The research shows that people who procrastinate suffer from lower well being and higher levels of stress and anxiety, which can reduce self-esteem and lead to depression. People who chronically delay tasks engage in self-deprecating thought patterns about themselves and others compared to non-procrastinators.
They may think things like:. For people with low self-esteem, their minds constantly wrestle with these limited thinking patterns like a machine. What causes procrastination for them is believing their negative self-talk.
Being too hard on yourself gets in the way of motivation and leads to patterns of procrastination. Many of us have struggled with self-esteem at some point. Building confidence in yourself is a lifelong process that can be done with careful attention. To overcome this dilemma, start by looking at the root causes.
Do you have a past trauma that you need to heal from in order to regain your self-worth? If so, consider speaking with a therapist who can help understand underlying causes for distress and low self-esteem.
Non-procrastinators tend to have a strong sense of personal identity and higher levels of self-esteem. That means they are less concerned with what other people think of them. Procrastinators, on the other hand, put a strong emphasis on external validation. In other words, they worry a lot about what other people will say. They find value in themselves from the approval of other people, and avoid doing something out of fear of criticism.
Surrounding yourself with positive people can also help you stay motivated and avoid that self-critical loop. Like a cheerleader on the sidelines, having a coach or a mentor can help develop a positive mindset to train your brain to push through barriers. But this rarely works out as planned. Putting off work until the last minute leads to mishaps and unnecessary errors that compromise the quality of their work.
The procrastinator usually has a poor understanding of how long the task will take. They fool themselves to forget about the task, hoping it will go away, or they make up excuses that they will perform better under pressure and put off the task until the last minute.
You can actually trick your brain into doing things on time. Substituting smaller units of time—10 days instead of 1 month or 48 hours instead of 2 days—can reduce procrastination by making future events seem more immediate. A study of participants asked each person to imagine themselves preparing for an upcoming event, like a project for work or studying for an exam.
Those who broke down the time into smaller units in this case days perceived the event as arriving an average of 30 days sooner when imagined as days rather than months. Is underestimating how long a project will take part of what causes procrastination for you? Try thinking about in terms of how many minute blocks of time it will realistically take.
In the s, Francesco Cirillo developed The Pomodoro Technique , a method that uses this type of logic and breaks down tasks into smaller time intervals. The name comes from the word pomodoro , Italian for tomato. As a university student, Cirillo would use a tomato-shaped timer and set it for about 25 minutes. He would then focus on a task until the timer when off. By following this technique, you develop the ability to focus during a shorter, more manageable chunks.
Plus, you make a larger task feel less overwhelming. Over time, dedicating those smaller amounts of time to a task will lead to big results. You also benefit from a type of biohacking. Each time you put down that checkmark and complete a task, your brain releases the dopamine neurotransmitter, also known as the feel good chemical.
With each hit of dopamine, you actually train your brain to become more productive. Psychologists have found a strong link between difficulty concentrating and procrastination. Once they do, they have trouble knowing how to prioritize, plan, and stay on track. If you simply have trouble getting started on tedious and unpleasant tasks, or those that require a high degree of concentration, try these solutions. Fortunately, improving focus is a skill you can learn and practice.
Consider these ideas:. We have so much available to us, that it can actually get in the way of getting things done.
Think of the amount of time it takes to make a simple decision like what to wear when you have too many choices. People often say they want options. Furthermore, there are some hindering factors that interfere with our self-control and motivation, in a way that also makes us more susceptible to procrastination.
Similarly, a large gap between the time when we complete a task and the time at which we will receive the reward for completing it can cause us to discount the value of this reward , which means that its motivational value will be greatly reduced. As long as our self-control and motivation outweigh the effects of demotivating factors, despite the hindering factors that interfere with them, we manage to get our work done in a timely manner.
However, when all the negative factors outweigh our self-control and motivation, we end up procrastinating, by putting off our work either indefinitely, or until some future point in time when the balance shifts in our favor.
Overall, we procrastinate because our self-control and motivation, which might be hindered by factors such as exhaustion and rewards that are far in the future, are outweighed by demotivating factors, such as anxiety and fear of failure.
This causes us to fail to self-regulate our behavior , which means that we postpone things unnecessarily, even when we know we should be doing them, which is why procrastination often leads to a gap between how we intend to act and how we act in reality. Note : there are some exceptions to this, in cases where procrastination is driven by some other factor , such as rebelliousness or the desire to add excitement to otherwise boring work.
However, for the most part, the mechanism outlined above is the main one that explains why people procrastinate. This section contains a comprehensive list of the specific reasons why people procrastinate, based primarily on the psychological mechanism which was outlined in the previous section. Try to be reflective and honest with yourself while you do this, since figuring out the underlying causes of your procrastination is crucial if you want to be able to successfully overcome it.
