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LIFE & WORK | IN THE LAB

To Stop Procrastinating, Start by

Understanding the Emotions Involved
Time management goes only so far; the emotional reasons for delay must also be addressed

Chronic procrastination is an emotional strategy for dealing with stress, researchers say,
and it can lead to difficulties in relationships, jobs, finances and health.
ILLUSTRATION: YAO XIAO

By Shirley S. Wang
Updated Aug. 31, 2015 11:44 pm ET

Putting off a work or school assignment in order to play videogames or water the

plants might seem like nothing more serious than poor time-management.

But researchers say chronic procrastination is an emotional strategy for dealing

with stress, and it can lead to significant issues in relationships, jobs, finances and
health.

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In August, researchers from Stockholm University published one of the first

randomized controlled trials on the treatment of procrastination. It found a
therapy delivered online can significantly reduce procrastination.

Psychologists also are studying other ways people might be able to reduce
procrastination, such as better emotion-regulation strategies and visions of the
future self.

Scientists define procrastination as the voluntary delay of an action despite

foreseeable negative future consequences. It is opting for short-term pleasure or
mood at the cost of the long-term. Perhaps we didn’t finish preparing a
presentation on the weekend because we had house guests. That is just
intentional delay based on a rational decision, says Timothy Pychyl (pronounced
pitch-el), a psychology professor at Carleton University, in Ottawa, who has
published extensively on the topic.

The essence of procrastination is “we’re giving in to feel good,” Dr. Pychyl says.
“Procrastination is, ‘I know I should be doing it, I want to, it gets under my skin
[when I don’t].’ ”

Ben Lockwood, a 39-year-old office manager in Chippenham, about 100 miles west
of London, knows the feeling all too well. Even though he isn’t a lazy person, he
says, he struggles with procrastination at work and in his personal life. He says he
feels paralyzed by wanting to do everything perfectly, which then makes him feel
anxious about getting started.

Instead of looking for a new job, he might go to the gym—a move researchers call
“moral compensation.” That is when procrastinators do something to make
themselves feel good or productive in order to avoid the task that needs to get
done.

Mr. Lockwood says this pattern of behavior fills him with self-loathing. “I think I’d
rather tell someone I robbed a bank than tell them I procrastinate,” he says.

Chronic procrastinators often hold misconceptions about why they procrastinate

and what it means, psychologists have discovered. Many chronic procrastinators
believe they can’t get started on a task because they want to do it perfectly. Yet
studies show chronic procrastination isn’t actually linked to perfectionism, but

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rather to impulsiveness, which is a tendency to act immediately on urges,

according to Piers Steel, an organizational-behavior professor at the University of
Calgary.

People may assume anxiety is what

TO PROCRASTINATE LESS, START BY DOING prevents them from getting started, yet
THIS
data from many studies show that for
Tips from research led by Timothy Pychyl, people low in impulsiveness, anxiety is
Piers Steel and Alexander Rozental. the cue to get going. Highly impulsive
•Break a long-term project down into specific sub- people, on the other hand, shut down
goals. State the exact start time and how long (not
when they feel anxiety. Impulsive people
just “tomorrow”) you plan to work on the task.
are believed to have a harder time
•Just get started. It isn’t necessary to write a long
list of tasks, or each intermediate step. dealing with strong emotion and want to
•Remind yourself that finishing the task now helps do something else to get rid of the bad
you in the future. Putting off the task won’t make it
more enjoyable. feeling, Dr. Steel says.
•Implement “microcosts,” or mini-delays, that
require you to make a small effort to procrastinate, Some people claim they purposely leave
such as having to log on to a separate computer things to the last minute because they
account for games.
work better under stress, but true
•Reward yourself not only for completing the entire
project but also the sub-goals. procrastinators get stressed out by the
delay. It’s arguable whether the quality
of their work is actually better than if
they had started earlier, according to Dr.
Pychyl.

Experts say the consequences of chronic or extreme procrastination can be

serious: Marriages break up, people lose jobs and often feel like impostors.
Fuschia Sirois, a psychology professor at the University of Sheffield, in England,
recently began studying the effects of procrastination on coping with chronic
illness.

The mental-health effects of procrastination are well-documented: Habitual

procrastinators have higher rates of depression and anxiety and poorer well-
being.

