Beyond procrastination: Reclaiming your time and life

This event is part of the GRADventure Professional Skills Conference. Visit the conference webpage for a full schedule of events.

Procrastination is a common enough experience, but it can cause significant stress, difficulties in planning and deprive you of a feeling of accomplishment and calm as you work. If you find yourself identifying with some of these struggles, this workshop is for you. 

Most pop psychology ideas about procrastination are based on the (erroneous) idea that it is primarily a time management issue or about a characterological shortcoming like laziness. The reality is that most people’s procrastination struggles have little to do with time management, and even less to do with lazing about.

Shifting out of a procrastination habit takes knowledge and the right strategies. In this session, you will learn both: We will take a deep dive into the psychology of procrastination and the workshop introduces a radically different framework for you to understand your own procrastination struggles in a new and empowering way. From there, you will create your own procrastination profile so you can identify quickly what is happening when you get stuck. And you will learn a variety of effective, proven strategies to work within your own profile to help you shift out of avoidance and passivity into an action-oriented mode.

Presenter bio: 

Alex Abdel-Malek, MSW, RCC, is a McGill trained psychotherapist and professional educator devoted to the question of how meaningful choices affect our health and wellbeing. A passionate clinician and speaker with over 25 years of experience in the field, Alex has been an instructor at many leading educational institutions, including SFU, UBC Robson Square, BCIT, City University, Vancouver Community College, and Mount Royal University. 

He has conducted training sessions for organizations throughout Western Canada on topics relating to mental health, trauma, and employee well-being, including from extensive work with the Canadian Coast Guard, the RCMP and other first-responder groups, health-care and front-line social service agencies. He has also worked extensively with UBC and other organizations for many years; his specialized workshops on procrastination and perfectionism have been attended by well over 2000 workshop attendees.

Alex lives and works in Port Moody, Greater Vancouver, where he runs a full-time clinical practice.

Additional Information

• Registration is required through Eventbrite. 
• This session is taking place through the Zoom meeting platform and will offer opportunities for participant interaction through breakout rooms. In order to fully participate in this session, please ensure you access the session with a device that has a microphone (at minimum) and webcam (preferred).
• A link to the live session will be emailed to registered attendees two days prior to the event, as well as the day of the event.