People sometimes procrastinate as a way of placing barriers in their own way , so that if they fail their failures could be attributed to their procrastination rather than their abilities, a behavior which is referred to as self-handicapping. For example, a student might procrastinate instead of studying for a test, because they prefer knowing that they failed due to their procrastination, instead of knowing that they failed because they were unable to understand the material well.
As a result of this defense mechanism, certain procrastinators spend more time procrastinating if they believe that they are likely to fail when it comes to the task at hand, especially if they feel that failure will reflect badly on them.
People sometimes procrastinate due to their tendency to engage in self-defeating behaviors , which means that they actively try to sabotage their own progress. There are various reasons why people engage in self-sabotage, and individuals who procrastinate for this reason tend to also engage in other types of related behaviors , such as pushing away people who treat them well.
Note that people can have different levels of self-efficacy with regard to different domains in their life. For instance, a person might have high levels of academic self-efficacy, but low levels of social self-efficacy, which means that they believe in their abilities when it comes to tasks that are academic in nature, but not when it comes to tasks that are social in nature. Furthermore, self-efficacy can relate to specific tasks or abilities.
The most notable among these, in this context, is self-efficacy with regard to your ability to self-regulate your behavior , in order to get yourself to complete tasks in a timely manner. This is because the belief that you will be unable to avoid procrastinating could become a self-fulfilling prophecy, which encourages you to procrastinate in situations where you might have otherwise been able to get your work done on time.
People sometimes procrastinate because they feel incapable of controlling the outcomes of events in their life. For example, a person might delay getting started on an assignment at work, if they feel that their boss will criticize it regardless of how much effort they put into it.
Though this perceived lack of control can play a role in specific, isolated cases, some people are more predisposed to feeling a general lack of control than others. This issue is operationalized through the concept of locus of control , which is the degree to which people believe that they have control over events in their life.
The locus of control is described on a spectrum of internality and externality :. Individuals who are internally oriented tend to get started and complete tasks on time , while individuals who are externally oriented tend to procrastinate more , perform worse on tasks, and experience more anxiety. For example, a person might procrastinate because their ADHD makes it hard for them to concentrate on a single task for long, especially once it gets boring, so they constantly jump from one task to another, without finishing any of them.
In general, research shows that there is a significant correlation between engaging in ADHD-related behaviors and procrastination. This is expected, given the fact that many ADHD behaviors can lead directly to procrastination , and given that various forms of procrastinatory behaviors are sometimes viewed as direct symptoms of ADHD. However, note that not all forms of ADHD are equally associated with procrastination, and research on the topic suggests that symptoms of ADHD that have to do with inattention are more strongly associated with procrastination than symptoms that have to do with hyperactivity or impulsivity.
Some people procrastinate because they suffer from underlying depression. This is because depression can lead to issues such as fatigue, difficulty in concentrating, and a reduced interest in activities, which in turn can cause people to procrastinate.
People often procrastinate because they are not motivated enough to work on a given task. Accordingly, when people are driven to complete a certain task by an external source of motivation, they generally display higher levels of procrastination than when they are driven by an internal and autonomous source of motivation. Furthermore, there are various other reasons why people can be unmotivated to work on a task.
Finally, note that different people have different levels of general achievement motivation , which means that some people are more driven and motivated than others to pursue their goals in life. Accordingly, those who have lower levels of achievement motivation are more likely to procrastinate on various tasks.
People are generally more likely to procrastinate if they suffer from low energy levels , in terms of physical or mental energy. For example, someone who is tired after having worked hard all day might find it harder to exercise self-control when they get home late at night, which could cause them to procrastinate on things they need to take care of such as washing the dishes. In addition, note that although laziness and lack of motivation appear similar, these are two separate issues. People often procrastinate because they prioritize their feelings in the present , and do things that will help them feel better right now , even if this comes at the expense of taking action that aligns with their long-term goals, a phenomenon which is known as short-term mood repair.
For example, a student might delay getting started on an assignment by wasting hours on activities such as browsing social media, playing video games, and watching TV, because doing so is more pleasant in the short-term than working on the task at hand.
Essentially, this form of procrastination, which is sometimes referred to as hedonistic delay , occurs when people give in to their desire for instant gratification , and engage in behaviors that are satisfying in the short-term, instead of working on the tasks that will benefit them more in the long-term. This kind of behavior relates to the concept of the pleasure principle , which is the tendency to seek out pleasurable activities and avoid unpleasant ones.
