How to Fight Shamecrastination (Without Being a Bosshole)

Punishment is a self-fulfilling prophecy – it reduces shamecrastinators (who appear careless, but aren't) into truly careless people. Part 2/3

We introduced shamecrastination in the previous post. A quick recap of the key points:

1. Shamecrastination arises when the inhibitory effect of shame/guilt overpowers the motivation to attack the problem.

2. It’s a product of the Taboo Tunnels. Like other taboos, shamecrastination is something we frequently feel but rarely talk about, making it seem a lot less common or important than it really is.

3. Time management strategies often fail because they are logical solutions, while procrastination is an emotional-regulation problem. Throwing time management tools at procrastination is only slightly more effective than administering medicine to the dead.

4. Shamecrastinators appear to be careless or forgetful, but their problem is not a lack of care – they care too much about the wrong things.

To us, shamecrastination feels like being trapped between a rock and a hard place – the rock being the discomfort of the unfinished task, and the hard place being the shame of everyone discovering that we’re stupid/careless/lazy imposters who aren’t good enough to deserve positions of authority.

The clock of shame makes a “tsk, tsk” noise every second. The sound of disappointment oppresses our conscience like heavy weight.

Now that we’ve confessed our sins against the Gospel of Workplace Productivity, let’s talk about ways to combat shamecrastination!

The Shamecrastination Equation

Recall the first key point from our opening paragraph, reproduced here:

Shamecrastination arises when the inhibitory effect of shame/guilt overpowers the motivation to attack the problem.

Let’s distill that statement into the Shamecrastination Equation:

Shamecrastination = shame > motivation

To eliminate shamecrastination in yourself and in those you lead, you can either reduce shame ↓ or increase motivation ↑. In theory, you can do both…but in practice, motivation is a fickle beast with a mind of its own¹. Shame reduction ↓, in contrast, is a workhorse that can reliably pull you out of productivity swamps.

Note: we’re using “motivation” as an umbrella that covers related terms like willpower, self-control, perseverance, determination, and grit. These are not perfect synonyms, but for this article it’s enough that all six terms do the same thing: getting us to do what we need, not what we want.

You’ll find plenty of books on increasing motivation ↑ in the self-help/management section of Barnes and Noble. Our essay will focus on the other part of the equation that few people talk about: how to reduce the inhibitory effect of shame/guilt, and (just as importantly) how to avoid making the inhibitions stronger.

How to Reduce Shame ↓

Redirect scruples, don’t extinguish them

A forgetful/careless person lacks the wherewithal to do their job effectively. If you can’t train them out of bad habits or motivate them to do better, then only the threat of punishment or dismissal will align their self-interest with the organization’s. This comes at a steep cost: when you use the fear of punishment as motivation, you’ll only drag minimally-viable products out of your underlings. Work grinds to a halt when you’re not around to crack the whip. Ruling by fear is not our first choice, but it’s sometimes preferable to paying someone to be a fleshy ornament.

Now ask yourself this question: would someone with no conscience be able to feel shame or guilt?
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Probably not. That means shamecrastinators are conscientious people!

A shamecrastinator might look and behave like a forgetful/careless person, but they already have the motivation to do a good job. Your job as a leader is to redirect their motivation to the right things, not brandish the sword of justice in their faces. Punishing a shamecrastinator will get you short-term results, but it also shames them.

Shaming your employees might not seem like a problem if you were raised in a culture that uses shame like a blunt instrument for enforcing social norms. But consider what happens if you fat-shame someone: they’re going to eat salads and sip zero-calorie soft drinks in your presence, then go home and eat an extra-large pizza (topped with a second pizza). Shame an alcoholic, and they’ll drown their feelings in a bottle of Jack Daniels when you’re not around. This is a widespread phenomenon called the Pygmalion Effect².

