Understand and Address Procrastination In Kids and Teenagers

Episode Transcript

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Hi everyone, welcome to the show, I am Dr. Nicole, and on today’s episode, we’re talking about procrastination. This can be a really frustrating thing to deal with as a parent, especially as kids get older and into more academics and activities and all of those kinds of things. But the good news is that when we understand what’s at the root of why our kids might be procrastinating, then we can use strategies and teaching tools to help them overcome the issue, or at least improve with it. So to talk with us all about this topic today is my guest, Leslie Josel. Let me tell you about her.

She is an ADHD-academic and parenting coach and founder of Order Out Of Chaos – a virtual company whose mission is to help parents guide their students to success in learning and in life. She started down this path when her son was first diagnosed with ADHD. She’s also the creator of the award-winning “Academic Planner: A Tool For Time Management,” a planner that helps students develop the management skills, and the award-winning artist of three books, including the recently published “How To Do It Now Because It’s Not Going Away: An Expert Guide To Getting Stuff Done”, I love that title, a respected resource on ADHD and executive functioning, Leslie writes the weekly “Dear ADHD” family coach column for, is it ADDitude Magazine?

Leslie Josel:

It’s ADDitude Magazine. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

ADDitude Magazine. She speaks to audiences all over the world, helping them utilize their resources to best navigate the task-driven world in which they live, Leslie, welcome to the show! 

Leslie Josel: 

So happy to be here! Thanks for having me, this is going to be fun!

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

This is going to be a great conversation. So relevant to so many families under normal circumstances, and especially with the situation that we’re still dealing with with the pandemic and virtual learning and all of those things. So I think this is just going to be such a practical, wonderful conversation for our listeners today. You know, I touched on it in your bio that you sort of started down the path of this work when your son was diagnosed. Is that how you kind of developed this interest in procrastination and all things related to it? Is there a story behind that? Because it’s a specific topic that you talk about. 

Leslie Josel: 

Yes. Well, I started my business many, many moons ago, like I said to you earlier. I’m old. So my son who has the ADHD is 22, and he was 5 when he was diagnosed. And that’s when I started Order Out of Chaos. It’s a great story but I’m not going to bore everybody with it now, you can head to our site to read it. But the one thing I will say is the reason why I started it is, go back so many years ago, there weren’t amazing podcasts like this, tele-summits, conferences — there was nothing. There wasn’t even the internet. So I really had to rely on my own instincts and gut to untangle and find ways to untangle his worlds, both at home and at school. Making a long story short, we’re now this massive global virtual company that parents come to on a daily basis and the reason why procrastination was the thing that I really wanted to spend time on is because it was the number one thing that we get asked, talked about, complained about. It’s confusing. It’s anxiety-producing. We get the question, “My kid is 13, why isn’t he doing this?/My kid is 16, he can’t seem to —” So it seemed the right kind of book to write this time around because it’s geared to students, and I think that’s a really important distinction. What I wanted to do was tell their stories and bring them ideas and tips and tools and have them see themselves represented and then have parents read it so that they could say, “Okay, now I understand what’s going on. Their procrastination looks different than mine. Or maybe what I’m thinking is procrastination really isn’t.” So that’s kind of how this book really came to be. 

 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

I think that’s such an important distinction because so often, things like procrastination get put in this basket of behavior issues or kids just being lazy, or they don’t want to, or they’re refusing, all of that. And when we approach things like procrastination from just a purely behavioral standpoint, “If you — you can do it, you’re just not —”

Leslie Josel: 

“Yeah, if you just work harder/If you just start earlier.” 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Yeah, or it’s an attitude problem or whatever it is, we don’t get very far, and it tends to be about these power struggles. So I think this idea of understanding where this is coming from and why it’s happening is so critical. Before we dive into that, let’s just start from the playing field of: How do you define procrastination? I think there’s lots of different terms, right? 

