The reality is that if you wait until you're in the right frame of mind to do certain tasks especially undesirable ones , you will probably find that the right time simply never comes along and the task never gets completed. The following are a few other factors that cause procrastination. Researchers suggest that procrastination can be particularly pronounced among students. According to researchers, there are some major cognitive distortions that lead to academic procrastination.
Procrastination can also be a result of depression. Feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and a lack of energy can make it difficult to start and finish the simplest task. Depression can also lead to self-doubt. When you can't figure out how to tackle a project or feel insecure about your abilities, you might find it easier to put it off and working on other tasks.
Procrastination is also pretty common in people with obsessive-compulsive disorder. One reason is that OCD is often linked with maladaptive, unhealthy perfectionism, which causes fears about making new mistakes, doubts about whether you are doing something correctly, and worry over others' expectations of you.
People with OCD also often have a propensity toward indecision, causing them to procrastinate rather than make a decision. In addition to the reasons why we procrastinate, we often come up with a number of excuses or rationalizations to justify our behavior.
Some researchers classify procrastination in two main types: passive and active procrastinators. Others define the types of procrastinators based on different behavioral styles of procrastination, including:. 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.
According to psychologist Piers Steel, people who don't procrastinate tend to be high in the personality trait known as conscientiousness , one of the broad dispositions identified by the Big Five theory of personality. People who are high in conscientiousness also tend to be high in other areas including self-discipline, persistence, and personal responsibility.
It is only in cases where procrastination becomes chronic and begins to have a serious impact on a person's daily life that it becomes a more serious issue. In such instances, it's not just a matter of having poor time management skills, it's a major part of their lifestyle.
Perhaps they pay their bills late, don't start work on big projects until the night before the deadline, delay gift shopping until the day before a birthday, and even file their income tax returns late. Unfortunately, this procrastination can have a serious impact on a number of life areas, including a person's mental health and social, professional, and financial well-being:. Fortunately, there are a number of different things you can do to fight procrastination and start getting things done on time.
Ever wonder what your personality type means? Sign up to find out more in our Healthy Mind newsletter. Procrastination in daily working life: A diary study on within-person processes that link work characteristics to workplace procrastination. Front Psychol. American Psychological Association.
Note : there are some exceptions to this, in cases where procrastination is driven by some other factor , such as rebelliousness or the desire to add excitement to otherwise boring work. However, for the most part, the mechanism outlined above is the main one that explains why people procrastinate. This section contains a comprehensive list of the specific reasons why people procrastinate, based primarily on the psychological mechanism which was outlined in the previous section.
Try to be reflective and honest with yourself while you do this, since figuring out the underlying causes of your procrastination is crucial if you want to be able to successfully overcome it. Note that not everything here will apply to you, so feel free to skim through the list, and read primarily about reasons that you think could apply in your particular situation.
People are more likely to procrastinate when their goals are vague or abstract, compared to when their goals are concrete and clearly defined. Furthermore, note that in addition to a lack of a clear definition, there are other factors that can make a goal feel abstract. For example, according to construal-level theory , goals that are perceived as highly improbable are also perceived as relatively abstract.
This means that if a person finds it unlikely that they will attain a certain goal, this can cause them to view that goal as abstract, which in turn can increase the likelihood that they will procrastinate on it.
People often procrastinate on tasks that are associated with outcomes e. This phenomenon, which is based on the timing of outcomes, is known as temporal discounting or delay discounting. Accordingly, people often display a present bias when they choose to engage in activities that reward them in the short-term, at the expense of working on tasks that would lead to better outcomes for them in the long term.
Note that the relationship between the time it takes to receive a reward and the perceived value of that reward is usually inconsistent, as the rate of discounting decreases over time. For example, while there is a big difference in how we value a reward that we can receive now compared to a reward we can receive in a week, there is a much smaller difference in how we value a reward we can receive in a year compared to a reward we can receive in a year plus a week.
Similarly, while there is a big difference between receiving a reward in a day compared to in a year, there is less of a difference between receiving a reward in a year compared to receiving it in two years. People sometimes procrastinate because they view their future self as being disconnected from their present-self , a phenomenon known as temporal self-discontinuity or temporal disjunction.
This disconnect between the present and future selves can cause people to procrastinate in a variety of ways. People sometimes avoid taking action in the present because they intend or hope to pursue a more attractive course of action in the future.
This mindset can lead to long-term procrastination, and persist even in cases where the person who is procrastinating never ends up following through on their intended plan. People sometimes procrastinate on tasks because they are overly optimistic about their ability to complete those tasks in the future.
