Procrastination is a bad idea

DO YOU ever beat yourself up for procrastinating? You might be composing a message to a friend who you have to let down, or writing a big report for school or work, and doing your best to avoid it but deep down knowing you should just get on with it.

Unfortunately, telling yourself off won’t stop you procrastinating again. In fact, it’s one of the worst things you can do. This matters because, as my research shows, procrastination isn’t just a time-sapper but is actually linked to real problems.

Procrastination is not a result of laziness or poor time management. Scientific studies suggest procrastination is due to poor mood management.

This makes sense if we consider that people are more likely to put off starting or completing tasks they feel an aversion towards. If just thinking about the task makes you anxious or threatens your sense of self-worth, you will be more likely to put it off.

Research has found that regions of the brain linked to threat detection and emotion regulation are different in people who chronically procrastinate compared to those who don’t procrastinate frequently.

When we avoid the unpleasant task, we also avoid the negative emotions associated with it. This is rewarding and conditions us to use procrastination to repair our mood. If we engage in more enjoyable tasks instead, we get another mood boost.

Tasks that are emotionally loaded or difficult, such as studying for an exam or preparing for public speaking, are prime candidates for procrastination. People with low self-esteem are more likely to procrastinate as are those with high levels of perfectionism who worry their work will be judged harshly by others. If you don’t finish that report or complete those home repairs, then what you did can’t be evaluated.

But guilt and shame often linger when people try to distract themselves with more pleasant activities.

In the long run, procrastination isn’t an effective way of managing emotions. The mood repair you experience is temporary. Afterwards, people tend to engage in self-critical ruminations that not only increase their negative mood, but also reinforce their tendency to procrastinate.

So why is this such a problem?

When most people think of the costs of procrastination, they think of the toll on productivity. For example, studies have shown that academic procrastination negatively impacts student performance.

But academic procrastination may affect other areas of students’ lives. In one study of more than 3 000 German students over a six-month period, those who reported procrastinating on their academic work were also more likely to engage in academic misconduct, such as cheating and plagiarism. But the behaviour procrastination was most closely linked with was using fraudulent excuses to get deadline extensions.

Other research shows employees on average spend almost a quarter of their workday procrastinating, and again this is linked with worse outcomes. In one US survey of more than 22 000 employees, participants who said they regularly procrastinated had lower annual incomes and less job stability. For every one-point increase on a measure of chronic procrastination, salary decreased by $15 000 (about R247 000). | THE CONVERSATION