Leslie Josel: 

There are so many terms. And that’s exactly how actually the book is laid out. The book starts with why kids procrastinate, what does it really mean? And then, here are the things that are going on behind the scene, so to speak. And then the chapters lay out after that. So there are a million different types of definitions, but this is the one that I work with: It is — so I always say that for someone to truly be procrastinating, there has to be a negative consequence on the other side of that fence. That’s what you have to really bear in mind, and here is how I’m going to bring that point home, and I’m going to use an adult. So let’s say an adult who said, “No, I’m going to clean out my garage, I’m going to clean out my garage.” Let’s remember: Procrastination doesn’t always have to be school-based, even for your student. And they said, “No we’re going to do it on Saturday.” And they wake up on Saturday morning and like, “You know? I just don’t really feel like cleaning out my garage today. It’s a nice day, I want to go for a —” You know, like a bike ride that you’re allowed to do. Are you procrastinating? No. You’re not. Is there a negative consequence on the other end of that? Did you legitimately decide “I am not going to do this”, knowing that there is something that is going to happen? And I think that’s the thing particularly with parents, and I’m not here to disparage parents. I’m a parent too and I have to check myself at the door a lot but what we tend to see as procrastination is “Why isn’t my student starting today? Why isn’t he doing it now? Why is he waiting till 7?” Well, is that procrastination if he waits till 7? Not if he’s actually starting at 7 and getting something accomplished, because there is no negative consequence. And my best story I can say, and I really want to bring this point home, is that I was coaching at the same time a student and a parent, and the student had a project due Monday night at like 11:59, and we were meeting on Friday afternoon. And the mom was going, “I don’t understand! He’s home! He should be working on it, why is he not? He’s procrastinating!” And the student turned and said to his mom, “You can yell at me at Tuesday at midnight, but not a minute before.” 

What he was trying to explain after was that he was going to tap into his best practices, and starting early wasn’t in the cards for him. He did his best work two days before with that adrenaline rush because he could see the time horizon, and we can break all that down, and that gave him that initiation, motivation to do it. Now not every kid does that. There are kids that just don’t do, and face that consequence. Yes, that is true procrastination. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Got it. I think that’s a really helpful thing to get our head around as a starting point for sure, because you’re right. There’s a difference between what we as an adult might see as the ideal or what we believe is the optimal way to do it, but the reality is: Is it getting done? And is there a consequence on the other side of that? So I think that’s a really helpful way to think about that. 

Leslie Josel:

Right it’s like saying — I always say you can procrastinate, that doesn’t mean you’re a procrastinator. Procrastination has many shades of grey, right? You might delay something. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re procrastinating on it. And heck, all of us sometimes don’t get something accomplished, and you’re okay about that. So I’m not saying that you should just let your kid watch videos all day long, but what I want to really impart to parents is that procrastination isn’t black and white and it’s not always what you assume it should be. There is a tremendous amount of shades of grey that go into this. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Well, and it’s interesting because I’m thinking about so many families that I’ve worked with who are, even between the two parents or adults in the home, there is a very different view of that. And you may have one who is very much a “This needs to get started on 2 weeks in advance and we need to be planning it out,” and you might have parent B who is like, “Look, I’ve started at the last minute” and that can send a really mixed message to kids. You’re getting in trouble from one parent…

Leslie Josel: 

And not from the other, right. So that’s a big one. And then the other thing, and I want to bring this point home too because I talk a lot in the book about the differences, and I know some of you out there are going to go “Well that is really no different.” But I feel that adults procrastinate differently or for different reasons than the students. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Yeah, let’s talk about that, yeah. 

Leslie Josel:

