Why self-care can overcome procrastination
• Perfectionism, self-sabotage and unenjoyable tasks can lead us to put work off today’s work for tomorrow
So what is really happening when we procrastinate? Psychologists have been exercising their minds on this topic since the discipline began.
But even the Romans battled with it: according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, “procrastinate” comes from the Latin prefix pro-, meaning “forward”, and crastinus, “of tomorrow”. “The word means moving or acting slowly so as to fall behind, and it implies blameworthy delay especially through laziness or apathy.”
“Acting slowly so as to fall behind” would imply a large amount of irrational selfsabotage, which is why theorists like Dr Piers Steel, distinguished research chair at the University of Calgary, where he teaches human resources and organisational dynamics, says procrastination is in fact self-harm.
“Since its first appearance in the English language in the 16th century, procrastination has identified not just any delay but an irrational one — that is, when we voluntarily put off tasks despite believing ourselves to be worse off for doing so. When we procrastinate, we know we are acting against our own best interests,” Steel says in his book The Procrastination Equation.
Such reason-defying behaviour is not unusual, though. Steel says: “It’s as common as morning coffee. Across scores of surveys, about 95% of people admit to procrastinating, with about a quarter of these indicating that it is a chronic, defining characteristic.”
It cuts across the board to such an extent you wonder how the human race gets books written or sends rockets into space. “Procrastinators can be of either sex, though the Y chromosome has a slight edge. A group of 100 hardened procrastinators would likely be composed of 54 men and 46 women ... they are more likely to be single than married but also more likely to be separated than divorced. They put off ending as well as beginning commitment. Age also determines procrastination,” Steel says.
Young adults tend to put things off more, according to a study by Valerie Danne and others at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Germany. “Statistical analyses showed that procrastination behaviour decreased across the adult lifespan. Higher levels of fear of failure were linked to more procrastination behaviour ... the relationship between age and procrastination was mediated by fear of failure.”
Experts also differentiate between “productive procrastinating” and the unproductive, nail-biting kind. Bingeing on Netflix instead of working might fall into the latter category, while meditating on a paper one is due to submit in a week’s time is not likely to be.
What Johannesburg-based writer and life coach Mandy Collins calls “procrastibaking” also probably weighs in on the positive side.
“When I really don’t want to do something, or I’m afraid of doing it, I procrastinate by tidying and ‘procrastibaking ’—I head into the kitchen and whip up a batch of scones ... I need to soothe myself by baking first. Last week it was a chocolate cake. Of course, my family really likes it when I procrastinate this way!”
Collins is the author of six books, so clearly procrastibaking is an effective business strategy.
Most procrastinators would agree that there are some tasks one is more likely to drag one’s feet on. Doing your tax, for example, flossing your teeth or cleaning out the garage.
Roger Stewart, a Cape Town-based business coach with Grow, a consultancy that helps business owners scale up profit, wonders whether it is just the nature of tasks that makes him delay them.
“Procrastination, or just low down on my current priorities? In essence, bureaucratic tasks, non-crucial admin and questionnaires all suffer the same fate. I tend not to procrastinate on stuff that is high up on my personal and business priorities.”
Stewart says writing and publishing his seminal book on the explorer and botanist William Burchell, called Burchell’s African Odyssey: Revealing the Return Journey 1812-1815 took more than 10 years, but was something he happily returned to because it was his passion.
Lindiwe Sangweni-Siddo, COO of City Lodge Hotel Group agrees: “We often delay tasks we do not enjoy, or lack confidence in executing, or simply mundane day-to-day activities that are no fun.” But she warns, “procrastination leads to ‘lastminute.com’, and we rush the thing we have been avoiding and then place a lot of unnecessary pressure on ourselves. This raises stress levels and has a knock-on effect on colleagues, especially when it is a group activity.”
EMOTION REGULATION
Collins says her 11th-hour action is linked to perfectionism: “I often put things off out of fear that I won’t be able to do them perfectly the first time round.” Writer’s block is more likely to be ‘writer’s fear’, she says.
This would correspond with the findings of psychology professor Tim Pychyl at Carleton University in Ottawa, that “procrastination is an emotion regulation problem, not a time management problem”.
In a 2016 study called “Procrastination, emotion regulation and wellbeing” Pychyl and fellow researcher Dr Fuschia Sirois of Durham University concluded that “procrastination functions as an emotion regulation strategy that provides short-term mood repair”. In effect, the procrastinator is more focused on managing a negative mood than getting on with the task.
That is where personality traits and mental health come into the picture: low selfesteem, a hard knock, depression, even ADHD can play their role in completing tasks. Joblessness can exacerbate things.
“Procrastinators are more likely to be unemployed or working part-time compared to their non-procrastinating counterparts,” says Steel. Hence the saying, “If you want something done, ask a busy person.”
Steel squashes the idea of perfectionism leading to our delay tactics. “Perfectionists who procrastinate are more likely to seek help from therapists, so of course they turn up in clinical research about procrastination in greater numbers. Non-perfectionist procrastinators are less likely to seek professional help. Perfectionists are more motivated to do something about their failings because they are more likely to feel worse about whatever they are putting off. Neat, orderly, and efficient perfectionists don’t tend to dillydally,” he says.
The experts are divided on the issue, but Steel believes that beneath all our deferring and avoiding is one core trait. “Thirty years of research and hundreds of studies have isolated several personality traits that predict procrastination, but one trait stands above the rest. The achilles heel of procrastination turns out to be impulsiveness; that is, living impatiently in the moment and wanting it all now,” he says in chapter 1 of The Procrastination Equation.
“Showing self-control or delaying gratification is difficult for those of us who are impulsive. We just don’t have much ability to endure shortterm pain for long-term gain. Impulsiveness also determines how we respond to task anxiety.
“For those of us who are less impulsive, anxiety is often an internal cue that gets us to start a project early, but for those who are more impulsive it is a different story: anxiety over a deadline will lead straight to procrastination. The impulsive try to avoid an anxietyprovoking task temporarily or block it from their awareness, a tactic that makes perfect sense if you’re thinking short term. In addition, impulsiveness leads procrastinators to be disorganised and distractible ... impulsive people find it difficult to plan work ahead of time and even after they start, they are easily distracted. Procrastination inevitably follows.”
Frogs and turtles may have the answer. “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning,” says the helpful website todoist.com. The saying is from Brian Tracy’s book, Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time.
According to City Lodge human resources director Marcel Kobilski, this methodology is meant to accomplish two main things: “Achieve ongoing progress on your top issues, which makes them easy to manage; and give you momentum on your daily task list by taking away the most difficult or challenging tasks first.”
Collins cites international life coach Martha Beck’s concept of “turtle steps”, or “breaking a task down into teeny-tiny steps, and then doing just the first one”. This gets you going, she says, which can be the hardest part. “Once you take it, the next step doesn’t feel as difficult.”
She advised a client who wanted to go swimming to lose weight to simply put his swimming kit out at night. The following week he had to put it on. “Then he thought, I might as well go. He didn’t swim for long at first, but it started to establish the habit and soon he was going every day.”
Finally, a little selfcompassion goes a long way: a study by Pychyl and others showed that students who reported forgiving themselves for procrastinating on studying for a first exam ended up procrastinating less for the second exam.
IT’S AS COMMON AS MORNING COFFEE. ACROSS SCORES OF SURVEYS, ABOUT 95% OF PEOPLE ADMIT TO PROCRASTINATING
Dr Piers Steel University of Calgary