Carleton professor Dr. Tim Pychyl said he believes procrastination is more about emotional regulation than wasting time.
As the school year gets into gear, Pychyl’s research into the root causes of procrastination and how students break the cycle of “not now” is especially important.
Pychyl has spent is career researching human behaviour. His PhD was an examination on understanding people’s goals, and whether someone’s personality traits could determine how likely they were to complete goals they set for themselves. This introduction allowed him to see the importance of procrastination when studying human behaviour.
“Procrastination is really just a form of voluntary delay. We resist the intended action to avoid stress, while knowing at the same time the consequences for our not doing so,” Pychyl said.
This is an emotion-focused coping response that Pychyl said he feels stems from the mismanagement of goals. The individual chooses a short-term relief over the longterm goal, Pychyl said, and that is the main problem.
According to Pychyl, while everyone procrastinates at some point or another, for many the effects are mitigated by a greater sense of self-control and how they deal with the crises in their lives. For those prone to impulsivity and demonstrate a lack of discipline, the “I don’t feel like doing that” voice is harder to ignore.
Chronic procrastination thrives off of self deception because the procrastinator feels like there will always be time left. Once this becomes a habit, tasks are always put off, anxiety about the event continues to build, and the person feels they have no other choice but to keep pushing back, he said. This starts the cycle of procrastination that plagues people, especially students.
Pychyl said even one-time procrastination can have consequences down the line, like disruption of health routines or not making time for proper nutrition or exercise.
Rather than trying to deal with procrastination, Pychyl said it’s easier to focus on preventing procrastination.
He said that contrary to popular thought, procrastination is an anxiety issue, not a time management one. Like with other kinds of anxiety, the symptoms have to do with the sufferer wanting to provide themselves with a small degree of comfort to stave off their damaged feelings of self-worth. Pychyl likened this behaviour to chronic over-eating.
“One eventually finds that they are no longer eating to sate hunger, but because of boredom and emotional coping,” he said.
Pychyl said he is a strong advocate for mindfulness meditation as a foundation for critical thinking.
“You can be aware of the emotions you are having, but you shouldn’t allow them to dictate how you act or go about achieving your goals,” Pychyl said.
As a rule, Pychyl recommended students tasked with a seemingly insurmountable objective, like a huge term paper or studying for a final, take a step-by-step approach. If they visualize a project as being both large and far away, then they will avoid the “unmanageable” task.
In order to write a multi-page paper, one must first sit down at their desk, open their computer, access the internet, and search their key term. It all starts with sitting down at the desk, he said.
Pychyl also recommended setting an environment that makes it easier to get work done and more difficult for you to be interrupted, and then discouraged from starting again.
This can be done by making social media sites harder to access, setting your alarm on the other side of the room, or even having to come into physical contact with the project you are putting off (for instance, laundry or dishes). Pychyl said rewards can have a positive effect on work ethic, but students have to be careful not to get distracted.
He said it’s important to remember that humans are action-oriented.
“We don’t do projects—we do actions,” Pychyl said.