So there are two things that I say: Number one, you have to remember that, and I know we’re adults and we don’t always have choices, but the choices that your student has, and I use the word “student”, it can also be “child” is minimal. They get asked all day long to do things that are not in their control. They have no control of their time, they have no control of what they’re being asked to do, when they’re being asked to do it, even how they do it. So that in and of itself is a huge procrastinating thing because if you have as little control as possible for someone who says “You must do it this way”, then that activation piece is really not going to be there, especially if, and if your listeners who are listening: If you here me say anything today, this is what I want you to hear, like sound on: We are super good as parents, again, I do it too, at asking our kids “What do you have to do today?” But what we don’t ask them is “Do you understand what you have to do?” And so much of what we are seeing underneath that procrastination is what I call skill or lack thereof. If your kid does not know how to study, they’re not going to do it. If your kid does not understand where they sit in time, they’re not going to activate. If your kid does not know how to organize something — I know that’s super-simplistic, but it’s easy to understand, they’re not going to. So so much of what you’re seeing at home might be like “Ugh, my kid’s just being like — doesn’t want to.” and then there’s that behavior thing, and I’m like, “Do they understand what it is they are being asked to do.” And trust me, there’s a varied difference between knowing “I have to study for a test” than “Do I know how to study for my test?” 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Right. I think that is just such an important thing to understand, the underlying piece of that. And I see that all the time in practice, I’m even thinking about a 17-year-old senior in high school that I had a session with yesterday, and we were talking about this exact thing of how when she doesn’t understand something, she perceives that it is going to be really difficult, it’s going to take a long time, she’s not going to be successful with it. Then that anxiety gets going, then she just shuts down to it and can’t start it and doesn’t do it. And she gets consistently blamed by parents and teachers for putting everything off, and “You’re not doing stuff” and she had a really big realization for herself that a lot of it comes down to those skill deficits of, in her case, not really having good skills for getting help for herself. What do you do when a teacher has given an assignment? You’re sitting in class, you’re taking notes, you’re doing all the things and you still don’t get it. What do you need to do to get support for yourself around that as opposed to just going home and then sitting there biting your nails, getting worked up, distracting yourself with other things because you don’t know how to do the paper that you’ve been asked to write. And I think the understanding of the skill deficit standpoint is so critical. 

Leslie Josel: 

You just gave — I’m done! We can shut the podcast off now! That’s exactly it. My point that I don’t feel we discuss enough when we talk about procrastination, we don’t talk about skill deficits. If you read articles about procrastination, we talk about self-regulation. Some people are still talking about time, we’re talking about mood and all, yes. But no one is talking about skill, particularly in students. And I know we don’t want to go down the whole executive functioning parade, but we’re talking about brain-based behavior. Procrastination is never the answer, it’s what the mask is. There’s always — and that’s how the book is laid out, there’s always something going on under it. It could be something as simple as organizing, or it could be something a little bit more nuanced, like decision fatigue. If your child has a really hard time making choices because open-ended questions flood the brain, that’s going to show up in some as procrastination. 

So that’s, number one, why I find this conversation so fascinating because people ask me all the time, well, you’ve got to get into the underbelly, you’ve got to play some eye spy, and as a parent, you will start to see things, you’ll be like, “Okay, I’m noticing they have no time management skills/they’re not planning or prioritizing.” So you start to kind of see where the deficit is. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Our listeners have heard me speak many times, on many different episodes, about this image of the iceberg with behavior with kids, and procrastination is what we see above the surface, that may be the behavior that we’re seeing, but we had to look at what is underneath that, beneath the surface of the water, and say there are lots of reasons why that’s happening. And 99.999% of the time is not because they want to make us crazy and tear our hair out that — going back to that Ross Greene quote of “Kids do well when they can.” And if they —

Leslie Josel:

That’s my quote! That is my quote! He was my lifeline when my son — so yes, I drink his Kool-aid! 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

We’ve had him on the show, he’s great! We get in this mindset that “Oh, they’re just doing this to be a pain, and it’s like: This is really — I think procrastination and the things that we’re talking about, surrounding that, honestly, especially in my work with middle school and up kids, so middle school through young adults, this is one of the most stressful, anxiety-producing challenges they deal with. They are not doing this because they’re getting some gain from this or they enjoy it. It really creates a lot of struggles for them, and not just in their academic life, but in lots of things in life. 

Leslie Josel:

Right. And I love that you said all of that because that’s my bandwagon. And again, I’m a parent and so I have to check myself at the door and I’m not disparaging parents when I say this, but I will go back to, and this is a great tip for all of your listeners is to have — I’m going to just use time as an example because after procrastination, time seems to be — time and study skills tend to be the thing that comes up a lot. So this is my philosophy. So you need to be always supporting your child externally because you need to lighten that load. So there is an expectation that our children should be able to manage their time, right? We do. We just assume, like “Why aren’t you ready? We’re meeting at 5.” Or “How come you can’t get started on that? You didn’t know how long that was going to take you”.
And I ask parents, how are you externalizing time in your home for your child? Because here is the bottom line and I’m a little bit like this, I’m sorry, but that’s just my New York-ness, if you can not — if your student, or you, even, can not see time, you can not learn to manage it. It is as simple as that. 

