative thought is thoughts I'm a loser or I'm not a good therapist or I'm so dumb for checking or not checking my email and focusing on YouTube right. These are thoughts that put us down make us feel negative and not so great. However what a tempting thought is these are thoughts that has a call to action. It's telling you to do something for example it might be something oh you can do this later and generally what comes from this is it gives me some sort of relief or positive emotion and the intent of the tempting thoughts are it helps with moving you towards a different behavior that you're wanting. So that's the difference between the two and we'll go over a few examples of what that look like so people understand a little bit more. Oh great I just covered this a little bit so relief or positive feeling. So a big part of this is when you do the tempting thoughts generally it does get to relief or positive feelings. So let's get into some of the more well rather there's one thing I mentioned that I promised you guys in the beginning here is this is the Habit Addiction Log however if you don't have this that's totally fine. If you want to buy it you can reach out to David Burns at the Feeling Good website. If not a different variation that sometimes I use when I don't have it in front of me is I just write down oh what happened and what are the emotions that come up and I write down the emotions and follow by writing down some of the tempting thoughts and that'll help me get started with shifting things and then create more self-control thoughts. Fairly simple to write things down so it's not 100% needed that you need this form however it's very convenient got to put that out there. So that being said let's jump over to some of the common tempting thoughts. So that that'll be something I can do this tomorrow or that's too overwhelming or I'll do it after I watch one more reel, one more TikTok, one more Instagram post or I'll do it when I feel more motivated or one more day can't hurt or only five more minutes then I'll get started or I deserve a break after a long day I can start later or I'll do it right after I do the dishes even though that's productive. So there are so many different tempting thoughts that we have and one thing that I want to turn over to you make this a little more collaborative. I'd love to learn a little bit more about different tempting thoughts. So how about we open it up and feel free to send some of your tempting thoughts over to Jill in the chat and she'll read some out to me. So not only can I learn a little bit more about tempting thoughts but everyone else as well so feel free to do that now.
Jill Levitt: So I am looking at the chat now and you're all going to send me your own unique tempting thoughts or you can share tempting thoughts of your patients as well and I will start reading. I won't be able to get them all but I got one I can do this tomorrow. Tracy was talking about her invoicing. I just can't do this right now I'm too exhausted. This is hard. I am free to do it whenever I want. I love these. I'm not sure how to do it. I'm too tired to do it now. I'll rest first. You have time to do it later. I'm too tired. I'll take a break first. It'll be okay. I can just figure it out later. Let me just see any new ones. Today is ruined so I might as well just start fresh tomorrow. I can do it when I feel it. I work so hard I deserve this time. I can do it when I have more energy. I don't have to do it now. How's that Richard?
Richard Lam: Yeah I love it I'm just smiling along the way because as you're reading it I'm like oh my God I had these all of these so it's fairly common right. I can imagine as Jill's reading it off a lot of us relate to it I've had these thoughts before. So as you can see it's fairly common for a lot of us to experience these. So thank you Jill for reading those out to us there and thank you everyone for contributing your tempting thoughts there. So let's go over a little bit more about what we would do next after a Habit Addiction Log. Generally what I to do is understand a little bit of the goal. I to determine what our goal is. They might come in because they're saying I want to help with procrastination but what exactly is the goal. If the more specific we are with the goal the more likely we'll be able to be successful. It's like if someone tells you oh you should work out next week I'm probably not going to work out next week but if someone tells me hey you have to work out next week at 9:00 a.m. and you're going to do 10 minutes on the elliptical I'm more likely to do that. It's very specific. So a big part of this is some of the questions you might think to yourself is how often will this be or how long will you be doing it or what will you be doing and it'll help us be very specific so that goal is achievable. And the reason why I to doing this is there is a sense of accountability that comes with it. So if our patient is telling us this is our specific goal and we want to accomplish this now they're going to stick to that and they're like I have to achieve this one specific thing so they'll come in knowing there's a bit of accountability from their therapist. But not only that but having a specific goal will actually help us understand the resistance of the goal a little bit more. For example if I wanted to work out in the morning, one of my resistances would be I don't the cold. It's very cold in the morning and that's why I'm not going to do it at 9 a.m. So that's one of the things that we won't cover today however one thing I highly recommend is on David and Joel will go over a lot about the resistance work and you'll be learning skills the triple Paradox to address resistance to certain habits as well and one of the things they'll talk about is a little more about the goal and Habit Addiction Log and everything all together. So this is a little bit of a snippet if you're interested in learning more about habits so just putting that out there. That being said let's talk a little bit more about identifying distortions. So I'll pass it over to my lovely co-host Sue who will tell us a little more about identifying distortions.
