If you’ve ever put off an important task by, say, making a cup of tea or coffee for your family, friends or colleagues, you know it wouldn’t be fair to describe yourself as lazy.

After all, brewing the perfect cup requires focus, effort and time, and hey, maybe you even went the extra mile and put a swirl of something on top too. And it’s not like you’re messing around with friends, you’re actually doing something to provide for other’s needs. This isn’t laziness or bad time management, but, if you did this to get out of an important task, this is procrastination.

So, if procrastination isn’t about laziness, or bad time management, then what is it about?

Well let’s look at where our English word procrastination came from, and that will give us a clue.

Etymologically, procrastination is derived from the Latin verb procrastinare — to put off until tomorrow, which implies a passiveness on our part. But it’s more than just a passive delay on our part, because procrastination is also derived from the ancient Greek word akrasia — doing something against our better judgment. So we are actually pro-actively doing something rather than passively doing nothing.

So what is it we pro-actively ‘do’ when we’re procrastinating, and isn’t it just harmless anyway?

Procrastination as a form of self harm

Well what if I were to tell you that many in medicine and academia are classifying procrastination as a form of self-harm.

Understanding this is key to understanding why procrastinating makes us feel so rotten. When we procrastinate, we’re not only aware that we’re avoiding the task in question, but also that doing so is not the best option. And yet, we still do it.

“This is why we say that procrastination is essentially irrational,” said Dr. Fuschia Sirois, professor of psychology at the University of Sheffield. “It doesn’t make sense to do something you know is going to have negative consequences.”

She adds: “People engage in this irrational cycle of chronic procrastination because of an inability to manage negative moods around a task.”

So, it seems procrastination isn’t so much about our ability to manage time, but a form of escapism to cope with challenging emotions and negative moods brought on by certain tasks — boredom, anxiety, insecurity, frustration, resentment, self-doubt and beyond.

“Procrastination is an emotion regulation problem, not a time management problem,” says Dr. Tim Pychyl, professor of psychology and member of the Procrastination Research Group at Carleton University in Ottawa.

But why should we believe Dr Pychyl & Dr Sirois anyway?

Well, in a 2013 study, Dr. Pychyl and Dr. Sirois found that procrastination can be understood as “the primacy of short-term mood repair over the longer-term pursuit of intended actions.” Put simply, procrastination is about being more focused on “the immediate urgency of managing negative moods” than getting on with the task, Dr. Sirois said.

The specific reason for our avoidance depends on the given task or situation. It may be due to something inherently unpleasant about the task itself — having to clean a dirty bathroom or organizing a long, boring spreadsheet for your boss. But it might also result from deeper feelings related to the task, such as self-doubt, low self-esteem, anxiety or insecurity.

Staring at a blank document, you might be thinking, I’m not smart enough to write this. Even if I am, what will people think of it?

Writing is so hard. What if I do a bad job?

All of this can lead us to think that putting the document aside and making that round of tea and coffee for everyone is a much better option.

But, of course, this only compounds the negative associations we have with the task, and those feelings will still be there whenever we come back to it, along with increased stress and anxiety, feelings of low self-esteem and self-blame.

Ironically, the momentary relief we feel when procrastinating is actually what makes the cycle especially vicious. In the immediate present, putting off a task provides relief — “you’ve been rewarded for procrastinating,” Dr. Sirois said. And we know from basic behaviourism that when we’re rewarded for something, we tend to do it again. This is precisely why procrastination tends not to be a one-off behaviour, but a cycle, one that easily becomes a chronic habit.

Over time, chronic procrastination not only has productivity costs, but measurably destructive effects on our mental and physical health.

It’s one of life’s ironies that we procrastinate to avoid negative feelings, but end up feeling even worse – maybe someone is trying to tell us something?

Prioritizing short-term needs ahead of long-term ones

Procrastination is an example of prioritizing short-term needs ahead of long-term ones, but, as with any other type of self-harm, we can’t just tell ourselves to stop procrastinating. And despite the prevalence of “productivity hacks and apps,” focusing on the question of how to get more work done doesn’t actually address the root cause of procrastination.

O.K. so how do we address the root cause of procrastination?

Well, if I can bring myself round to it, we’ll look at the root cause of procrastination in my next blog 🙂 

Ruth