So I’m pretty time-managed, I’ve been voted on the top time management experts in the world, and I’m in my office right now, and I don’t know if you can see, but I have 6 things in my office alone that eternalize time for me. So I have an analog clock, I think you can see a little bit of that, I have a wall calendar, I have a paper planner, I have a timer, my phone and my watch. I think that’s 6. When I ask parents, they’re like, “Oh, I don’t ever think of it that way, and I’m like: Your child needs to know where they sit in time. Your child needs to be able to see time move. They need to be able — and here’s my party line: The thing for most students, and again, some of the things I say are research-proven, some of them are Leslie-proven. Some of them are my 16 years in the field of working with students.
The power of seeing “done” is incredibly powerful. Your child needs to be able to see the end, to start. Time actually does that. And an analog does that because your child can see the time move. So any way that you can externalize time for your child — I want to go out, and this is my challenge, ask your child when they were sitting in class, when they were in person and they could not get through the class, they were done, put a fork in that, they wanted to get out. The first thing they look for is the clock on the wall! Because they want to see how much time do I have left! And what that allows them to do is get themselves motivated. Okay, they play a game with themselves, “I’ve got 5 more minutes, I can see this through.” They pause, they picture and they pace themselves so they can see “done”. But if you are not doing any of that at home, that whole philosophy of “My child should just be able to”, it’s just not fair.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

I totally agree, and I think there are so many great tools for doing that. We’ve the analog clock, we’ve got — even for younger kids or even older kids, sand times. They make sand times in a variety of timing, like 10 seconds all the way up to 30 minutes, those are a great visual thing, the visual timers now. There are so many options for that. But I think that’s such a great point, especially for those of us raising kids with these challenges who don’t experience these things ourselves, it’s really hard to understand. “What do you mean they don’t get time?” Well, they don’t. So don’t just say, “Well I’m not a person who needs this” or “My other child has a more internalized sense of time, they don’t need that.” But these kids do need it. So I love what you’re saying about making these things accessible in the environment, and then as they get older, teach them to use those things. I’ve clients in college and even beyond into their adult lives, who when we teach them as kids how to use these tools for themselves, then they go on to be adults who know how to use these kinds of tools to support themselves in their work, in their home life. So I think it’s really important. 

Leslie Josel:

You are right. I think a lot of these things can — because people say “Well, does it really work?” And I’m like, well you have to start organically so it’s not like you have to hit them over the head but even having things externalizing, your child can internalize it very, very organically. But that power of “done”, it’s why when I work with students where we are always working time over task because not necessarily that they’re going to finish in that time slot, but they can see how much that time slot is. So if you’re at home, going to your child like, “Oh just go upstairs and do your math homework before dinner,” again, it’s like the equivalent of being on a boat in the middle of the ocean unmoored, they don’t see it. And if they don’t see it — I keep doing this, they can’t manage it. So instead, if you can, again, make time as visible as possible, like okay, you’ve got 20 minutes, you’ve not only, and this is the other thing about procrastination: It’s not always like getting started, which we know is super-hard, it’s also staying the course.
So again, that power of done is so, so powerful. It’s really powerful, and we use that also in music. I use music a lot in my work to get students motivated and initiated because the other thing I want your parents to hear me say is: Everything that I always bring home is lightening the load, especially now. To expect any of us, even adults to rely on our internal motivation right now, all the time, it’s just unsustainable. It’s just not going to happen. I don’t know about you, but I woke up this morning, not to you, I’m just so not in the mood. So we’re looking everywhere in our environment to help us lighten that load. What else can we have that’s going to share that burden with us? Particularly now. Especially now.
So anything you can provide, and we can talk about environment, music, time, externalizing time, even movement, movement helps to activate us and engage, is going to help your child not have to keep digging in here to go, “Okay, I have to get up to do work/I have to get up for that Zoom call/I have to get up to get to class.” It’s just not sustainable. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

