Even if you do not consider yourself a procrastinator, at some point in your life you’ve probably put something off.
Procrastination is a problem that everyone has experienced, according to Dr. Sara Antunes-Alves, a psychologist and manager of From Intention to Action (FITA).
Procrastinating is one thing—being able to deal with it is another entirely.
While you might think that your problem is due to being too busy–procrastination is actually a complex problem. It combines practical time management skills, emotional aspects, and your mental health.
Antunes-Alves, said dealing with procrastination is complicated. The different aspects, both emotional and habitual, are what make finding a solution to procrastination difficult.
Why?
Timothy Pychyl, an associate professor of psychology and director for the Centre of Initiatives in Education at Carleton University, has been researching procrastination since 1995.
“Procrastination is an emotion-focused coping strategy,” Pychyl said. “We procrastinate the things that we don’t want to do because it’s difficult, or it’s boring, or it’s frustrating, or we resent doing it. Any of those things or more, and we don’t like that feeling and we can get rid of the feeling by putting off the task.”
Even if a person feels bad or guilty for procrastinating, they will continue to do it because the guilt they feel is not as strong as other emotions, such as resentment towards the task, Pychyl said.
Kimberly Pham, a third-year communications and media studies student, said she can relate to those feelings.
“I feel guilty and I feel good at the same time because I’m doing things that I enjoy, but I feel bad because I know that I’m going to regret this decision,” she said. “It’s more because I think the thing I have to do is boring, and I feel a lot of pressure when I have to do it.”
Genna Pearce, team lead at FITA, said another reason behind procrastination which she has encountered a lot when talking to students, is related to expectations over their own success.
“One thing can be fear of failure, or ironically perfectionism is a common one,” she said. “So the thought might be, rather than fail or do badly on this assignment, I’d rather avoid the whole thing and know I failed because I didn’t do it, then do it and do badly.”
Distraction
Distractions are another factor that make people procrastinate.
According to Chris Bailey, an author who has published two books on productivity, there is a chemical process in the brain which makes people pay greater attention to anything that is more fun or desirable than the task at hand.
“We have a novelty bias embedded within the brain where our prefrontal cortex releases and rewards us with a hit of dopamine for each new and novel thing on which we direct our attention,” he said. “And so we’re wired to pay attention to anything that’s more attractive in the moment over anything that is boring, that’s frustrating, difficult, ambiguous, or unstructured.”
Pychyl said distractions also make us procrastinate because they create the illusion of feeling productive.
“What’s interesting about distraction is that it actually makes it feel like you’re doing something; so you say to yourself, ‘oh yeah, this is interesting’ and you end up reading something because it’s interesting, but has nothing to do with what you’re supposed to be doing,” he said. “So it can make you feel like you’re actually doing something but of course you’re just wasting your time.”
For a distratciton to capture our attention, it has to be pleasurable, threatening or something that is new or novel, said Bailey.
According to Pychyl, distractions not only take away our attention but also trick us into feeling less guilty for procrastinating.
“The distraction really helps not to have the guilt because you absorb yourself into something else that’s interesting or even fun,” he said. “Now, the guilt will come in later when you realize—’I just spent three hours watching Netflix’ or ‘I spent this afternoon surfing the web.’ Then, you might feel guilty.”
Effects
Procrastination affects people in different ways. Pychyl said when we procrastinate, we affect our performance, well-being, and health.
“Although performance is typically affected, what’s really affected is our well-being. Our happiness and our life satisfaction is negatively affected. We’re less happy; we’re less satisfied with life. The more you procrastinate, the more problems you report with your health and this happens because first, you have the direct effects of this stress.” – Tim Pychyl, , Carleton professor and expert in procrastination
Pham admitted to being stressed all the time due to procrastinating tasks.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me but that’s a problem—I want to fix it,” she said.
In addition to stress, procrastination also causes health problems because people who procrastinate are more likely not to seek treatment or practice self-care.
“Procrastination causes stress; stress affects your health. You also have problems with health because you have fewer wellness behaviours. In other words, you don’t exercise as much, or sleep as well or eat the food you should be eating, so that affects you,” said Pychyl. He added that this stress can also lead to people avoiding routinely checking up on their physical health with doctors.
Fight the urge
Pychyl said the way to fight procrastination is to focus on small, simple tasks which help you get past the feeling of not wanting to do the activity.
Pychyl also added that the turning point for doing a task is when people decide the potential fallout of putting off a task any longer would be worse than the pain of doing the task.
Antunes-Alves said when students come to her with procrastination problems, she often recommends they read Pychyl’s books or look up his podcasts or videos, which give advice and tips based on his research.
“Instead of focusing on the feeling, because you’re not going to feel like it, you’re going to feel all sorts of negative emotions. Instead, ask yourself the question: what is the next action I would need to take to do this task if I was going to do this task?” – Tim Pychyl
For students who find it difficult to tackle their procrastination problem, there are resources available. FITA is focused on helping students dealing with mental health and academic problems.
Antunes-Alves said FITA has changed its focus in the past couple of years from dealing with students facing academic suspension towards having an increased focus on providing counselling for mental health problems as well as helping with academic stress.
The program has a capacity of around 300 students, which she said is a lot less than what health and counselling services at Carleton takes.
They take on less students because they provide every participant in the program with a guaranteed session every week, for 12 weeks. Students request an intake interview, where they are assessed for the state of both their academics and their mental health.
Pearce said students must be serious about tackling their problems. Because of the time commitment—students must attend every session over the twelve weeks—this means some students are not accepted into the program.
“The reason we like students to contact us directly is because FITA has a strong commitment piece, where we require students to show up to all 12 of their sessions,” Pearce said. “If someone [else] gets them into the program, that doesn’t really show a commitment, so we want people to want to be here, and that’s when we get the most work done.”
Sometimes, FITA passes students onto Carleton’s Centre for Student Academic Support (CSAS) if students just have academic problems.
“We are professional counsellors whereas CSAS has learning strategists who have been trained in learning strategies and supporting students.”
But, according to Pearce, around two thirds to three quarters of the students who apply to FITA get accepted into the program.
“CSAS for example might focus more on the academic habits or tools such as scheduling or pacing yourself. We might touch upon that as well in sessions, but we are looking at more the underlying reasons behind motivation,” he said.
He added: “Tim Pychyl is a big advocate of how it really is an emotional regulation problem or a distress tolerance problem. So as counsellors, we’ll work on that piece of it, and then on the tools side, CSAS might be a good way to marry the two.”
Whether it be through counselling or changing your priorities, according to Bailey, it comes down to trying to make the tasks enjoyable.
“The key is to recognize when something that we’re working at has a few of those characteristics that make us more likely to put it off. Then find ways to make a task or project more pleasurable or more threatening, or more novel in the moment.” – Chris Bailey, author on procrastination
Graphics by Paloma Callo
