Procrastination, Part 1

I’ve recently started reading a fantastic book by procrastination researcher Dr. Fushia M. Sirois simply titled Procrastination, and have picked up so much that I think would be helpful to clients, and have found personally helpful myself. The start of the new year also feels like a relevant time to explore the gap between our intentions and our actions, as so many of us review the past year, think about the year to come, and begin to envision what we hope the new year brings. I hope that sharing what I’ve learned from Dr. Sirois’s book is helpful to you, and would definitely encourage giving the book a read if you’d like to dive further into the topic.

Part One: What Is Procrastination, and How Does It Affect Us?

Definitions

So, first things first: What exactly is procrastination?

Procrastination is not just any delay in behavior or action. Sometimes we delay action for really good reasons, such as because of obstacles out of our control, waiting for the best timing, or needing to gather more information first before taking action. None of these kinds of delay count as procrastination, according to Dr. Sirois.

Here’s the traditional definition used by people who research procrastination:

Procrastination is a common self-regulation problem involving the unnecessary and voluntary delay in the start or completion of important intended tasks despite the recognition that this delay may have negative consequences.

To break that down into less research-y speech, we procrastinate when we do three things: 

1) We have trouble managing our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to set goals and take action toward those goals; 

2) we are choosing to delay, rather than being delayed by something external to us; 

3) we are aware of the possibility of negative consequences from delaying but choose to do so anyway.

Dr. Sirois adds her own definition developed with her colleague Tim Pychyl to emphasize just why this procrastination behavior happens.

Procrastination is a form of self-regulation failure that involves prioritizing short-term mood repair over the long-term pursuit of intended actions.

We procrastinate as a way to manage our feelings, particularly the feelings we associate with the task we’re procrastinating.

Impact of Procrastinating

Procrastination, as the first definition says, is very common. Just about everybody procrastinates at some point in some part of their life. For example, research estimates that somewhere between 80-95% of college students procrastinate somewhere in their academic life. 

The real issue is when procrastination becomes more of a habitual pattern, when it’s something we do frequently and in several parts of our life, across work, finances, school, relationships, health, and any personal goals we might have. This kind of more habitual or “chronic procrastination” shows up for somewhere between 15-25% of people, which is still quite common, between 1-in-5 and 1-in-4 people.

One common form of procrastination these days is what’s called “cyberslacking”, where we take a mental break to help recharge and psychologically detach, which can actually be helpful to do for 10-20 minutes, but that then turns into hours of scrolling online to avoid negative feelings associated with the tasks we’re avoiding, like boredom, anxiety, uncertainty, or stress. It doesn’t help that everything associated with online behavior, from the design of phones to the functioning of apps has millions of dollars poured into getting and keeping our attention for as long as possible.

Chronic procrastination across numerous areas of our life can have all kinds of negative consequences. 

Academic performance can suffer, work projects can be delayed or completed poorly. Our health can suffer due to healthy behaviors like physical exercise, healthy eating, and getting enough sleep themselves being procrastinated, and from the increase in chronic stress that frequent procrastination can create. 

Social relationships can also suffer when procrastinating making plans with others that would foster new relationships or deepen connection within existing relationships. But on top of that, chronic procrastination often creates ongoing feelings of guilt and shame about procrastinating that can lead us to isolate ourselves from others, and to assume that others view us with as much judgment as we view ourselves due to procrastinating.

With so many negative consequences, and with procrastination involving a delay despite knowing about these consequences, why do we still do it?

And how do we stop?

Those are the questions Dr. Sirois addresses in Part 2 and Part 3 in her book, and that’ll I’ll likewise get into in Parts 2 and 3 of this post.