Note that not everything here will apply to you, so feel free to skim through the list, and read primarily about reasons that you think could apply in your particular situation. People are more likely to procrastinate when their goals are vague or abstract, compared to when their goals are concrete and clearly defined. Furthermore, note that in addition to a lack of a clear definition, there are other factors that can make a goal feel abstract.
For example, according to construal-level theory , goals that are perceived as highly improbable are also perceived as relatively abstract. This means that if a person finds it unlikely that they will attain a certain goal, this can cause them to view that goal as abstract, which in turn can increase the likelihood that they will procrastinate on it. People often procrastinate on tasks that are associated with outcomes e. This phenomenon, which is based on the timing of outcomes, is known as temporal discounting or delay discounting.
Accordingly, people often display a present bias when they choose to engage in activities that reward them in the short-term, at the expense of working on tasks that would lead to better outcomes for them in the long term. Note that the relationship between the time it takes to receive a reward and the perceived value of that reward is usually inconsistent, as the rate of discounting decreases over time.
For example, while there is a big difference in how we value a reward that we can receive now compared to a reward we can receive in a week, there is a much smaller difference in how we value a reward we can receive in a year compared to a reward we can receive in a year plus a week. Similarly, while there is a big difference between receiving a reward in a day compared to in a year, there is less of a difference between receiving a reward in a year compared to receiving it in two years.
People sometimes procrastinate because they view their future self as being disconnected from their present-self , a phenomenon known as temporal self-discontinuity or temporal disjunction. This disconnect between the present and future selves can cause people to procrastinate in a variety of ways.
People sometimes avoid taking action in the present because they intend or hope to pursue a more attractive course of action in the future. This mindset can lead to long-term procrastination, and persist even in cases where the person who is procrastinating never ends up following through on their intended plan.
People sometimes procrastinate on tasks because they are overly optimistic about their ability to complete those tasks in the future. For example, a student might decide to postpone getting started on an assignment that is due a few weeks from now, because they feel that there will be plenty of time to get it done later.
In many cases, this form of optimism might occur as a result of underestimating the time it will take to complete the tasks in question; this phenomenon is known as the planning fallacy , and it can lead both procrastinators as well as non-procrastinators to assume that they will finish upcoming tasks earlier than they actually will.
Similarly, a person might decide, after struggling to get started on a task, to postpone it to the next day, because they believe that tomorrow they will be able to bring themself to work on it, even if they have postponed the same task in the exact same manner several times in the past.
People sometimes procrastinate because they are unable to make decisions in a timely manner. There are various factors that generally make it more likely that someone will get stuck over-thinking the situation while trying to make a decision, a phenomenon which is sometimes referred to as analysis paralysis or choice paralysis. The main factors to consider, from a practical perspective, are the following:.
Accordingly, the more decisions you have to make during a certain time period, the more you deplete your capacity for self-control, and the more likely you are to procrastinate in making future decisions, at least until you have a chance to recharge yourself mentally.
Finally, note that this form of procrastination is generally referred to as decisional procrastination , since it involves a delay in making a decision. People sometimes procrastinate because they feel overwhelmed with regard to the tasks that they need to handle. A feeling of overwhelm can occur due to a variety of reasons, such as having a single task that feels huge in terms of scope, or having a large number of small tasks that add up. When this happens, a person might simply decide to avoid the tasks in question, or they might attempt to handle them, but then end up feeling paralyzed before those tasks are completed.
For example, if you need to clean up your entire house, the fact that the task will take so long and involve so many parts might cause you to feel overwhelmed, in which case you might avoid getting started on it in the first place. People sometimes procrastinate because they feel anxious about a task that they need to handle. People often procrastinate because they are averse to the tasks that they need to perform.
This occurs because, in general, the more people find a certain task unappealing, the more likely they are to want to avoid it, and therefore the more likely they are to procrastinate. Note that there are many things that can make a person averse to a task in a way that causes them to procrastinate on it.
For example, a person might procrastinate because they perceive a task as frustrating, tedious, or boring, or they might procrastinate because they believe there is a gap between the difficulty of the task and their own competence, which means that they feel that the task is too difficult for them to handle.
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. After all, although all procrastination is delay, not all delay is procrastination. If you do find yourself procrastinating, both say that a little bit of self-compassion might be the key to getting back on track.
Pychyl authored a study that showed people who self-forgave procrastinated less in the future on the same task that they forgave themselves on, while Sirois authored a study on how increasing self-compassion may be particularly beneficial for reducing the stress associated with delaying tasks. How we think.
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