Why We Procrastinate and What To Do About It

Procrastination, a common phenomenon that plagues many of us, is often associated with many negative traits, such as laziness, lack of motivation, poor attention span, and more. But is it just a matter of these negative characteristics, or does it have deeper roots? The answers to these questions can be found in extensive research that delves into procrastination, decision-making, and risk.

Defining Procrastination

From a language perspective, "procrastination" originates in the Latin verb "procrastinare," meaning to put off until tomorrow. However, it encompasses more than mere voluntary delay. Procrastination also draws from the ancient Greek word "akrasia," which refers to doing something against one's better judgment.

Procrastination is "avoiding doing a task that needs to be accomplished." It can also be described as "a habitual or intentional delay of starting or finishing a task despite its negative consequences." Piers Steel, author of The Procrastination Equation: How to Stop Putting Things Off and Start Getting Stuff Done, defines it as "voluntarily delaying an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay." Procrastination involves opting for more pleasurable activities instead of less pleasurable ones.

While occasional procrastination is common, habitual procrastinators repeatedly avoid tasks, especially challenging ones, and actively seek distractions. Research from the American Psychological Association indicates that nearly 20% of US men and women are chronic procrastinators.

Interestingly, procrastination is not a new phenomenon brought about by the internet age. It has been a struggle for individuals throughout history. The Greek poet Hesiod, in 800 B.C., cautioned against putting off work, while the Roman consul Cicero regarded procrastination as "hateful" in the conduct of affairs. Procrastination has been a part of human behavior for centuries.

Perfectionism and Procrastination

Perfectionists are often prone to procrastination, as it may seem psychologically more acceptable never to tackle a task than to face the possibility of not completing it perfectly or achieving a goal successfully. Research has shown that procrastination can significantly impact one's personal life and job, even leading to detrimental effects on mental health in severe cases.

There is no one-size-fits-all definition of a procrastinator, but certain general impressions have emerged over years of research. Chronic procrastinators consistently struggle to complete tasks, while situational procrastinators delay based on the nature of the task. The perfect storm of procrastination occurs when an unpleasant task meets an individual with high impulsivity and low self-discipline. Most procrastinators tend to tend to self-defeat, which can arise from either a negative state (e.g., fear of failure or perfectionism) or a positive one (e.g., the allure of temptation). These qualities have collectively led researchers to describe procrastination as the "quintessential" breakdown of self-control.

Contrary to popular belief, procrastination is not solely a result of laziness. In fact, procrastinators work intensively for extended periods just before deadlines, which is the opposite of laziness. So, why do people procrastinate, and more importantly, what can be done about it?

The Justifications for Procrastination

Some individuals claim to procrastinate because they are lazy, while others argue that they work best under pressure. However, a critical examination of these explanations is warranted. Those who consistently procrastinate and need more systematic task management can accurately assess their performance under different circumstances. Procrastination often leads to feelings of anxiety, stress, fatigue, and disappointment when one falls short of their standards or puts their life on hold for extended periods. Moreover, leaving tasks until the last minute increases the risk of unexpected issues, such as illness or technical problems, jeopardizing desired outcomes. So, while procrastination may seem like a choice, it can be hard on individuals and increase their chances of failure.

Psychological Complexity of Procrastination

Procrastination is not merely a matter of poor time management; it is deeply rooted in complex psychological reasons. These underlying dynamics can be exacerbated by educational environments where students face constant evaluation, particularly in college, where the pressure for grades is high. In such situations, procrastination can serve as a self-protection strategy. Delaying tasks provides an excuse for "not having enough time" in case of failure, preserving one's self-esteem. Fear and anxiety, whether stemming from fear of poor performance, fear of success, fear of losing control, or fear of judgment, are often at the core of procrastination. People avoid work to protect their self-concept and abilities from being scrutinized.

Characteristics of Procrastination

Procrastination exhibits various characteristics that manifest in different ways:

• Avoidance: Individuals avoid the location, situation, or person associated with the expected task.
• Denial: Some pretend that procrastination is not happening or justify it by deeming the task unimportant.
• Distraction: Engaging in pleasurable activities that provide instant gratification, weakening willpower and perseverance.
• Comparison: Comparing one's procrastination consequences with those of others to rationalize the behavior.
• Rationalization: Finding satisfaction in what has been achieved during procrastination.
• Blaming: Attributing procrastination to external factors beyond one's control.
• Trivializing: Using humor to validate procrastination, often at the expense of others' efforts.