I love what you said about that idea of time over task. Let’s go back there because I think the really important thing, especially as we think about the many, many kids and young adults who struggle with the act of getting started, that maybe for them it’s not even so much the doing of the thing, it’s getting over the hump of just initiating it, and I think that’s such a powerful thing for parents and professionals to grasp, that it’s often an easier starting point to focus on “Let’s just work on it for this much time.” The focus does not have to be the getting of the thing done, let’s set a goal, even if it’s one minute or five minutes or whatever it is, because once they can get into it and get started and feel like it’s doable, many of them then can keep going with this. So talk a bit more about that time over task. 

Leslie Josel:

Okay. So I’m going to broaden it up a little because how I view it is what I call “Removing all your barriers to entry.” So this is my little anecdote, when my first was first diagnosed, I realized for him, what he couldn’t see, didn’t exist. There were barriers to entry, everywhere in his world. So a physical barrier could be a closet door. You have a young kid at home and they can’t see what’s on the other side of the closet and that’s frustrating or they’re not putting things away, get rid of the door. That’s as simple as — even height is a barrier to entry. But time can be a barrier to entry. One, if your kid does not know where they are on time, if you don’t have that, that’s a barrier.
So you want to make starting so easy. Even too much information is a barrier to entry. Too much information on a page. So your student could have 20 math problems on a page. It might be simple computation, but the sheer volume of it, they’re done. That will look like procrastination. So can we give them one math problem? Can we give them one spelling world? Can we give them one vocab? Can we give them one paragraph to read? Or can you even ask them the question: What is the one thing you need to do to get started? See, I didn’t say to get finished. Just to get started. That helps to eliminate any of those barriers. Time, having things timed allows you — because time, you know it’s money. Time is three-dimensional. It has a beginning, middle and end. So when you work time over task, I always like to say it kind of puts the barriers around them so they can see the beginning, middle and end. I can see when I’m starting, I can even see the middle and I can see when done will be. I know I sound like a broken record, but in so many ways, that’s powerful. 

And you can even — I want to bring one more tool in here. I use music a lot for that. So music is a great initiator, right? I don’t know about you, I’m a disco girl, I hear my disco, it’s time to get on my bike, right? That’s just my thing, I’m girl of the 80’s, give me all the Donna Summer. But there is something behind that. Your child hears that, it elicits a response, it’s time for me to get going, again sharing that cognitive load. But here is what’s interesting about music, and what I mean is you making a playlist. I don’t like just shuffling around. I want a concrete playlist, a study playlist, a homework playlist, whatever you want to call it for about 35, 40, 50 minutes — depending on the age of your student. But here is what my students tell me: When they listen to that same playlist over and over again, it starts to act as a timekeeper, they see done. So they’re 20 minutes in, and they hear the Avett Brothers, they — I’m halfway there, right? You hear my taste in music. Then I hear Dawes, I know I’m in the home stretch. That in and of itself is beyond powerful. It’s beyond powerful, because again, you’re putting that time over task as well as the power of seeing done. It is highly motivating. So I’m trying to take all of that and whoosh it together. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

It’s so great, though, because it’s such a concrete, practical strategy, and when you think about it, we use that in lots of ways in our life, like I’m thinking about my Peloton workouts, for example, that’s like built-in to that. 

Leslie Josel:

We’re best friends, yeah.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

So doing part of the class, it’s like okay, but I know that song is almost done, then I’m going to be able to move on. So I think that we can all really relate to how we use that without even realizing it in our lives, and then how we can take that and put that to work for our kids and I’ll say too, from a neural connection perspective, tools like that over time, when used consistently, do built the connections in kids’ brains for being able to have that internalized sense of time and that awareness of time that we want them to develop. So you have to use that consistently, but it does create change in the brain. 

