“TD, can you please hang your towel up in the bathroom?” I asked my son.
“Just a minute, Mum, till I finish what I’m doing.” Several minutes passed by. Siren noises came from the Lego pile. He was having a wonderful time telling a story with his Lego toys. I got busy with other things and didn’t think to check if he’d put the towel away.
The next day, I called the kids for the shower.
“You can go first, TD,” I said.
“OK, Mum” he replied and went off to the shower quite happily. After a couple of minutes, the shower stopped, and I heard the door open.
“Mum!” he yelled. “Can you get my towel please?”
Now I had a choice. Not putting his towel away had become a habit. I reminded him of it practically every night, and nearly every night I was met with the same response. “In a minute, Mum!” Some days I got tired of reminding him and did the job myself. Other times I would remind him several times before he did it. Now I could choose to go on enabling bad behaviour, or I could start allowing him to experience some consequences.
“I told you to put your towel away last night, TD,” I said.
“Sorry, Mum, I just forgot.”
“That’s what you say every time,” I said. “But I’ve had enough of doing that job for you. In future, if you don’t do it, you will have to go and get it yourself. In the nude.” His eyes widened. “If you leave it there after you’ve finished your shower – especially after you’ve been told to put it away – it’s your responsibility. Not mine.” He got out of the shower and slowly peered around the door to see who was in the living room. The coast was clear, so he streaked through the house to his bedroom and scooped up the towel. Phew! Safe this time.
What Is Procrastination?
Experts define procrastination as voluntarily putting off a task or activity with the full realization that it will have a negative impact on us in the future. The very nature of procrastination means that we avoid thinking about the future consequences and live in the present moment – until our lack of action catches up with us. Then we are likely to experience stress, anxiety, and feelings of being out of control. Experts believe that it goes much deeper than the inability to manage time well (although this can certainly exacerbate the problem), and in actual fact, stems from an inability to manage emotions.
Why Do We Procrastinate?
Much has been made of the psychology behind procrastination, but in its simplest form, the answer is: we procrastinate because we want to avoid something that might cause us pain or discomfort. But why do we want to avoid those things in the first place?
Joseph Ferrari, PhD, Associate Professor of psychology at the University of Carleton in Ottawa, Canada, believes that many procrastinators use procrastination as a means to avoid fears – fear of failure, other people’s opinions, or even success. He makes the distinction that while anyone may procrastinate, not everyone is a chronic procrastinator. The latter live procrastination as a lifestyle, a habit that controls everything they do – and as much as 20 percent of the population admits to chronic procrastination.
Procrastinators are not born that way. Sometimes the family environment leads to this behaviour in response to an authoritarian parenting style – it can be one of the few forms of self-expression that the procrastinator gets away with. In an environment with a controlling parent, children fail to develop self – regulation mechanisms and lack the will or the ability to set intentions and follow them through. Sometimes procrastination is a form of undercover rebellion.
Although the reasons for procrastination vary, the results remain the same: a disorganized life, leading to greater levels of stress and a higher incidence of illness than among non – procrastinators.
Three Types Of Procrastinators
Dr Ferrari’s work has identified three different types of procrastinators.
- The thrill seekers, who get a euphoric rush out of leaving things to the last minute and then completing the task under intense pressure.
- The avoiders, who procrastinate because they have a fear of something. This may be a fear of failure – not measuring up, not meeting expectations, or looking bad to people who are important to them. It could also be a fear of success – not being able to handle the results of success or a fear of being unworthy of success or the changes that success would bring. Either way, these people sabotage their efforts with procrastination, often because they are fearful of what others will think of them.
- Decisional procrastinators, who are unable to make a decision, and by default, procrastinate. However, they are not immune from the results of procrastination and suffer the consequences of being unable to decide.
The Cost Of Procrastination
While procrastination is often viewed as a relatively harmless but slightly annoying habit, the reality is that it is actually quite harmful. It takes a toll on health, relationships, and workplace harmony and productivity. Procrastinators often see the impacts of their habit on their own lives but fail to realize the extent of the damage it causes to others.
In 1997, Psychological Science published a case study conducted by psychologists Dianne Tice and William James Roy Baumeister among university students. After establishing a scale to measure procrastination, they monitored the students’ stress levels, academic progress, and general health. They found:
- At the beginning of the semester, procrastinators were more relaxed and had lower stress levels than the other students.