In other words: punishing a shamecrastinator reinforces their latent belief that “I’m a bad person (shame) and I’ve done bad things again (guilt). I can’t do anything right ☹” The result: higher inhibition ↑ and lower job performance ↓

Repeatedly punishing a shamecrastinator will eventually extinguish their motivation to do a good job. Treating a shamecrastinator like a careless person is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If you want to keep conscientious employees around, then only use punishments as a last resort. Otherwise, you might as well announce to your team that:

THE BEATINGS SHALL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES

Don’t shoot the Lollapalooza messenger

Shamecrastinators already feel inhibited by shame and guilt. What happens when a manager introduces fear and anxiety into the mix by punishing people who are brave enough to bring bad news?

Inhibitions: ↑ Procrastination: ↑ Withheld information: ↑
Productivity: ↓ Morale: ↓ Psychological safety: ↓

Shooting the messenger doesn’t cause additional shame, but the fear and anxiety compounds with existing shamecrastination to create a Lollapalooza Effect, thereby worsening the inhibition. Several other things from the Taboo Tunnels have similar inhibitory effects:

• Outbursts of extreme emotion: shooting the messenger is an outburst of wrath, but any emotion have similar effects. Sobbing uncontrollably into someone’s shoulder out of sadness (or elation!) and blowing your nose on their sleeve will make them think twice about telling you anything.

• Toxic positivity: we previously wrote about this well-intentioned form of censorship.

• Harassment and unwanted advances: Interacting with a creep gives us…the creeps. It’s possible to admire someone’s accomplishments from a distance, but avoid interacting with them like the plague.

• Dominance and powerlessness: If you have a strong personality, you might inadvertently overwhelm your timid employees through your conviction, energy, and sheer force of will. These are generally seen as good qualities in a leader, but they carry a side effect of inhibiting those who already feel powerless³.

No excuses

Whenever we muster the energy required to plow through a wall of shamecrastination, we always feel an intense itch to make excuses for why it took so long. Worse still, we feel the need to exaggerate the excusability of our procrastination. That’s the shame/guilt trying to help us save face.

We’re not the only ones with this impulse. We’ve heard all kinds of improbable-but-plausible excuses coming out of people’s mouths (including our own):

• Got sick for a month.

• Grandma died. Again. (Particularly common among students because they can use that excuse twice per instructor. One professor said that “grandmothers start dropping like flies” at certain times of the school year).

• Competing priorities took precedence.

• Got sick, transmitted disease to grandma (who died – again), so drinking/medicating away the survivor’s guilt became a competing priority that took precedence over work, relationships, and personal hygiene.

All excuses boil down to “life got in the way” or “it wasn’t my fault.” And all excuses are equally useless, because even if a delay wasn’t our fault, it’s still our responsibility.

Our preference is to avoid scratching that itch. We try our hardest (and sometimes we even succeed!) in not making excuses for shamecrastination – we simply pick up where we left off. If we caused harm by delaying, we smooth things over with an apology, but we don’t volunteer an excuse unless asked for one. Resolving to do better next time is better than any excuse.

How you deal with excuses from shamecrastinators is up to your own leadership style. If you tolerate excuses, you’re tacitly consenting to more excuses in the future. If you dismiss people’s legitimate (sometimes traumatic) misfortunes, you signal that you don’t care about them.

Our approach is to show magnanimity to anyone who slinks back to us with tail between their legs. We listen to all excuses, both petty and apocalyptic, then guide the shamecrastinator back toward their responsibilities as kindly as possible. Most people eventually figure out that we’re not interested in hearing petty excuses after we impatiently wave them aside and go straight back to business. We engage “active listening mode” for non-petty excuses (we were irreverent about dying grandmas earlier, but in real life we’re solemn when someone claims to lose a family member – including pets).

Build the Temple of Trust

We have a post on how to build trust. By purifying the Altar of Psychological Safety and promoting the 3 Cs of comfort, camaraderie, and cognitive ease, you can reduce the inhibitory effect of shame. This, by extension, suppresses shamecrastination.