Less is known about physical effects, and especially serious health problems. In a
recent paper, Dr. Sirois and colleagues found procrastinators with hypertension

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and heart disease were less likely to engage in active strategies for coping with
the illness, such as finding meaning or taking action, such as arranging to exercise
with a friend. They were more likely to adopt maladaptive behaviors, like being
avoidant or blaming themselves for the illness and trying to forget it.

In addition, procrastinators often seem unable to see as clearly into the future
about their choices and behaviors as non-procrastinators—a phenomenon she
calls “temporal myopia.” Their vision of their future selves is often more abstract
and impersonal, and they’re less connected emotionally to their future selves.
Temporal myopia may be largely due to their high levels of stress which can shift
their focus to more immediate rather than distant concerns.

“A lot of us think, I’m doing it for me” and that in the future we’ll benefit because
of what we’re doing now, says Dr. Sirois. But procrastinators aren’t as good at
envisioning this. Dr. Sirois, Carleton’s Dr. Pychyl and others are testing
interventions for helping procrastinators better envision and connect with their
future selves.

Focusing on time management alone will help procrastinators, but only so much,
the scientists say. The emotional regulation component must be addressed as
well.

Dr. Sirois and Dr. Pychyl also have focused on short-term mood repair as an anti-
procrastination strategy. They teach people to recognize that they might have
strong emotions, such as anxiety, at the start of a project but to not judge
themselves for it. The next step is just to get started, step by step, with a narrow
focus.

At Stockholm University, researchers set out to test whether a self-help treatment

could have an effect on more-severe forms of procrastination, as the research in
this area was lacking. Though there are many self-help books and experimental
lab studies, the group wanted to design an intervention that, if shown efficacious,
could be rolled out widely, such as via the Internet, said Alexander Rozental, a
clinical psychologist and doctoral student who was an author of the study, which
was recently published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.

Some 150 participants were self-reported high procrastinators and were

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randomly assigned to complete the intervention, either by themselves, with the

guidance of a therapist or to a wait-list control. The treatment program consisted
of 10 weekly modules.

One component focused on goal setting, such as breaking down long-term goals
into smaller and more-concrete sub-goals. Instead of saying one was going to
work on a paper on Tuesday, participants were taught to be specific and divide it
into manageable sub-goals: I am going to work on a paper for one hour at 11 a.m.

The intervention also employed a reward system. Participants would give

themselves something positive, whether a cup of coffee or a break after
accomplishing mini-goals, rather than wait until finishing the overall goal.

Another module involved exposing procrastinators to stressful feelings or

thoughts in brief but gradually longer periods. The goal there is to help them feel
that they are better able to manage their emotions and not to instinctively follow
them.

The results showed that after intervention with both guided and unguided self-
help, people improved their procrastination, though the guided therapy seemed to
show greater benefit. The researchers, who have continued following up with the
participants, will look at one-year outcomes later this year to see if the results
were maintained.

They also are conducting a study of college students receiving either group
therapy or Internet-based cognitive behavior therapy, where they will look not
only at self-reported procrastination but also at real-life outcomes including
academic grades and use of alcohol and drugs, Mr. Rozental says.

In Calgary, Dr. Steel’s lab is testing and helping to develop new software with a
Hong Kong company, Saent, that helps by delaying the loading of websites such as
Facebook for 15 seconds or so, using “micro-costs” such as requiring a password
before surfing the Web. Sometimes these little bits of effort are all that are
necessary to deter procrastinators from distraction, Dr. Steel says.

Mr. Lockwood, the procrastinator from the U.K., has developed his own strategies
for helping him delay tasks. Since he’s had to pay late fees before for not paying
bills on time, for no reason other than he didn’t put the check in the mail, he now

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makes sure he’s always stocked with stamps and envelopes at home and has
online bill pay set up for as many places as possible.

But he wishes he could shake his procrastination in other areas of his life. He says
his girlfriend is always planning their vacations because he has a hard time
getting started and is reluctant to ask for time off. But he actually enjoys the act of
planning trips. He says one day he would love to surprise her by coming up with
the idea and doing the planning.

“If you’re an occasional procrastinator, quit thinking about your feelings and get
to the next task,” says Dr. Pychyl. “But if you’re a chronic procrastinator, you
might need therapy to better understand your emotions and how you’re coping
with them through avoidance.”

Write to Shirley S. Wang at shirley.wang@wsj.com

Copyright © 2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers visit
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