Research on Procrastination

Chronic procrastination has productivity costs and adverse effects on mental and physical health. It can lead to chronic stress , general psychological distress, low life satisfaction, symptoms of depression and anxiety , poor health behaviors , chronic illness, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease .

Personality traits play a role in procrastination tendencies. People who don't procrastinate tend to score high in conscientiousness, a personality trait linked to self-discipline, persistence, and personal responsibility.

Although typically perceived as a negative trait due to its hindering effect on one’s productivity, procrastination is often associated with?depression, low self-esteem, guilt and inadequacy; it can also be considered a sometimes wise response to certain demands that could present risky or negative outcomes or waiting for new information to arrive before making a decision.

?Procrastination is ?“a purely visceral, emotional reaction to something we don’t want to do,” says Timothy Pychyl, author of?Solving the Procrastination Puzzle .?The more averse you find a task, the more likely you are to procrastinate.

In?his research ,?Pychyl identifies a set of seven triggers that make a task seem more averse. Bring to mind something you’re putting off right now — you’ll probably find that task has many, if not all, of the characteristics that Pychyl discovered to make a task procrastination-worthy:

• Boring
• Frustrating
• Difficult
• Ambiguous
• Unstructured
• Not intrinsically rewarding
• Lacking personal meaning

?“Non-procrastinators focus on the task that needs to be done. They have a stronger personal identity and are less concerned about what psychologists call ‘social esteem’—how others like us—as opposed to?self-esteem, which is how we feel about ourselves,” explained Dr. Ferrari Joseph Ferrari, a professor of psychology at DePaul University in Chicago and author of?Still Procrastinating?: The No Regrets Guide to Getting It Done ,?in?an interview with the?American Psychological Association.

?Ferrari has found that about 20?percent of adults are chronic procrastinators. “That’s higher than depression, higher than phobia, higher than panic attacks and alcoholism. And yet all of those are considered legitimate,” he said. “We try to trivialize this tendency, but it’s not a funny topic.”

?Psychologists like Ferrari and Pychyl see flaws in such a strictly temporal view of procrastination. If the delay were as rational as this utility equation suggests, there would be no need to call the behaviour?procrastination?— on the contrary,?time management?would fit better. Beyond that, studies have found that procrastinators carry accompanying feelings of guilt, shame, or anxiety with their decision to delay. This emotional element suggests much more to the story than time management alone. Pychyl noticed the role of mood and emotions on procrastination with his first work on the subject back in the mid-1990s and solidified that concept with a study published in the Journal of Social Behavior and Personality.

?People learn from their mistakes and reassess their approach to certain problems. For chronic procrastinators, that feedback loop seems continually out of service. The damage suffered due to delay doesn’t teach them to start earlier the next time around. An explanation for this behavioral paradox seems to lie in the emotional component of procrastination. Ironically, the quest to relieve stress in the moment might prevent procrastinators from figuring out how to relieve it in the long run.

?“I think the mood regulation piece is a huge part of procrastination,” says Fuschia Sirois of Bishop’s University, co-editor with Timothy Pychyl ?of the book ?Procrastination, Health and Well-Being: ?“If you’re focused just on trying to get yourself to feel good now, there’s a lot you can miss out on in terms of learning how to correct behavior and avoiding similar problems in the future.”

?A few years ago, Sirois recruited about 80 students and assessed them for procrastination. The participants then read descriptions of stressful events, with some of the anxiety caused by unnecessary delay. In one scenario, a person returned from a sunny vacation to notice a suspicious mole but put off going to the doctor for a long time, creating a worrisome situation.

?Afterward, Sirois asked the test participants what they thought about the scenario. She found that procrastinators tended to say, “At least I went to the doctor before it got worse.” This response, known as a?downward counterfactual, reflects a desire to improve mood in the short term.

?At the same time, the procrastinators rarely made statements like, “If only I had gone to the doctor sooner.” That type of response, known as an?upward counterfactual, embraces the moment's tension to learn something for the future. Simply put, procrastinators focused on making themselves feel better at the expense of drawing insight from what made them feel bad.

?Recently, Sirois and Pychyl tried to unify the emotional side of procrastination with the temporal side that isn’t so satisfying on its own. In? Social and Personality Psychology Compass , ?they propose a two-part theory on procrastination that braids short-term, mood-related improvements with long-term, time-related damage. The idea is that procrastinators comfort themselves in the present with the false belief that they’ll be more emotionally equipped to handle a task in the future.