For example, a student might decide to postpone getting started on an assignment that is due a few weeks from now, because they feel that there will be plenty of time to get it done later. In many cases, this form of optimism might occur as a result of underestimating the time it will take to complete the tasks in question; this phenomenon is known as the planning fallacy , and it can lead both procrastinators as well as non-procrastinators to assume that they will finish upcoming tasks earlier than they actually will.
Similarly, a person might decide, after struggling to get started on a task, to postpone it to the next day, because they believe that tomorrow they will be able to bring themself to work on it, even if they have postponed the same task in the exact same manner several times in the past.
People sometimes procrastinate because they are unable to make decisions in a timely manner. There are various factors that generally make it more likely that someone will get stuck over-thinking the situation while trying to make a decision, a phenomenon which is sometimes referred to as analysis paralysis or choice paralysis. The main factors to consider, from a practical perspective, are the following:.
Accordingly, the more decisions you have to make during a certain time period, the more you deplete your capacity for self-control, and the more likely you are to procrastinate in making future decisions, at least until you have a chance to recharge yourself mentally.
Finally, note that this form of procrastination is generally referred to as decisional procrastination , since it involves a delay in making a decision. People sometimes procrastinate because they feel overwhelmed with regard to the tasks that they need to handle.
A feeling of overwhelm can occur due to a variety of reasons, such as having a single task that feels huge in terms of scope, or having a large number of small tasks that add up. When this happens, a person might simply decide to avoid the tasks in question, or they might attempt to handle them, but then end up feeling paralyzed before those tasks are completed.
For example, if you need to clean up your entire house, the fact that the task will take so long and involve so many parts might cause you to feel overwhelmed, in which case you might avoid getting started on it in the first place. People sometimes procrastinate because they feel anxious about a task that they need to handle. People often procrastinate because they are averse to the tasks that they need to perform.
This occurs because, in general, the more people find a certain task unappealing, the more likely they are to want to avoid it, and therefore the more likely they are to procrastinate. Note that there are many things that can make a person averse to a task in a way that causes them to procrastinate on it. For example, a person might procrastinate because they perceive a task as frustrating, tedious, or boring, or they might procrastinate because they believe there is a gap between the difficulty of the task and their own competence, which means that they feel that the task is too difficult for them to handle.
People sometimes procrastinate as a result of their perfectionism. For example, someone might delay working on their book, because they want every line that they write down to be perfect from the start, which causes them to not write anything at all. People sometimes procrastinate because they are afraid of being evaluated or because they are afraid of receiving negative feedback from others.
Whether the influence of this fear is positive or negative depends on a variety of factors, such as how anxious a person feels about the upcoming evaluation, and how confident they are in their ability to successfully handle the task at hand. This fear of failure can promote procrastination in various ways, such as by causing people to avoid finishing a task, or by causing them to avoid getting started on a task in the first place. For example, someone might be so worried that their business idea will fail, that they end up continuing to work on it indefinitely, without ever making it available to the public.
In an issue of the Journal of Research in Personality from , Tice and Ferrari concluded that procrastination is really a self-defeating behavior — with procrastinators trying to undermine their own best efforts. Chronic procrastinators have perpetual problems finishing tasks, while situational ones delay based on the task itself.
The behavior is strongly linked with the Big Five personality trait of conscientiousness. Most delayers betray a tendency for self-defeat, but they can arrive at this point from either a negative state fear of failure, for instance, or perfectionism or a positive one the joy of temptation. Social scientists debate whether the existence of this gap can be better explained by the inability to manage time or the inability to regulate moods and emotions.
Generally speaking, economists tend to favor the former theory. Many espouse a formula for procrastination put forth in a paper published by the business scholar Piers Steel, a professor at the University of Calgary, in a issue of Psychological Bulletin. The idea is that procrastinators calculate the fluctuating utility of certain activities: pleasurable ones have more value early on, and tough tasks become more important as a deadline approaches. Psychologists like Ferrari and Pychyl, on the other hand, see flaws in such a strictly temporal view of procrastination.
For one thing, if delay were really as rational as this utility equation suggests, there would be no need to call the behavior 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. Pychyl noticed the role of mood and emotions on procrastination with his very first work on the subject, back in the mids, and solidified that concept with a study published in the Journal of Social Behavior and Personality in His research team gave 45 students a pager and tracked them for five days leading up to a school deadline.
Eight times a day, when beeped, the test participants reported their level of procrastination as well as their emotional state.
