My name is: Mary Lamia.

My book is called: What Motivates Getting Things Done: Procrastination, Emotions, and Success.

The publication date is:  June 29, 2017.

I was inspired to write it when: as a clinical psychologist, I noticed that many of the high achieving individuals I’ve worked with in the past 40 years are self-identified procrastinators, as are many of the graduate students I’ve taught in the past 20.

Early on in my career, I assumed delay was maladaptive—after all, I always get things done right away, and those of us who are early birds tend to assume we do it right! I have been very humbled by my inquiry into the subject of motivational styles. In an attempt to give words the experience of what we call “procrastination,” I found that emotions motivate the way we get things done, and they are activated differently in task completion styles. 

It's about: how anxiety is like a highly motivating friend, why you should fear failure, and the underpinnings of shame, distress, and fear in the pursuit of excellence. While many successful people put things off until a deadline beckons them, countless others can’t resist the urge to do things right away. The book explores the emotional lives of people who are successful in their endeavors—both procrastinators and non-procrastinators alike—to illustrate how the human motivational system works, why people respond to it differently, and how everyone can use their natural style of getting things done to their advantage. I illustrate how the different timing of procrastinators and non-procrastinators to complete tasks has to do with when their emotions are activated and what activates them. Overall, What Motivates Getting Things Done illustrates how emotions play a significant role in our style of doing, along with our way of being, in the world. 

My hope is that readers will: learn to interpret the messages their emotions convey and understand their reactions to what they feel so they can make the most of the system that not only motivates them to get things done but motivates everything they do.

My next book: is titled, The Upside of Shame, which will be published by W. W. Norton in January 2018. And the title of my autobiography would be What Makes Me Driven.

If I were a character from fiction, I'd be: Who knows? I cannot even imagine an answer to this question because, in fact, based on a lifetime of emotional experiences, we are all very unique.