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Soap scum is a recurring theme in Hugh Kearns’ work. Along with grass that needs cutting, work that needs doing and novels in need of an end.
by Sharon Mascall
“When I did my Master’s, my garden was the neatest in the street and I was the most helpful man in the house,” he says. “But after my thesis, the garden went to wrack and ruin and the helpful man was gone.” Beating procrastination – getting things done – has become Kearns’s mission in life. After he had finished his Master’s degrees in educational psychology and mental health, he teamed up with clinical psychologist Maria Gardiner.
Together, they run Thinkwell, a South Australian consulting company and work in the Staff Development and Training Unit at Flinders University. They believe they have a cure for “self-sabotage”.
The theory is simple enough. Self-sabotage is everything we do to stop us achieving our goals. It is scrubbing soap scum off the shower instead of studying. It is answering emails instead of getting the real work done. But Kearns and Gardiner say the behaviour, itself, is not to blame. It is the thinking behind it. We put it off because it will not be perfect. We delay because we are disorganised. We fail because we try to achieve in impossible circumstances.
“The current trend is busyness. People think that if they’re not busy, they’re a slacker,” says Kearns. “But busyness is a substitute for substance. It’s spending all day on the phone and sending text messages rather than dealing with the real question. Technology is an amplifier. It allows us to be busy, faster.”
One Adelaide businessman came to see Kearns and Gardiner feeing burnt out. He was working from seven in the morning until seven at night. His business was successful but he knew he could achieve more. His question was how.
“We sat down with him and asked him what he was doing with his day. We asked him how much he was delegating to staff and how much he had to be involved in the work to be done,” says Gardiner.
“We set a rule that he had to stop at 5pm. His profits went up by 30 per cent. He said he could think more clearly and make better decisions.”
The approach – called Cognitive Behaviour Coaching, or CBC – is based on Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, or CBT. It uses rational thinking to break self-defeating patterns of behaviour.
Its early pioneers were Albert Ellis, a clinical psychologist and Aaron Beck, a psychiatrist. Both had started their careers taking a more Freudian approach. Sigmund Freud, the 19th century “father” of psychoanalysis, emphasised the importance of past experiences. He believed that the past shaped thoughts, attitudes and behaviour.
Both Ellis and Beck came to reject this idea. They believed that irrational thinking was a more likely suspect. Their approach was grounded in the present – what we do now can change the way we think and feel.
“It’s different from positive thinking. We use evidence to challenge people’s thinking, on a rational basis,” says Kearns.
“People think psychologists help people who aren’t well. But we take the best from psychology and apply it to well people. They become more productive and content.”
So far, Kearns and Gardiner have worked with doctors in South Australia, New South Wales and Tasmania, as well as students, across the country, struggling to finish their PhDs.
A survey of rural doctors, who used their techniques to manage workplace stress, showed retention rates improved. After coaching, 94 per cent stayed in their jobs.
“When doctors are running late and have a waiting room packed with people, they might think irrationally. They might think: ‘I should be faster’, ‘I’m rushing, I might make a mistake’, or ‘Why does this keep happening? The patients are getting annoyed,’” says Gardiner.
“We challenge that thinking, based on evidence. We encourage them to think, ‘These things happen and I’m doing my best.’”
With students, Kearns and Gardiner have heard a range of excuses for not getting the work done, ranging from “I’m finding my voice”, to “I’m not good enough.”
In many cases, PhD students suffer from Impostor’s Syndrome: the irrational thought that, any day now, someone will tap you on the shoulder and say the game is up, you have been found out.“It’s more common among high achievers. When their work starts to get hard they think they’re not good enough and they shouldn’t be there,” says Kearns.
“Lots of people think that way but the problem is you can’t tell anyone. That would give the game away.” In one case, a student in the Department of Science and Engineering at Flinders University made a groundbreaking discovery after realising she was not an impostor after all.
For two-and-a-half years, Dani Lyons slaved in the labs for up to 12 hours a day. She felt she was getting nowhere and wanted to give up her PhD. Then, on advice from Kearns and Gardiner, she cut her hours and became more productive.
Within weeks she had made a breakthrough. She discovered a new molecule and finished her PhD. Today Dr Lyons is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
“Dani was doing lots of experiments but she wasn’t writing them up. She was avoiding the hard part because she thought her work wasn’t good enough,” says Gardiner.
“But then she looked at the evidence and got good feedback. Negative thinking had held her back.” After success in Australia, Kearns and Gardiner are now going international. This month Kearns is in Europe, presenting their ideas and research – developed in South Australia – to universities in the UK and Ireland.
“We’ve had great feedback so far, the body representing PhD students in the UK is already using extracts from our books,” says Kearns.
In Ireland, Kearns will revisit his Irish roots. Now head of the Staff Development and Training Unit at Flinders, he will tell his alma mater – University College, Dublin – about his discoveries, of interest personally as well as professionally.
“Personally, my strategy is intelligent avoidance. I find other, more important things to do, like cleaning the bathroom, when I don’t want to sit down and do something,” he says.
“What I tell myself and other people is buy a big stamp with the word ‘Draft’ on it. Then, when you feel your work is not up to scratch you can say, ‘It’s OK, I’m just writing a draft, I’ll refine it later.’”
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