Procrastination: Why You Do It, What To Do About It

Some people would rather suffer the consequences of procrastination than the humiliation of trying and not doing as well as they had hoped.

The timely pursuit of your intentions

Steel ultimately identified four main issues that make procrastination more likely—low confidence in succeeding, task aversiveness, distractibility and impulsiveness, and having goals and rewards be too far off in the future.

Perfectionists fear that if they make a wrong decision, they will think less of themselves and their feeling of regret will be intolerable. But underneath this apprehension is a belief that they can (and should) be omniscient—able to read the future and guarantee how things will turn out. It is a childhood fantasy that grown-ups know everything (how did your parents figure out that you were lying anyway?) and most of us harbor the wish that someday we, too, will know and control everything. It is indeed hard to accept the reality that we are neither omniscient nor omnipotent—and neither were our parents.

It is more tolerable to blame themselves for being disorganized, lazy, or uncooperative than to view themselves as being inadequate and unworthy—the failure they fear so deeply. And it is the fear of this failure that is eased by procrastination.

All of these experiences have reinforced our idea that procrastination is not primarily a time management problem or a moral failing but a complex psychological issue. At its core, problem procrastination is a problem with one’s relationship to oneself, reflecting a shaky sense of self-esteem. In our first book, we called it a problem of self-worth. Now we emphasize that self-worth is rooted in the capacity for acceptance, which includes acceptance of our biology, our history, our circumstances, and our many human limits.

Technological advances now allow us to work 24/7, but they also tempt us to procrastinate 24/7!

Father: That’s not what I would do, but I hope it works out for you. Mother: You should live your life the way you want to. Father: Don’t worry, everybody makes mistakes. It’s only human. Aunt: You really tried your best. Good for you! Brother: No matter what, I’ve got your back. Neighbor: I love being with you. Come visit me anytime.

The writer May Sarton has described the Growth Mindset beautifully. “In the middle of the night, things well up from the past that are not always cause for rejoicing—the unsolved, the painful encounters, the mistakes, the reasons for shame or woe. But all, good or bad, painful or delightful, weave themselves into a rich tapestry, and all give me food for thought, food to grow on.

loosening the grip procrastination holds over your life requires both understanding what leads you to put things off and finding some way to take action.

What happens in your brain influences what you avoid, and what you avoid (or don’t avoid) affects the structure and function of your brain. Because of this “neuroplasticity,” the brain is always changing, and therefore your biological tendencies do not have to be a fixed impediment to your progress.

Ratey, J. (2008). Spark: The revolutionary new science of exercise and the brain. New York: Little Brown.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,

New cultural situations are stressful; often they pose a conflict between assimilating into the new culture and holding onto family and friends from the old culture. Procrastination helps you avoid making difficult choices and facing the potential loss of important attachments.

Time is passing; the future is coming; you are getting older; there are limits to what you will accomplish in your lifetime; and most starkly inevitable of all, eventually you will die.

The perfectionist believes that if one is truly outstanding, even difficult things should be easy. Creative ideas should flow ceaselessly! Studying should be pure intellectual joy! Decisions should be made immediately with total certainty! Using such impossible standards, a person who must work hard, or even exert a moderate amount of effort to get something done, is likely to feel inferior. A college physics major said, “If I can’t solve a problem instantly, I feel stupid. I understand the concepts and I’m pretty smart, so I should be able to see the answer right away—I get so mad at myself that I can’t stand sitting there. I play video games.

They wish not only for ideal careers and relationships but also to make a masterpiece of the letter they write or the garden they plant. If you expect your everyday performance to be up to the level of your ideal picture of yourself, then whatever you do is bound to seem mediocre in comparison. You devalue the average, the ordinary, the regular, regarding them with contempt. Since mistakes and flaws are an inevitable part of the human condition, people who can’t bear the ordinary find comfort in procrastination. When an ordinary performance can be attributed to the last-minute rush, they can continue to believe their ideal could have been reached, if they’d had more time. This allows perfectionists to avoid feeling contempt for themselves when they are simply average.

Often without realizing it, people who procrastinate are perfectionists. In an attempt to prove they are good enough, they strive to do the impossible, thinking that they should have no problem at all reaching their lofty goals. They usually put unrealistic demands on themselves and then feel overwhelmed when they are unable to meet them. Discouraged, they retreat from the demands by procrastinating.

Even though their skills may have improved over the years, they don’t feel completely safe from the possibility that someone will discover their deficits.

To protect their confidentiality, we’ve changed all names and identifying information;

In fact, over the years there has been an increase in avoidance behavior, with the Internet as the single most powerful cause.2 Now, information is both limitless and instantaneously available; there is far more information than we can manage, let alone use. Too much information, too many decisions, too many options—this overabundance of information leads many of us into procrastination paralysis.

In the middle of the night, things well up from the past that are not always cause for rejoicing—the unsolved, the painful encounters, the mistakes, the reasons for shame or woe. But all, good or bad, painful or delightful, weave themselves into a rich tapestry, and all give me food for thought, food to grow on.