Sue Kessner: Thank you Richard. We're going to focus now on identifying positive distortions as Richard said and these mirror the list of negative distortions that we are probably all familiar with if we're familiar with the work of Dr. Burns. Remembering that negative distortions work to maintain depression and anxiety but what you might not be familiar with is that positive distortions maintain problems with habits like procrastination. So negative distortions are a faulty way of thinking that make us feel worse and positive distortions make us feel good and offer relief at least initially. They lead us to making choices that push us toward unwanted behaviors behaviors that we later come to regret. This tempting way of thinking gives us a false sense of relief generally leading to actions that we really don't want to be taking. In this technique we start by introducing the concept of positive distortions to clients and we ask them to identify the positive distortions that are driving their procrastination. When they start to realize that their procrastination is based on distorted thinking they are better able to change their thinking. So let's look at the list here in front of us. First of all we have all or nothing thinking where you view the world in black and white terms or all and nothing. So your example of that might be I can't do it now it has to be the perfect time. We might also do overgeneralization where you think about a positive event as a never-ending pattern of success for example I've done it before so I can do it again. You're in a mental filter you dwell on the positives and ignore the negative consequences so an example of that might be the last time I put something off I still did a good job so I'm sure it will be fine this time. In discounting the negative you tell yourself that negative facts don't count and this maintains helps you maintain a universally positive self-image so an example of that might be I've been putting off for a while but I always work better under pressure so it's not a big deal. Then we come to jumping to conclusions which are in two parts, mind reading and fortune telling.
In mind reading you make assumptions about how other people are thinking and feeling for example you may assume that other people don't have to struggle with temptation to put things off. Although what we saw from the poll is that many people struggle with this temptation to put things off and fortune telling where you make an unrealistic positive prediction about the future, for example I'll get everything done in time no problem. Next slide. We also go into magnification or minimization. In magnification you either blow the positives out of proportion or shrink them for example I'm taking a break right now and taking a break right now will make me feel so much better. Emotional reasoning where you base your view of reality on what you're feeling for example I deserve a rest and I feel I deserve a rest so it's okay to put things off for now. Should statements, you use should statements to increase the desire to procrastinate. I should wait until I feel more motivated to work or labelling statements where you might say I need rest because I've been working so hard lately and taking a break will help me refocus later. So the last one is labeling and this is where you attach a positive label to yourself to justify your procrastination. You might say I'm a perfectionist so I need to wait for the ideal moment to dive into a task. I also wanted to thank Marina Dyck and Tyan Trong for some of these wonderful examples.
Richard Lam: Lovely thank you Sue. Yeah I'm a big fan of Marina or man now I'm slipping. Well who was the it was.
Sue Kessner: Tyan and Marina.