Leslie Josel:

Absolutely. And it’s also incredibly motivating. What I also love about it, particularly now, if you have all your kids at home, maybe you have younger kids and you’d like to have them all sitting around the table together, you can even have a house playlist that signals to everyone it’s time deep work, it’s time for quiet work. Music is so powerful, if that’s what they need. Again, what I get from parents a lot is that push and pull of, “Music is distracting, I don’t want my student to listen to it” and I’m like, your student will let you know if they need to listen to it. What’s distracting about music is not the music, it’s the “Oh, I want to listen to this and I want to listen to that.” So again, if you can do it right, it can actually be an incredibly anti-procrastination tool. If you read the book, you’ll hear that, we did interviews, we went way back and interviewed all of my students or a lot of them. We asked them — we called them Classroom Confessionals. And we asked them, “What’s the best grade you ever got for something you didn’t study for?” Like fun questions. But then we also asked them “What’s your number one study tool?” Hands-down, music. They all said music. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

And it doesn’t have to be a specific kind of music. Figure out what works. And for some it may be instrumental music because words get in the way. For others, it might songs with lots of — 

Leslie Josel:

Hamilton!

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Right! I mean it’s helping them to become more attuned to how they work, how their brain works and what’s going to work, but I love this even for little kids, like in the home with really little ones, you can have a playlist for songs that indicate that it’s time to clean up. That it’s time to get ready for bed and songs to play while you brush your teeth and do your night routine. Again, that internalized sense of where am I in time and space? Where is the beginning and the end of this? I can think of so many ways to use that. It’s such a powerful — really a powerful strategy. 

Leslie Josel:

Particularly now — listen, we can talk procrastination all day long, and a lot of these are evergreen, but they’re even more prevalent right now, as we might all be here in one place, but looking at the same 4 walls everyday is not motivating at all. It is just not. So if I’m talking procrastination right now, like some people have asked me, like, right now, what would you think? Other than what I said about externalizing time and music, I would also tell you: Movement. You have to get moving. And again, moving is highly motivating. So I kind of equated — I’m going to sound crazy, but I am a little crazy. It’s like that sneaky chef.
You know the sneaky chef who stuffs zucchini in the brownies? You kind of know it’s there but you don’t really know it’s there but you’re eating it anyway, it’s kind of the same with movement. You’re working, but you’re moving, so you don’t feel it as much. If anything comes out of this podcast to your listeners is I want them to keep repeating to themselves: Lighten the load. Because everything is so heavy right now, pandemic or not. Even after, a lot of your kids will feel very heavy. Again, how can you share that load? Movement helps to share it, right? If you’re sitting in one place, if your student is sitting in the same place doing everything, put a fork in them, they’re done. That procrastination is going to flood over them. It just is. So you’ve got to get them moving into different locations, you’ve got to be playing games. 

One of my favorite things that I do with younger students is I do something called “Hide The Homework”. So if you have younger kids, you take all the work they might have for that day, maybe a math sheet, vocab, spelling, whatever it is, and you literally hide it around your house. And the crazier, the better. So you can put math in the bath, you might put a science sheet on top of the toilet, you might put English under the kitchen table, something else in the pantry closet, it doesn’t matter. You don’t give a you-know-what. We just want them to do it. What you’re doing is your adding energy around, you’re adding something that’s making it game-like. When something has energy and it’s game-like, it’s fun and therefore it’s motivating. So if you have older students, okay, they might not want you to be like hiding their homework, but I do have older students, I have to say this, who take a pillow, hop into the bathtub with their laptop and freaking love it. Love it. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Giving them those opportunities to figure out where are the environments that are going to work for them, and that movement, and there is so much science behind that. We recently had Dr. John Ratey on the show, who was the big researcher around movement and exercise and the brain. There are so many studies now that show that, and yet still, especially when we look in the realm of education and what goes on in the classroom and homework, we do this thing which is “Sit still and listen!” It’s like no! That is the opposite of what the research tells us we should be doing. We have to let them move. 