- By the end of the semester, procrastinators had higher stress levels.
- Procrastinators ended up getting lower grades as a result of procrastination and the ensuing stress it caused.
- Procrastinators reported higher levels of illness, also thought to be linked to higher stress levels.
“Thus, despite its apologists and its short-term benefits, procrastination cannot be regarded as either adaptive or innocuous,” concluded Tice and Baumeister (now both at Florida State University). “Procrastinators end up suffering more and performing worse than other people.”
“But I Want To Feel Good!”
Researchers have concluded that the biggest component of procrastination is emotional.
“Emotional regulation, to me, is the real story around procrastination, because to the extent that I can deal with my emotions, I can stay on task,” says psychologist Timothy Pychyl of Carleton University. “When you say task-aversiveness, that’s another word for lack of enjoyment. Those are feeling states — those aren’t states of which [task] has more utility.”
In other words, procrastinators are experiencing a lack of self-regulation – the ability to get the task done no matter how they feel. Instead, negative feelings persuade them to put off the task, often accompanied by the self – lie “I’ll do it when I feel better,” or, “I’ll feel better tomorrow. I’ll do it then.”
In experiencing negative consequences from choices, most people learn to modify their behaviour to avoid a repeat in the future. Not so with chronic procrastinators. It seems that a focus on relieving the stress of the moment might actually prevent procrastinators from taking in the big picture, and figuring out how to solve the problem in the future.
“I think the mood regulation piece is a huge part of procrastination,” says Fuschia Sirois of Bishop’s University, in Canada. “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 behaviour and avoid similar problems in the future.”
Psychological science researchers Fuschia Sirois and Timothy Pychyl concluded that procrastinators comfort themselves with a false belief that they will be better equipped to handle problems in the future by avoiding them today.
“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 be better able to handle feelings of insecurity or frustration with the task. That somehow we’ll develop these miraculous coping skills to deal with these emotions that we just can’t deal with right now.”
Tips For Overcoming Procrastination
- Try breaking tasks into smaller chunks so that they seem more manageable and not so overwhelming.
- Recognize a pattern of exchanging long-term aims and wellbeing for short-term pleasure, and seek a counselor’s help
- Set personal deadlines, then find someone to hold you accountable for meeting them
- Eliminate the need for a short-term mood fix by changing your view of the task – try to find something enjoyable or valuable in the task and focus on that. You’ll get a lot further if a task is meaningful to you in some way.
- If procrastination masquerades as perfectionism (because you are afraid of criticism if you don’t get it right), let go of the idea that you have to complete a task perfectly because you will never do it if you hold onto that thought.
- Let go of any obsessions with “Shiny Objects” – the latest and greatest research, products, programs and more. Complete one project at a time. Don’t get derailed by the Shiny Objects that come your way.
- Don’t wait for others to be ready. You might still be waiting in ten years’ time!
Make Yourself Accountable
Avoid temptation – deliberately place yourself where you are less likely to be tempted by things that waste your time (Facebook springs to mind!) when you have a task to accomplish. If this is a problem and you are struggling with saying no to yourself, ask someone else to hold you accountable. They might even be able to help you come up with some strategies to avoid temptation – ie turn off the wifi and hide it till you’ve done your work!
Tough Love Wins the Day
If you live with a procrastinator, stop enabling the behaviour. Research shows that people are more likely to be procrastinators if they believe their partner will pick up the slack. Fed up with it? Let there be consequences! No clean clothes because he failed to put the dirty ones in the laundry for the last four days? It’s now his problem. No food in the cupboard because she didn’t go grocery shopping? Walk away and let her deal with it. If you enable the behaviour to continue, it will. And you will continue to feel resentful, used, and fed up with it. Get out of the cycle.
While tough love might be the best option for couples, self-forgiveness is often the best option for an individual. When you mess up, forgive yourself. In doing so, you give yourself permission to get up and try again.
What Are You Doing With Your Life?
Timothy Pychyl likes to focus, in conclusion, on the hopeful aspect of forgiveness – the possibility that you have given yourself permission to move on and try again, in spite of the failures of the past.
He also sees procrastination as a problem that is relevant to our very existence.
“It’s an existentially relevant problem because it’s not getting on with life itself,” he says. “You only get a certain number of years. What are you doing with them?”
References:
http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-16306/top-5-procrastination-behaviors-what-they-say-about-you.html
https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200308/procrastination-ten-things-know