Richard Lam: Yes. Yeah two of one of my favorite teachers out there and I think one of the lovely part of it is being part of the team community really helps us connect to a greater degree and I think I remember this thread going on a little bit and the list serve. So one of the amazing things is we can connect a little bit more in terms of helping each other through email and on this list serve. So one of the many benefits when it comes to being part of the certification program. So thank you Sue for kind of bringing this to life here and kind of sharing with us these positive distortions. That being said let's jump over to The Devil's Advocate technique one of my favorites. I roleplay techniques so this is going to be a roleplay technique and it's the in our childhood you remember those cartoons with the angel and devil on your shoulder these angel devil versions of you and the angel will be telling you to do good things and the devil will be tempting you to do bad things and in this role play what's going to happen and how I to present it is this we're going to be playing that version of the devil tempting them however the angel is it actually on vacation so it's up to you to fight back against that devil. And there are definitely two roles in this one and for our patients they'll be playing the role themselves while we play that little devil version of them tempting them using the tempting thoughts that we've came up with together on the Habit Addiction Log or a variation of the Habit Addiction Log of course. And so what we'd be doing is tempting them to do the behavior that they don't want to do and this is a very paradoxical approach and a lot of therapists will be more tempted to help their patients overcome their addiction rather than use their temptations to tempt them to do the behavior and a big part of this is by actually trying to cheerlead them or trying to encourage them to do the behavior it actually does the opposite creates more resistance for them. One thing that comes to mind for me is it's when you're not feeling well and you had a bad day and you go to your partner and you're telling them about what's going on and they offer help. First thing is I'm not going to take your help and you just want to feel understood and kind of understand a little more and I think a big part of this is and what you'll learn at the workshop again is comes with a lot of empathy and connection at first before we use this more paradoxical approach and using this technique.
So just remembering that this comes with a lot of empathy beforehand and also throughout as well this entire process of the connections with our patients. So that being said I just wanted to talk about self-control thoughts and the importance of writing it down and the importance of writing it down is research shows that writing things down or typing things down is a way to help internalize the learning process and that's why when we go to school we are always typing things down or writing things down because it helps ingrain that memory. Something about the physical and the mental connection that helps us with the learning process here. So that being said I do want to do a demonstration today but one of the things I want to talk about is an example. So this is a variation of a Habit Addiction Log that I have for myself here and how this works is I'll just go over this with you and then Sue will be playing a person who is essentially procrastinating on her taxes. So this is very similar to what we talked about is I'm going to have that tempting event. So Saturday morning planning to do taxes at maybe 9:00 a.m. or something and one of the things is they're feeling tempted so I bolded it but sometimes if you're writing a time you can circle it tempted, stressed, overwhelmed, burdened, uninterested turned off unhappy, nervous, alone and pessimistic. So a lot of negative emotions coming up here and one of the things that you'll see is these percentages and what these percentages represent in the percent before is in that moment how tempted were they feeling and in this situation they were feeling 90% tempted out of a 100. So each one will help us understand a little bit more and will also help us with identifying a little more of the tempting thoughts too. And as you can see these tempting thoughts are very similar to the ones that we've came up with in terms of the very common ones but also some that are tailored to taxes specifically for example I can do my taxes later, I have all weekend or it’s going to be so much work I can just take a 15 minute break before I start and I work so hard all weel, I deserve a break on the weekend and I’ll start Monday or I feel motivated to do it later today so I’ll wait till then. Doesn’t matter too much if I finish it now I can do it later and these are all telling thoughts that came up in this example of the avoiding the taxes and most importantly I do want to go over the percentages here, becasue often times people who are familiar with a mood log with a percentage on how true each of these thoughts are. However, the percentage here actually represents how tempting it is. For example, if someone ever gave me a tempting thought of ice cream is just so good, you should just have one bite and honestly for me that’s true, you’re not going to convince me that ice cream is disgusting. I love ice cream, so there is no way to really change that for me however, the temptation is what I’m looking at the percentage of temptations towards that tempt me towards ice cream and very similarly is when there’s a lot of temptations towards procrastination, we’re looking at these percentages in terms of how tempting it is to procrastinate when it comes to these tempting thoughts . So that being said Sue are you kind of feeling ready to dive with me for this demonstration?
Sue Kessner: Absolutely.
Richard Lam: Let's go for it. So Sue, I'm so glad that you're coming in today. I know you've been putting off the taxes for such a long time now and most recently on Saturday, I know you were planning to do it and Saturday morning you were planning to do the taxes and I know a lot has come up for you in terms of all these emotions and all the tempting thoughts that we've captured. And I have a really awesome technique that I want to tell you about today and see if you want to do. Is it okay if I share a little bit more about this technique?