Leslie Josel:

Right, and so here’s the tiny silver lining, if we can even have one during this pandemic. I actually have students who have said “The pandemic has actually been good for me because I can not sit at 8 o’ clock in the morning in calculus class, listening to a professor. I can — I’m home, I’m lying on my floor. I’m lying upside down. I have it blasting and I’m walking, I’m doing donuts on the floor, sorry, laps is how I speak. Laps around my bedroom. I’m not starting at 8 in the morning. I’m starting at 8 o’ clock at night. I’m going outside. I am walking my dog with flashcards because that movement is helping me lay down my learning.”
I make all my students giant, giant post-it notes. I want you not only moving your body, I want you moving your brain because the more you can put your whole self in, again, you’re going to lighten that load, and it’s motivating. I don’t know if I’m going to get shut down for this, and that’s okay, because I don’t always come to the table as — I’m a little different and that’s fine, that’s what I love. But people ask me all the time, what’s for you, the definition of distraction. And my edition or the opposite of distraction is actually movement. Because when we move we focus more, right? We’re not sitting there going “I’m working on math” I don’t know if you can see me. “I’m working on math, I’m kind of working on math, I’m pretending to work on math. I’m so not working on math, where’s my phone?” But if I’m moving and I’m writing and I’m walking and I’m pacing and I’m sitting on top of the toilet — I’m sorry, I don’t care, but the urge to grab my phone and be distracted diminishes. So I just want to bring that up as a very different way of looking at distractibility. That’s it. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

I think it’s so important, and again, that piece of us as adults, being able to separate what works for us an what we think is the way it should be done versus what works for them and what’s effective, I think that’s really a key in all of this whether it’s with our own children or if you’re a teacher with kids in the classroom or a therapist or whatever. To recognize that this is about helping kids tune into what is going to be effective for them, it may look very different from how we would approach it and that’s okay. 

Leslie Josel:

Oh my goodness, so I’m going to share something with you if it’s okay, it’s free on my site. So a couple of years ago I developed what I call, to this point, what I call a personal homework profile. It could be a personal study profile and there are 15 questions on it because what we have all found out is: I might like to study in quiet, you might like to work with noise. I like to get something done three weeks ahead of time, you might like to get something done the day before. I need music, you don’t. My energy level is in the morning, yours is at night. And on, and on and on we go. What we developed is 15 questions that your students should answer, and it’s asking those questions in different scenarios. So one will be regular homework, one will be studying for an exam, one will be reading, and one will be long term projects. What’s so fascinating is what parents say, it’s one of the best tools. Because again, you’re allowing — we’ll go all the way back to the beginning when I said that your student feels like they don’t have control. This is when they can turn around and say “I do my best work in the bathtub at 8 o’clock at night with music blaring.” So it’s free on our site, it’s a download, but what I love about it, I’m hearing and we’ve been doing this one for years, it’s a conversation starter. It really allows the student to tap in and say “This is my best practices.” When that procrastination bulk hits, it’s something they go back to to say, “Okay, I forgot this works for me, I like to have popcorn next to me.” Because I have one kid, that’s why I’m thinking of it, “I always have to have a bowl of popcorn when I work” because popcorn for them is motivating. I’m all about the food. So lock on. 

So it’s free and it’s on our site. It talks exactly to what you’re saying about my practice might look very different than yours and here is where you can allow your student to have control and choices.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Fantastic. That’s awesome. I want to get to some of the other resources as we wrap. I want to ask this because I think this is something that a lot of parents deal with: When kids are sort of stuck at the start of something, where it’s like they just can’t get themselves started and they want a parent or another person to be there with them all the time to do things. So I think a lot of parents say, “Well, as long as I am willing to sit there and talk them through and do it with them and be there, he’ll do it but if I try to back away —“, what are some tips that you have for people in that situation?

Leslie Josel:

There’s actually a term for it and it’s called body doubling. It’s real and it’s very effective. What it means is that your child might need a — and there’s different levels to it, might need what’s called a mirroring image. I’m sitting at the table, I’m at the kitchen table with my laptop, I need someone across the table from me with theirs. That’s a very big body doubling. Other kids just need somebody present. They don’t need you sitting with them, they need somebody there in the same room, even on the same floor. I am going to tell you, and again, you might not like my answer, if you or your spouse or your partner or whomever is in a room and your child is sliding on next to you and you’re going “Go upstairs, go away, it’s too noisy in here/it’s too much commotion.” Do not do that.
I think right now, especially now, we need to honor that in our kids. If your child is like glued — here is what body doubling isn’t: It’s not tutoring. It’s not teaching and it’s also not going “You didn’t get problem 22 right.” No, no, no, no. It’s no speaking. So we have variations on body doubling. Some parents are putting all their kids together at a table, putting up what I call  privacy shields so you still get the energy of having everybody there, but not feeling like you’re in a fishbowl. You can be in the den, I’m going to be in the kitchen so at least you know I’m still here. If you do have a child, some kids are using music as body doubling. If you are not home or you are not able to, but what I’m also seeing is if you do have a kid that’s right next to you, it’s similar to like when we used to wean our kids. It’s like, “Okay, I’m going to stay with you for 10 minutes, but I need to go into the next room, but I’ll come back again in 15”. And make sure you honor that. 

If you have a timer, set that timer so your child has the timer almost as that body doubling to know and feel safe that you are coming back. But right now, especially now, I would be honoring the body doubling need 100% for your student. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

I think that’s an interesting way of thinking about it, and that term. It’s a helpful thing. I think too that over time, then, for a kid who maybe is really insecure or struggling to start, or feeling like they need that, over time, you can start to fade that out of it and say “Okay, I’m going to help you get started. Let’s talk about — here is the first one, now I’m going to have you try this one. I’m going to go check on your brother, I’ll be back in —“

Leslie Josel:

“I’m going to come back in 10”. Be specific about time, remember that. Don’t say I’ll be back in a while. Back in 10. Show it externally. But you’ve got to remember, body doubling is real. It’s like a force field. It keeps you on task. I used to use it all the time with my own child. He could sit in my office for hours and get work done. But if I put him alone at a kitchen table, if that is something your child needs, especially now while their motivation is waning, and if you have an older student, provide them with a different room, provide them with music. That acts like — a lot of my older students use music as a body doubling to help them get started. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

It’s awesome. And I think that also speaks to why many kids — some kids are loving the virtual and doing great, others are struggling because they are alone and isolated and they’re finding that being in the classroom setting, as much as there might be things they don’t like about it, is more conducive for them because everybody is there doing the same thing and when they’re home by themselves, they’re just sort of like you used, they’re unmoored. 

Leslie Josel:

They’re not anchored. They’re unmoored. Which is why I’m seeing a lot of my older students, and this is one that’s another push and pull is they’re doing a lot of virtual studying together. I’m seeing study groups and 1 on 1 and accountability people and a lot of people, and a lot of my parents are like, “Oh no, no, no.” I’m like, “No, no, no” they’re actually not talking about every kid. We’re never talking in absolutes, but a lot of my kids are really using it. They’re saying it’s the best thing to have someone on the other side because they miss that body doubling. You know school, or I would say a more traditional school is one big body double!

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Oh, that’s great. You and I could talk for hours about this!

Leslie Josel:

Oh my God, for hours!

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

So many awesome things you’ve provided, so many really great concrete strategies. I want to make sure that people know where they can find out more about you, your work, all of the resources you offer. 

Leslie Josel:

So here is the good news, the name of my company is Order Out Of Chaos. Our website is, and I’m assuming you’ll probably put this in your notes, is orderoochaos.com we are 100% virtual. So you don’t need to live in New York to be a part of us, what I tell everyone is go to the website and from there you can find our products, our programs, webinars we do, our socials, we’re very robust there, books, our private Facebook group. Whatever you want from us, go there first and then go from there. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Great. So orderoochaos.com, we’ll put that in the show notes as well, and the books are available everywhere that books are sold. Great, if you really found the conversation that we had today about procrastination helpful, definitely recommend Leslie’s most recent book, “How To Do It Now Because It’s Not Going Away”. 

Leslie Josel:

I love that title, my son named the book!

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

I will say that, having been to your website, so many great resources there for people and the social media as well, so I really want to encourage all of you listening to check that out. Leslie, it has been such a joy to have you with us today, thank you for taking the time.

Leslie Josel:

Oh, this was fantastic, you ask fantastic questions. Thank you for having me, this was pure joy.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Awesome. And thank you to all of you, as always, for being here and listening, we’ll catch you back here next week for our next episode of The Better Behavior Show.