?“The future self becomes the beast of burden for procrastination,” says Sirois. “We’re trying to regulate our current mood and thinking our future self will be in a better state. They’ll better handle feelings of insecurity or frustration with the task. We’ll somehow develop these miraculous coping skills to deal with these emotions we can’t handle right now.”

One of the first studies to document the pernicious nature of procrastination was published in?Psychological Science . ??Dianne Tice and Roy Baumeister rated college students on an established procrastination scale and then tracked their academic performance, stress, and general health throughout the semester. Initially, procrastination seemed to be a benefit, as these students had lower stress levels than others, presumably due to putting off their work to pursue more pleasurable activities. In the end, however, the costs of procrastination far outweighed the temporary benefits. Procrastinators earned lower grades than other students and reported higher cumulative stress and illness. True procrastinators didn’t just finish their work later —?the quality of it suffered, as did their well-being.

?“Thus, despite its apologists and short-term benefits, procrastination cannot be regarded as either adaptive or innocuous,” concluded Tice and Baumeister. “Procrastinators end up suffering more and performing worse than other people.”

?A little later, Tice and Ferrari teamed up to do a study that put the ill effects of procrastination into context. They brought students into a lab and told them at the end of the session, they’d be engaging in a math puzzle. Some were told the task was a meaningful test of their cognitive abilities, while others were told it was designed to be meaningless and fun.

?Before doing the puzzle, the students had an interim period to prepare for the task or mess around with games like Tetris. As it happened, chronic procrastinators only delayed practice on the puzzle when it was described as a cognitive evaluation.

When it was described as fun, they behaved no differently from non-procrastinators.

?In an issue of the?Journal of Research in Personality ,?Tice and Ferrari concluded that procrastination is a self-defeating behavior —?with procrastinators trying to undermine their best efforts. “The chronic procrastinator, the person who does this as a lifestyle, would rather have other people think that they lack effort than lacking ability,” says Ferrari. “It’s a maladaptive lifestyle.”

?Procrastination can be seen as irrational behavior—delaying some intended course of action, realizing that it is disadvantageous, according to K.B. Klingsieck in an article published by the?European Psychologist. ?Behavioral delay in procrastination is observed in at least two ways. First, during action implementation, the person may divert to an alternative and more tempting course of action, indirectly delaying the original plan. Second, from a longer time perspective, the negative consequences of such diversions become visible, for example, when people postpone seeing their doctors until treatment is no longer an option.

?Recently behavioral research into procrastination has ventured beyond cognition, emotion, and personality into neuropsychology. The brain's frontal systems are known to be involved in several processes that overlap with self-regulation. These behaviors —?problem-solving, planning, self-control, and the like —?fall under?executive functioning. Oddly enough, no one had ever examined a connection between this part of the brain and procrastination, says Laura Rabin of Brooklyn College.

?To address this gap in the literature, Rabin and colleagues gathered a sample of 212 students. They assessed them first for procrastination, then on the nine clinical subscales of executive functioning: impulsivity, self-monitoring, planning and organization, activity shifting, task initiation, task monitoring, emotional control, working memory, and general orderliness. The researchers expected to find a link between procrastination and a few subscales (the first four in the list above). As it happened, procrastinators showed significant associations with?all nine, Rabin’s team reported in?the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology .

Causes of Procrastination

Procrastination's physiological roots are associated with the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for executive functions like impulse control, attention, and planning. Damage or low activity in this brain region can reduce an individual's ability to filter out distractions, akin to the role of the prefrontal lobe in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Genetics can also influence procrastination. Studies have shown that both procrastination and impulsiveness are moderately heritable traits.

Psychologically, some individuals use procrastination as a mechanism to cope with anxiety related to task initiation or completion. Impulsiveness plays a significant role in this relationship.

Why Stopping Procrastination is Difficult

Research on the?physiological?roots of procrastination has concerned the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for executive functions?such as?impulse control,?attention?and planning. The prefrontal cortex also filters, decreasing distracting stimuli from other brain regions. Physical damage or low activity in this brain area can reduce one’s ability to screen out distractions. This is similar to the prefrontal lobe’s role in?attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, where it is commonly under-activated.

There is some evidence also that procrastination can have some genetic influence.?In a 2014 U.S. study? surveying procrastination and impulsiveness in?fraternal-?and?identical twin?pairs, both traits were found to be “moderately heritable.”