Sue Kessner: Sure
Richard Lam: So this technique is called The Devil's Advocate technique and how it will work is it's a roleplay technique but don't worry, you get a really easy role. You just play yourself, Sue. It's so your suit. And for me, I'm going to be playing, you know those cartoons like the angel and devil on your shoulder. I'm going to be playing that little devil version of you on your shoulder and I'm going to tempt you using all the tempting thoughts that we come up with on this Habit Addiction Log. But the thing is, you don't have the help of the Angel because the Angel's on vacation. So your job exactly. So your job is actually to fight back against this devil version of you. So that way you can create more of the self-control thoughts. And the reason why we do this is because if you can defeat these tempting thoughts now, you're more more likely to be able to do it on your own later and to really reinforce those self-control thoughts to kind of create the ability to fight against the procrastination. Is this something that you'd be willing to try with me, Sue?
Sue Kessner: I sure will.
Richard Lam: Wonderful. But before we begin, I just wanted to clarify in this role play, who am I again?
Sue Kessner: You're the devil with the temptation..
Richard Lam: Exactly. I'm that little D version of you and who are you?
Sue Kessner: Myself. I'm Sue.
Richard Lam: You got it. You ready?
Sue Kessner: Yeah.
Richard Lam: Well, you know, Sue, you can do the taxes later. You have all weekend.
Sue Kessner: You know that's what you told yourself last time and your taxes didn't get done and you had to pay a fine so better get them done now.
Richard Lam: I love that. Who who won this interaction, me, the devil or or you?
Sue Kessner: I think I won it.
Richard Lam: I think so too. Was it like a small win or big win?
Sue Kessner: A big win.
Richard Lam: Big or huge?
Sue Kessner: I think big.
Richard Lam: Big, great. Yeah. Well, let's kind of capture that here. And of course, we can aim for a huge win. Did you want to try that again or would you prefer to just write this down as of right now? We can come back to it later using some other techniques.
Sue Kessner: Let's do this and and keep moving.
Jill Levitt: Write down and then let's remind Sue to use the I when she responds.
Richard Lam: That's right. So definitely use the I version of it, right. Because you're fighting against me, the devil. So of course, Sue, I would want you to write this down as well in the self-control thought and then the percent belief we can put a percent belief but generally I like to kind of just write small, big or huge. So I have an idea what's going on. So we can just write big here if you want you to. And then lastly, I'm wondering after creating the self-control thought, how tempting is it now in this percent after a box here? How tempting is, I can do my taxes later have all weekend after we created the self-control that?
Sue Kessner: Maybe 20%.
Richard Lam: Yeah, 20%. Wonderful. We kind of decreased it significantly from 100 to 20%. And the intent of this Habit Addiction Log is actually to decrease the temptations enough so that way we can still do the behavior that we want to do, right? So I love that we decreased it. Are you ready to try the next one with me, Sue?
Sue Kessner: Sure.
RichardLam: You know it's going to be so much work. You can just take a 15 minute break before you start.
Sue Kessner: You know 15 minute breaks stretch to half hour breaks and suddenly an hour has gone by. I better start now.
Richard Lam: Who won that one, me or you?
Sue Kessner: I did.
Richard Lam: Yeah. Small or big?
Sue Kessner: Big.
Richard Lam: Big or huge?
Sue Kessner: Huge.
Richard Lam: Wonderful. I love that. Let's write that down, right. Write it down the self-control thought and then we'll write huge here and how tempting is it now that it's going to be so much work and I can just take a 15 minute break before I start?
Sue Kessner: Oh, maybe 10%.
Richard Lam: Lovely. Let's put 10% on the percent after here. You ready to try one more?
Sue Kessner: Sure.
Richard Lam: Great. But you know, you work so hard all week. You definitely deserve a break on the weekend. You can start on Monday.
Sue Kessner: If I start on Monday, I'm only going to have one day to prepare. That's not enough time. I better start now.
Richard Lam: Lovely. I like that. Who won, you or me?
Sue Kessner: Me.
