Stop putting it off: procrastination

This guide is psychoeducational content. It does not replace a consultation. If you are thinking about dying, if the idea of disappearing crosses your mind when you look at everything that has piled up, talk about it the same day to your doctor, to someone close to you or to a suicide prevention line; in immediate danger, call the emergency services in your country. Also seek help without waiting if what you are putting off is care (a symptom that worries you, a test you have been prescribed, a treatment that needs renewing), or if unopened letters expose you to a serious and imminent consequence, such as having a service cut off, an eviction or legal proceedings: in these cases, the priority is not to understand why you are putting things off, it is to get help so that you can act today. Allow fifty minutes to read.

1. Before you begin

It is nine in the evening. The dissertation is due in ten days. You opened the file at two in the afternoon, reread the title, corrected a comma in the introduction, then checked your messages "just for a second". You tidied your desk. You looked for a better outline template. You watched a video about procrastination, all the way to the end. You had promised yourself you would start properly at five, then after dinner. It is nine in the evening, you are as drained as after a full day's work, and you have not written a single line.

Or perhaps it is an envelope from the tax office that has been sitting on the hall table for three weeks. A client's email opened four times and still unanswered. The dentist you have been going to call "tomorrow" since the spring.

The delay is not the worst of it. The worst is what you tell yourself in the evening: that you are lazy, that you will never change, that everyone else manages perfectly well.

Three things, straight away.

Procrastination is not laziness. A lazy person does not want to do the thing, and is fine with that. You do want to do it, you know that putting it off will cost you, and you put it off anyway. It is this gap between intention and action that research calls procrastination. It does not mean you lack good will: in studies, people who procrastinate generally intend to work just as much as everyone else. What gives way is the step into action.

You are not avoiding the task so much as what it makes you feel. Boredom, doubt, fear of getting it wrong, confusion, irritation: opening the file sets off a small unease, and doing something else makes it vanish within seconds. The psychologists Fuschia Sirois and Timothy Pychyl describe procrastination as a way of repairing your mood in the moment, at the expense of the person you will be tomorrow. That is why a new planner rarely does the trick.

Being hard on yourself keeps the problem going. Guilt adds discomfort to a task that is already unpleasant, and so gives you one more reason to avoid it. In a Canadian study, students who had forgiven themselves for putting off their revision procrastinated less before the next exam. Forgiving yourself is not letting yourself off the hook: it is what allows you to get back to it.

Who this guide is for

For you if you are a student and your revision, your assignments or your dissertation always get done in a panic on the last night.

For you if, at work, a report, a phone call or a delicate email can wait for weeks while you get everything else done.

For you if post, paperwork or medical appointments are piling up at home and you are ashamed to talk about it.

For you if you wonder whether an attention disorder, depression, anxiety or exhaustion might be involved: section 7 helps you tell them apart.

2. What procrastination is, and what it is not

A precise definition

In research, procrastinating does not simply mean doing something later. Piers Steel, who in 2007 wrote the meta-analysis that is the reference on the subject, defines it by three elements taken together: you voluntarily delay an action, that action is one you intended to do, and you expect to be worse off because of the delay. Take away any one of these elements, and it is no longer procrastination.

Putting something off is not always procrastinating

Waiting for a missing piece of information, postponing a secondary task because another one is more urgent, going to bed rather than finishing a report at two in the morning: these are decisions, and often good ones. Delay is only a problem when it is needless, goes against what you had decided, and costs you.

A problem of organisation? Not only

"I need to get more organised" is almost everyone's first conclusion. Organisation matters: on average, the most organised people procrastinate less. But it is not enough. Many people who procrastinate know how to plan: they make lists, colour-coded schedules, immaculate timetables worked back from the deadline. The plan exists. What fails is carrying it out, at the precise moment when you would have to start. And many are highly efficient at everything except the dreaded task: the kitchen is never as clean as on the eve of an exam.

The forms it takes

• In studying: revision started three days before the exam, the dissertation outline redone six times, the assignment submitted at 11.58 pm.
• At work: the quarterly report, the expense claim, the reply to the unhappy client.
• With paperwork: the tax return, the letter from the bank that stays unopened, the subscription never cancelled.
• With health: the dentist, the prescribed blood test, the screening.
• In relationships: the difficult conversation, the condolence message never sent.
• In the evening: bedtime pushed back in front of a screen when nothing was stopping you from going to sleep. Researchers call this bedtime procrastination.

A very widespread problem

Steel's review reports estimates according to which the great majority of students procrastinate, and nearly half do so regularly and in a way that causes them problems; among adults, chronic procrastination is thought to affect between 15 and 20% of people. A representative German survey, published in 2016 by Manfred Beutel and colleagues, found it more marked among 14- to 29-year-olds, and associated with more stress, more depressive and anxiety symptoms, more fatigue, and lower life satisfaction. You are far from alone.

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