While this tendency is natural and instinctive, it becomes a serious issue when a person is unable to control it, since it causes them to continuously pursue short-term satisfaction, at the expense of long-term achievement and development. A lack of self-control makes people much more likely to procrastinate , which is not surprising, given that self-control is crucial when it comes to allowing people to self-regulate their behavior.
Lack of self-control can cause people to procrastinate in itself, and can also make them more likely to procrastinate as a result of other issues, such as task aversion or fear of failure. Perseverance is the ability to maintain goal-driven behavior in the face of obstacles. Impulsivity is the tendency to act on a whim, without planning ahead or considering the consequences of your actions. Impulsivity is strongly associated with the tendency to procrastinate, since the decision to procrastinate is often an impulsive one, such as when people ignore the long-term consequences of their actions, or when they fail to plan their work ahead of time.
Distractibility is the inability to focus your attention on one thing at a time or to stay focused for long in general. High levels of distractibility can make a person more likely to procrastinate, such as when they lead people to constantly switch from one locus of attention to another.
For example, a person who is studying for a test might end up procrastinating because they are constantly distracted by the notifications on their phone. It answers the question of how you would most like to spend your time in life.
It focuses on actions, not results. It focuses on the journey, not the destination. Procrastinators often put off doing things, leave them to the very last moment or sometimes even spend their time staring at the wall.
However be careful, procrastination is not a synonym for lazy. It's a good idea to start using the word procrastination instead of using the terms laziness or putting things off. It provides a much more accurate description of your situation. Only by giving the right name to your problem can you begin working on it. Relaxing recharges you with energy. In stark contrast, procrastination drain it from you. The less energy you have, the more stressed or even depressed you might have become and the higher the chances of you putting off your responsibilities are.
So the opposite of procrastination is actually getting things done, and being able to relax, deal with your workload well and be happy in the long term. A lot of the times we hear the excuse that people often love leaving things to the last minute.
They justify their actions by claiming that they are most productive under pressure. However, scientific studies show that the opposite is true. Putting things off until the very last moment creates fertile ground for stress, guilt, and ineffectiveness. This video is part of an online course, The End of Procrastination.
Check it out if you want to learn more about how to fight procrastination and be more efficient. You can learn as much as you want about self-discipline , motivation , planning and time management, but unless you make what you learn part of your daily routine, your habits, your thinking patterns and your mental models, it will be only useless information stored in your memory without ever helping you.
Any book, article or video can give you tools, but it is up to you to actually use them. The personal vision is one of the core tools, it helps you understand your skills and priorities, and by creating one, you will never feel lost in what is it that you want to do with your life. The personal vision as well helps you to focus your effort on the right activities and set priorities to avoid continually switching between actions.
Understand what motivates you, and you will be able to maintain your discipline and make the most out of each day. Long to-do lists tend to pile on, and this leads to procrastination. Seeing the long list of tasks can frustrate us so much that we have tendencies to give up on them completely. The To-Do Today method is there to help you get the most important and urgent tasks done every day, while also helping you prioritize the work on your schedule and limit new tasks.
With its help, you will be able to manage much more in a day, with less stress and tiredness. Learning new habits is one of the basic elements of personal development. If we make a habit of doing something, its implementation requires less mental energy to do it. Learning new habits is, therefore, very important. But there are several myths about what is working and what is not in learning new habits.
And then they begin to ruminate on the task, increasing their negative feelings about it and hampering their ability to view it rationally for what it is. If a task is small, rather than adding it to your to-do list, you should just get on and do it straight away, experts say Credit: Alamy. Another reason small tasks can pile up is that they often lack the same kinds of hard deadlines and structures that bigger tasks entail; you figure you can just slip them in somewhere during the day.
Timothy Pychyl, a psychology professor at Carleton University in Ottawa and author of Solving the Procrastination Puzzle, says motivation often follows action. American productivity consultant David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, calls this the two-minute rule, where if a task will take fewer than two minutes, then the time spent adding it to your to-do list will exceed the time it takes to actually complete the task right away.
So instead of programming it, just dive in. This proactive mentality can help you bypass unnecessary rumination. A study Pychyl conducted on university students showed that, once they actually began a task, they rated it as far less difficult and stressful than they had when they were procrastinating about it.
Pychyl says working to reduce your emotional response will help you better manage small tasks. Another trick for tackling smaller tasks is to nest them within larger ones. Sirois says we have memories of the emotional responses that triggered past procrastination. You might, for example, look at the task as an opportunity to learn a new skill.
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