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Simon May describes his 2025 book Jump! as a new approach to conquering procrastination. Unlike self-help manuals that urge readers to break tasks down into manageable chunks with clear deadlines, May digs into the philosophy of why we put things off.

He also explores not only why we fear career failure but also (more mysteriously, he says) career success, and why boredom and regrets are a “phenomenal wake-up call” to be learnt from.

The modern cult of work, May tells Holly Newson in the penultimate episode of this podcast series about books covering the scientific workplace, forces us onto a productivity treadmill that can sap our motivation.

“If something becomes cold and alienating and simply production-oriented, it ceases to engage,” he says, highlighting some scenarios: “I need to get this out by Monday morning. My competitor in the next lab has produced three papers this year, and I’ve only produced one.”

But how do you make an important personal or professional goal less important, less intimidating, and so more achievable?

May, a visiting professor of philosophy at Kings College London, offers some strategies. This includes how he conquers his own procrastination as a book deadline looms, describing himself as someone who feels “paralyzed” by the importance of the project.

May concludes with a warning about the “mirage of fulfilment” felt by the 19th century Russian author Leo Tolstoy. Aged 50 and at the height of his fame, Tolstoy felt his life was meaningless. “One other thing to avoid is this sense that the destination is the key, that, once reached, will provide a sense of lasting fulfillment.” Instead, he argues, it’s the journey that counts.

Listen to Simon May in conversation with Holly Newson.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-00551-7

Transcript

Listen to Simon May in conversation with Holly Newson.

Holly Newson 00:00

Welcome to Working Scientist, a Nature Careers podcast. I’m Holly Newson, and in this series, you’ll hear from authors who can help you in your career.

In this episode, I am joined by Simon May, visiting professor of philosophy at King’s College London, and the author of Jump, a New Philosophy for Conquering Procrastination, a book that helps you understand what’s holding you back from getting on with your biggest, deepest goals, and how procrastination forms part of the human experience.

Simon, thank you so much for joining me. (Great pleasure).

So to start off with, I wanted to ask, you mention the cult of work in your book. What is that?

Simon May 00:37

So, the cult of work is the idea that our identity is our work, is fundamentally our work.

Of course, there are other things that contribute to our identity, some of them extremely important, but that without work, we’re, in a sense, an empty shell.

And the cult of identity, I trace back to the 16th-17th century, essentially to the birth of Protestantism in Europe.

And I mean, I need to emphasize, I’m really talking about the West here, so I don’t want to presume to know about, you know, all the other rich cultures in the world.

It essentially, I trace it back to the rise of Protestantism, when work became a form of godliness, of devotion.

So that godliness was no longer confined, say, to charitable acts, to proper procedures of, you know, church worship. But the amount of work you did, which you did for the sake of God made you, in some sense, helped you, as it were, towards salvation. (Okay).

I mean, in those days, obviously, it had this very religious purpose.

That got secularized, you know, with the Enlightenment in the 18th century, and then with its development in the 19th century.

So that, you know, work became, in the words of several people in the 19th century, a sacred duty.

In our day, work has become reduced in many ways, not entirely, but there’s a big element of that to a sort of treadmill of productivity, so that we ourselves value ourselves by our outputs. And even the very word outputs is a bit like a factory, yeah.

And so work has become, in some ways, what would be the word. Depersonalized, cold, mechanical production line, spirit.

And I trace one of the causes, (and I go through a number of causes of procrastination) to that.

So that it’s extremely frustrating, as on the one hand, we’re gripped by the cult of work, so that, you know, if we are our work, it’s tremendously important other people value us based on our achievements, our outputs and so on.

You know, the maximum number of scientific papers we can churn out, sometimes writing the same paper in different ways twice. And some of the philosophers do this too. Many academics do this. Because output, you have a number of papers, you have on your on your CV, in some ways you know, will determine your care

How procrastination can rob you of career fulfilment in science