As the preparatory tasks became more difficult and stressful, the students put them off for more pleasant activities. When they did so, however, they reported high levels of guilt — a sign that beneath the veneer of relief there was a lingering dread about the work set aside. A subsequent study, led by Tice, reinforced the dominant role played by mood in procrastination. In contrast, when they thought their mood could change and particularly when they were in a bad mood , they delayed practice until about the final minute.
The findings suggested that self-control only succumbs to temptation when present emotions can be improved as a result. In general, people learn from their mistakes and reassess their approach to certain problems. For chronic procrastinators, that feedback loop seems continually out of service. An explanation for this behavioral paradox seems to lie in the emotional component of procrastination. Ironically, the very quest to relieve stress in the moment might prevent procrastinators from figuring out how to relieve it in the long run.
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. Simply put, procrastinators focused on how to make themselves feel better at the expense of drawing insight from what made them feel bad.
In the February issue of 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. Recently the behavioral research into procrastination has ventured beyond cognition, emotion, and personality, into the realm of neuropsychology.
The frontal systems of the brain are known to be involved in a number of processes that overlap with self-regulation. These behaviors — problem-solving, planning, self-control, and the like — fall under the domain of 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 students and 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 of the subscales namely, the first four in the list above. Rabin stresses the limitations of the work. As the basic understanding of procrastination advances, many researchers hope to see a payoff in better interventions. Procrastinators might chop up tasks into smaller pieces so they can work through a more manageable series of assignments.
The emotional aspects of procrastination pose a tougher problem. Direct strategies to counter temptation include blocking access to desirable distraction, but to a large extent that effort requires the type of self-regulation procrastinators lack in the first place.
Sirois believes the best way to eliminate the need for short-term mood fixes is to find something positive or worthwhile about the task itself.
Ferrari, who offers a number of interventions in his book Still Procrastinating? The No Regrets Guide to Getting It Done , would like to see a general cultural shift from punishing lateness to rewarding the early bird. He also suggests we stop enabling procrastination in our personal relationships. But while the tough love approach might work for couples, the best personal remedy for procrastination might actually be self-forgiveness. A couple years ago, Pychyl joined two Carleton University colleagues and surveyed students on procrastination before their midterm exams.
The research team, led by Michael Wohl, reported in a issue of Personality and Individual Differences that students who forgave themselves after procrastinating on the first exam were less likely to delay studying for the second one.
Pychyl says he likes to close talks and chapters with that hopeful prospect of forgiveness. He sees the study as a reminder that procrastination is really a self-inflicted wound that gradually chips away at the most valuable resource in the world: time. What are you doing? I am writing my seventh speech for my Toastsmasters meeting and I am speaking about procrastination.
This article provided me with great research and information about this subject. I too am writing my 7th speech for Toastmasters on the same subject. Hope yours went well. Mine is due tomorrow! Me too! Hence, it has become the topic for my speech! This article has been very informative. As a counselor, this article is powerful. People say that procrastination reduces the productivity. But scientifically it actually increases the productivity. People tend to work more and try to be more productive in the last few hours before the deadline.
On the other hand, it also increases the internal stress. So it is better to avoid procrastination for a perfect work-life balance. To avoid procrastination, I chose Habiliss virtual assistant services, which really helped me in increasing my productivity.
My daughter belongs to the type of people who will procrastinate or avoid anything that implies making an effort. Or she will start something and leave it unfinished to do something else. Chop the whole task in small pieces. Observe the small task very deeply.
Interesting that no procrastinators have posted. Does that demonstrate the guilt and shame they feel for wasting their lives? It is so stressful to always feel like you are behind the eight ball. I have always taken on a little more than most sensible people would. So, I set myself up from the get go. I have a long history of depression, so when I get depressed, my chores, projects, whatever seem to be too heavy to deal with. I have a totally unrealistic sense of time.
I am chronically late. As I have gotten older, this has gotten worse. I often stayed late to finish projects when everyone was gone for the day and I could focus in total peace and quiet. Of course, when I worked late, I felt the inner guilt of neglecting my family.
I am almost 70, raising 2 grandchildren and unable to find the peace and quiet or the time to work on the projects I saved for retirement.
This was voluntary and I really felt I could give them the best environment for their special needs. So, maybe I have given myself an acceptable, selfless reason to procrastinate.
But, it only makes me feel more stressed. I really want to be relaxed, happy and unstressed. I wonder if anyone has ever studied procrastination from the perspective of someone who just perpetually takes on more than they can handle. My work is usually very good, but almost always late.
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