Do you wait to get started on a project? Or are you someone who likes to start and finish a task early?
When you have a big deadline, do you feel confident you can get everything done in time or are you filled with fears and negative thoughts?
In “Why You Procrastinate (It Has Nothing to Do With Self-Control),” Charlotte Lieberman writes:
If you’ve ever put off an important task to, say, alphabetize your spice drawer, you know it wouldn’t be fair to describe yourself as lazy.
After all, alphabetizing requires focus and effort — and hey, maybe you even went the extra mile to wipe down each bottle before putting it back. And it’s not like you’re hanging out with friends or watching Netflix. You’re cleaning — something your parents would be proud of! This isn’t laziness or bad time management. This is procrastination.
If procrastination isn’t about laziness, then what is it about?
Etymologically, “procrastination” is derived from the Latin verb procrastinare — to put off until tomorrow. But it’s more than just voluntarily delaying. Procrastination is also derived from the ancient Greek word akrasia — doing something against our better judgment.
“It’s self-harm,” said Dr. Piers Steel, a professor of motivational psychology at the University of Calgary and the author of “The Procrastination Equation: How to Stop Putting Things Off and Start Getting Stuff Done.”
That self-awareness is a key part of why procrastinating makes us feel so rotten. When we procrastinate, we’re not only aware that we’re avoiding the task in question, but also that doing so is probably a bad idea. And yet, we do it anyway.
“This is why we say that procrastination is essentially irrational,” said Dr. Fuschia Sirois, professor of psychology at the University of Sheffield. “It doesn’t make sense to do something you know is going to have negative consequences.”
She added: “People engage in this irrational cycle of chronic procrastination because of an inability to manage negative moods around a task.”
Wait. We procrastinate because of bad moods?
In short: yes.
Procrastination isn’t a unique character flaw or a mysterious curse on your ability to manage time, but a way of coping with challenging emotions and negative moods induced by certain tasks — boredom, anxiety, insecurity, frustration, resentment, self-doubt and beyond.
“Procrastination is an emotion regulation problem, not a time management problem,” said Dr. Tim Pychyl, professor of psychology and member of the Procrastination Research Group at Carleton University in Ottawa.
In a 2013 study, Dr. Pychyl and Dr. Sirois found that procrastination can be understood as “the primacy of short-term mood repair … over the longer-term pursuit of intended actions.” Put simply, procrastination is about being more focused on “the immediate urgency of managing negative moods” than getting on with the task, Dr. Sirois said.
The particular nature of our aversion depends on the given task or situation. It may be due to something inherently unpleasant about the task itself — having to clean a dirty bathroom or organizing a long, boring spreadsheet for your boss. But it might also result from deeper feelings related to the task, such as self-doubt, low self-esteem, anxiety or insecurity. Staring at a blank document, you might be thinking, I’m not smart enough to write this. Even if I am, what will people think of it? Writing is so hard. What if I do a bad job?
All of this can lead us to think that putting the document aside and cleaning that spice drawer instead is a pretty good idea.
Ms. Lieberman tells us there are no easy solutions like downloading a scheduling app because overcoming chronic procrastination is about managing our emotions in a new way, not better time management or self-control.
She goes on to provide several techniques such as self-forgiveness, self-compassion and making your temptations more inconvenient.
Students, read the entire article, then tell us:
— Are you a procrastinator? If yes, how does procrastination affect your life and performance in school? Tell us about a specific time you kept putting off a task and what you think was the source of your procrastination?
— How big a problem is procrastination in your life? What have you tried to do to overcome this problem? If you are not a procrastinator, tell us what strategies you use to get things done on time.
— What do you think of Ms. Lieberman’s argument that procrastination is not about being lazy or bad time management but about managing our emotions? Can you give any examples that support or contradict this viewpoint? What do you think are the root causes of your own procrastination?
— What do you think about the author’s advice? Which of the techniques that she recommends are you most likely to try and why? Are there any other strategies you have used in your life that have been successful?
— Do you think procrastinating can ever be productive? Why or why not? Can you give an example of a time when putting off a task or project until the last minute made your work better?