Shame-resistant policies and systems

An organization with conscientious employees will always be plagued with shamecrastination. Here are some ways to combat it systematically:

• Internal controls enforced by regular audits: This is already required by law in large organizations. In smaller organizations, you could try…

• Peer review: When employees go on vacation, you can assign a colleague to audit their work instead of merely keeping the lights on. You can also audit the work yourself. This can only be done when employees aren’t so siloed that each person’s work is incomprehensible to everyone else. Some organizations require their employees to take two weeks of paid leave every 6-12 months so their work can be peer-reviewed.

• First-in, first-out (FIFO): Exemplified by the support ticket system used by your IT department. Even when your work is highly variable and 20% of your tasks take 80% of your time (Pareto principle), you can default back to a FIFO system for those 80% of tasks that take 20% of your time.

These practices keep shamecrastination in check by catching the procrastination early. The longer the delay, the stronger the shame.

How to Increase Motivation ↑

The Institute of Conventional Wisdom is full of methods that purport to increase motivation ↑ and thereby eliminate shamecrastination. The Eisenhower Method. Teambuilding activities. Time management software. Team huddles to replace useless meetings. Eating a frog first thing in the morning at 4:30 AM, which is when the early bird gets the worm by using the Pomodoro Technique.

“Boiled alive in the first essay, swallowed alive in the second. How many frogs must be sacrificed at the Altar of Workplace ProductrrRRRibbity?!”

We won’t say much about improving motivation ↑ because we don’t feel like competing with the Harvard Business Review. It doesn’t hurt to apply conventional methods for inspiring your team and nurturing esprit de corps. This is a non-competitive environment where you’ll get good results just by following “best practices”. Human motivation is a precious resource, but also a renewable one.

That said, we want to repeat our earlier warning about motivation being a fickle beast. Motivation is like a terrible employee whom you can’t fire because he was chosen by the God of Nepotism. When you need him to slay the dragon that’s burning nearby villages, he’s off prancing in the meadow, pulling the wings off butterflies. You can push on the motivation ↑ side of the Shamecrastination Equation, but you should expect inconsistent results. You can only swallow so many frogs in the morning before you choke. And has it ever occurred to you that the early worm gets eaten?

Now Comes the Hard Part…

We explained the Shamecrastination Equation, covered five ways to reduce shame ↓, and tickled the topic of increasing motivation ↑. But reducing shamecrastination into a mathematical equation is the logical approach. Having difficult conversations is an emotional ordeal, and throwing the global supply of math textbooks at the issue wouldn’t make a dent in it.

How do you confront a shamecrastinator without extinguishing their scruples? Ironically, the mere thought of “having the talk” with a shamecrastinator triggers shamecrastination in us! How do we practice what we preach?

We initially thought this would be a 2-part series, but the word count for this essay is already 2,000+. We’ll push the finale on coaxing productivity out of shamecrastinators off to part 3 – click/poke here to read it. Subscribe if you want future posts delivered straight to your inbox!

1. This is why the ancient Greeks had the Muses: sometimes a burst of creative energy feels like divine inspiration. A blessing from the Muses lifts one above writer’s block and middling work.

2. Two caveats:

1. Some people will turn their lives around when shamed, but this happens once in a blue moon. A 99% chance of shaming people deeper into their bad habits and a 1% chance of lasting change is a terrible trade-off when better methods exist. If you’re going to gamble with such terrible odds, why not have fun by going to Vegas/Monaco/Macau?

2. There are some rare individuals who are anti-fragile to shaming. They are not merely resistant to insults – they will use the shame to fuel a crusade to prove you wrong. Their reaction to shaming is “how dare you cast me so low; I will rise up and make you sorry you ever said that.” If you choose to shame them, you do so at your own risk: you’ll get spectacular short-term results, but they will resent you forever. There are safer ways to fuel their passions without creating a lifelong enemy.

3. Whether you see this as a good or bad thing depends on your situation. If have a vision of a future much different from today, combating organizational inertia from the top-down (Steve Jobs style) can make paradigm shifts easier. But if you rely on the creativity of your line staff from the bottom-up (Brad Bird style), your radiance can snuff out their tiny flames.