Richard Lam: Small or big?
Sue Kessner: Big.
Richard Lam: Big or huge?
Sue Kessner: Huge.
Richard Lam: Wonderful. And we'll write that down in the self-control thought, capture the huge right here, the percent belief. And what about the percent after, how tempting is this now for you, Sue?
Sue Kessner: It's maybe 10% again.
Richard Lam: Wonderful. That's lovely. We're decreasing the temptations quite a bit. Well, let's pause right there. Thank you, Sue, for such an amazing demonstration today and kind of showing how this would kind of play out in terms of a a demonstration. And one of the things I want to highlight is as you can see, we capture the distortions here. We captured the percent belief, self-control thought and kind of like the after percentages of the temptation. And then after we do all the attempting thoughts and I'm just not doing it today just for the sake of time. However, after we completed that, we'd actually go back up here in the percent after we start rating how tempting and how stressed or how uninterested they're feeling now. And remember the intent of this is actually to change behavior. So maybe the temptations might decrease. However, the stress uninterested, nervousness, unhappiness might actually stay the same or sometimes they might increase too. So or sometimes they decrease. So a big part of this is remember this Habit Addiction Log is intended to change behavior, not emotion. So that being said, I'm going to pass it over to Sue who will help us understand a little bit more of everything that we learned today in in a case example. So I'll pass it over to you, Sue.
Sue Kessner: Thanks, Richard. I've been working with Lisa who is a 17-year-old high school student. She's a high school senior and she has applied to a lot of colleges and confronted herself with found herself with four college applications that she had to submit by Monday. And the situation is that it was Friday afternoon. She came home from school and she was confronted by a pile of applications and she was anxious and tired and unmotivated and her thoughts came up immediately like, I can do my applications later. I have all weekend and if I just take a nap now, I'll feel more like doing them later on this afternoon or evening. So we did several techniques. I identified, talked about the habit and addiction log and identifying distortions. And we went over the positive distortions and we also did The Devil's Advocate technique that you just saw us demonstrate and then I taught her little steps for big feats which is a basically putting things into small doable bite-size steps. And there's also anti-procrastination sheet which we don't have time to go into now. But if you come on March 28th to the Habits and Addiction Workshop that Jill and Dr Burns are going to be doing, there'll be more information on that then. But all of these helped her a great deal. And I think next slide Richard, so what she decided to do was in terms of her tempting thoughts, she came up with self-control thoughts. So and when she was feeling, I'm so tired. I just need a little nap. I'll start on my applications after dinner. She turned that around to, it probably won't happen that way. Naps have a habit of stretching out. If I put it off, chances are I won't do it. I better start now. Then she had the tempting thought of, I worked so hard at school all week. I deserve a break on the weekend. And she realized if I wait till Sunday night to start, I'll have only a couple of hours to do my applications. A couple of hours is not enough time. I better start now. And she had a goal that we worked on of doing two hours of college applications each day from 4 to 6 PM. So it was a very specific doable actionable goal.
Richard Lam: Lovely, thank you, Sue, for such an amazing example. As you can see with this case example with Lisa, very similar to what a lot of us experienced and maybe even some of your kids or something that you've experienced before when you were applying to to grad school or undergrad. And I'm just on this page on resources now and I there's a lot of wonderful resources. But the top two that I I can think of is the Feeling Great by David Burns. A lot of good work, a lot of good stuff in there in terms of not only dealing with habit but relationship and also mood stuff like anxiety and depression. And another one that really helps specifically in terms of habits and some of you might have read this book. I I find that it's a really helpful book is something called Atomic Habits, an easy and proven way to build good habits and break bad ones. And of course, there's a few research articles or more data when it comes to a little more of habits and anti-procrastination. And so feel free to utilize these resources here. That being said, we're kind of jumping over to some Q&A, one of my favorite parts of this. So kind of learn more and also to answer any of your questions because I know we covered a lot today. So I can imagine quite a bit of questions. So that being said, I'll pass it over to Jill to read a some questions for us.
Q&A Session