?Some?psychologists?use procrastination as a?mechanism for coping?with the?anxiety?associated with starting or completing any task or decision.?Piers Steel indicated that the focus of studies on procrastination should be?impulsiveness. That is, anxiety will cause people to delay only if they are impulsive.

Dr. Roy Baumeister, a psychologist from Florida State University, has found that just like any muscle, human’s self-control is a limited resource that can quickly become exhausted. When self-control is close to being depleted, humans tend to choose what’s more pleasurable, which can then reinforce procrastination. At its core, procrastination is an avoidance strategy Baumeister argues. Procrastinators choose to do something else instead of doing what they need to do because it’s much easier to choose pleasure over pain.

?Many procrastinators argue they procrastinate because they perform better under pressure, but research shows that is false. Often, that’s their way of justifying putting things off.?Procrastination can also fuel some self-deception. At some level, procrastinators are aware of the truth of their behavior.

Procrastination has been associated with perfectionism: a tendency to negatively evaluate outcomes and one’s performance, intense fear and avoidance of evaluating one’s abilities by others, heightened social self-consciousness and anxiety, recurrent low mood, and “workaholism”. In a regression analysis study of Steel, from 2007, it is found that mild to moderate perfectionists typically procrastinate slightly less than others, with “the exception being perfectionists who were also seeking clinical counselling”.

?Here are some other reasons:

1. Temporal Discounting: Humans tend to prefer immediate rewards over delayed ones. Procrastination provides instant gratification, as you can do something more enjoyable right now instead of tackling a task with future benefits.
2. Affective Forecasting Error: People often misjudge how they'll feel in the future. They might expect to be more motivated or energetic later, leading them to postpone tasks.
3. Self-Control Depletion: Willpower is a finite resource. Resisting temptation and making yourself do something you don't want to do can deplete your self-control, making procrastinating easier.
4. Fear of Failure: Procrastinators often delay tasks for fear of failing or not meeting their high standards. This fear can be paralyzing.
5. Perfectionism: The desire for perfection can lead to procrastination, as individuals may fear not meeting their or others' unrealistic expectations.
6. Cognitive Dissonance: Procrastinators may convince themselves that they work better under pressure or need the adrenaline rush of a looming deadline to perform at their best.
7. Task Aversion: Some tasks are inherently unpleasant, leading to avoidance behavior. This can be compounded by low self-esteem or a lack of confidence.

