Procrastination is the practice of carrying out less urgent tasks in preference to more urgent ones, or doing more pleasurable things in place of less pleasurable ones, and thus putting off impending tasks to a later time, sometimes to the “last minute”.
According to psychologist Professor Clarry Lay, a prominent writer on procrastination, procrastination occurs when there is “a temporal gap between intended behaviour and enacted behaviour”.
Volumes have been written about procrastination; it has been the subject of much study and research, and there have even been research conferences on the issue.
Few seem to be immune to procrastination: it is prevalent, with the principal variant being to what degree people succumb to it.
Joseph Ferrari, a social psychologist at Chicago’s DePaul University, estimates that up to one-quarter of adults are chronic procrastinators. “They never get tasks done,” says Ferrari, who wrote the book Still Procrastinating: The No Regrets Guide to Getting it Done. “They habitually wait, they’re always delaying. It’s not just at work but at home, in relationships, in situations with other people – this is the way they function.”
Research has come up with various explanations; impulsiveness, connection with anxiety, low sense of worth, a self-defeating mentality and maladaptive perfectionism.
According to Fuschia Sirois, a professor in the psychology department at Canada’s Bishop’s University, “They prioritise their current mood over their future mood and then they disengage from the task, procrastinate on it, and go and do something more enjoyable, more pleasurable.”
There have been many famous procrastinators. JRR Tolkien suffered from perfectionism and procrastination in equal doses, spending the better part of 16 years working intermittently on The Lord of the Rings trilogy after the initial success of The Hobbit in 1937.
Leonardo da Vinci is thought to have spent about 13 years from 1503 to 1516 refining his Mona Lisa. Nobel prize-winning economist Akerlof used his own procrastination (it took him eight months to organise sending a box of clothes from India to the US) for his groundbreaking insights into human behaviour (eventually).
And former US president Bill Clinton was called “punctually challenged” by his vice-president, Al Gore, and his inability to keep to a schedule initially caused huge problems.
How to overcome procrastination?
- Recognise that you are procrastinating.
- Work out why you are procrastinating (the work is unpleasant, or you are disorganised, overwhelmed, a perfectionist or have underdeveloped decision-making skills).
- Adopt anti-procrastination skills (break the habit or pattern of behaviour), for example:
- break the task down into small steps
- be objective and specific
- turn off the negative self-talk
- find something positive in the task
- consider the consequences of not doing the task
- make your goals public
- make up your own rewards
- don’t think about it – just do it
Don Marquis
August 2014