Strategies to Overcome Procrastination

1. Take planned and frequent breaks.?According to?MIT Sloan Senior Lecturer Bob Pozen, author of the bestselling book?Extreme Productivity: Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours ,?regular timeouts can help you refresh your focus and get more done. In a?Fast Company ?article, Pozen says the question is not how many breaks you should take in a day but “What is the appropriate period of concentrated work you can do before taking break?” Pozen suggests taking a time-out every 75 to 90 minutes. He comes to this duration based on studies of professional musicians, who are most productive when they practice for this amount of time in a single sitting.?In addition, research by?Tony Schwartz, author of?T he Way We’re Working Isn’t Working ,?shows that humans naturally move from full focus and energy to physiological fatigue every 90 minutes. To help, you could use the Pomodoro Time Tracker .?It is a great tool to help you take breaks at set intervals.
2. Reward yourself.?Acknowledging and rewarding yourself for achieving even the small tasks is important. It creates a sense of motivation and releases those feel-good, productive emotions that spur you to achieve even more. Make your reward proportional to the task you completed.?“Our brains are always looking for relative rewards. Suppose we have a habit loop around procrastination, but we haven’t found a better reward. In that case, our brain is just going to keep doing it over and over until we give it something better to do,” said psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr. Judson Brewer, Director of Research and Innovation at Brown University’s Mindfulness Center. To rewire any habit, we must give our brains what Dr. Brewer called the “Bigger Better Offer” or “B.B.O.” In the case of procrastination, we have to find a better reward than avoidance — one that can relieve our challenging feelings in the present moment without causing harm to our future selves. The difficulty with breaking the addiction to procrastination, in particular, is that there is an infinite number of potential substitute actions that would still be forms of procrastination, Dr. Brewer said. That’s why the solution must, therefore, be internal and not dependent on anything but ourselves.
3. Keep track of how you use your time.?By having a clear idea of where you spend your time, you can always review your productivity and know which areas to improve. You could use the app?Rescue Time ,?to help. It gets you a categorized breakdown of how you spend your time and helps you to find out how much time you’re on-task. You can even label activities as productive and non-productive to block your biggest distractions.
4. Remove your obstacles and distractions.?Before getting started on a task, take a moment to carefully consider the obstacles and distractions that might get in your way. Then, develop a plan to ensure that they don’t. For example, email or smartphone notifications or messages distract you from your task and reduce productivity. Research shows that it takes between 12-24 minutes to regain your focus when you are distracted from the task at hand.
5. Start with something small.?Procrastinators often find it hard to begin a task because they want it to be perfect or take too big a step. Focus on taking a small action, and think of it only as a?“draft,” not a finished product.
6. Be in a friendly environment.?Working in the wrong environment can make you succumb to procrastination. This physically distancing yourself from distractions such as television, electronics, friends, and loud places.
7. Take control of your negative self-talk.?Telling yourself not to do something focuses your attention on not doing it, and can have the reverse effect. Telling yourself positive messages of how you are going to do it successfully and the reward that is waiting for you will help
8. Stop trying to be and do perfect.?As mentioned before, perfectionism—wanting the conditions before doing the task to be perfect, or hoping the outcome will be perfect, are demotivators, and can prevent you for starting the task. First, adopting a measurement of doing your best under the circumstances rather than demanding 100% will help. Also, conditions will never be perfect to start something, and taking an attitude of trial and error will be much more productive.
9. Use a habit system to control procrastination. In the late 1990s,?a group of neuroscientists at MIT ?discovered that habits are formed in the brain, a process that?T he Power of Habit ?author Charles Duhigg calls “the habit loop.” To establish good habits or eliminate bad habits, learning how the habit loop works can be a powerful tool for controlling procrastination, says James Clear, in his book?Atomic Habits.? ?One of the techniques he describes : “Another way to overcome the trap of chronic procrastination is to use visual cues to?trigger your habits ?and?measure your progress .?A visual cue is something you can see (a visual reminder) that prompts you to take action. Visual cues display your progress on a behavior.?Visual cues can have an additive effect on motivation. As the visual evidence of your progress mounts, it is natural to become more motivated to continue the habit. The more visual progress you see, the more motivated you will become to finish the task. There are a variety of popular behavioral economics studies that refer to this as the?Endowed Progress Effect.?Seeing your previous progress is a great way to trigger your next productive action.?Clear suggests two strategies that use visual cues The Paper Clip Strategy ,?which is helpful for beating procrastination day-after-day, and?The Seinfeld Strategy ,?which is great for maintaining consistency over longer periods.
10. Forgive yourself in the moments you procrastinate.?In?a 2010 study ,?researchers found that students who could forgive themselves for procrastinating when studying for a first exam ended up procrastinating less when studying for their next exam. They concluded that self-forgiveness supported productivity by allowing “the individual to move past their maladaptive behavior and focus on the upcoming examination without the burden of past acts.”
11. Practice?self-compassion,?treating ourselves with kindness and understanding in the face of our mistakes and failures.?In a 2012 study ?examining the relationship between stress, self-compassion and procrastination, Dr. Sirois found that procrastinators tend to have high stress and low self-compassion, suggesting that self-compassion provides “a buffer against negative reactions to self-relevant events.”
12. Set deadlines close to the present and not far off.?Psychologists Neil Lewis of the University of Michigan and Daphna Oyserman of the University of Southern California attempted to prove this in a?recent study published in ?Psychological Science .?They found that if people considered far-off events from the perspective of days rather than months or years, they acted more quickly.

?Dealing with others who procrastinate

?It can frustrating dealing with a family member, friend or work associate who chronically procrastinates, and we tend to bend over backwards to accommodate them. Some research has suggested taking a different approach.

?Ferrari, who offers several interventions in his book would like to see a general cultural shift from punishing lateness to rewarding the early bird. He’s proposed, among other things, that the federal government incentivize early tax filing by giving people a small break if they file by February or March 15. He also suggests we stop enabling procrastination in our relationships.

?Stop enabling procrastinators by stepping in to help them. For example,?In a 2011 paper in?Psychological Science , ?Gráinne Fitzsimons and Eli Finkel report that people who think their relationship partner will help them with a task are more likely to procrastinate.

?Summary:

?Procrastination can be a serious problem for people, causing negative consequences in their personal and work lives. And there is a clear connection to perfectionism, the addiction to technological distractions and anxiety. However, practical strategies to address the problem are easily available and successful.