Procrastination

A psychologist explains why we put off important tasks and how we can break this habit

A
ATo procrastinate is to postpone something that genuinely needs doing, typically by turning instead to activities that feel lighter, pleasanter and less pressing. It is a habit none of us entirely escapes. Perhaps we are drafting an awkward reply to a friend we are about to disappoint, or assembling a major report for our studies or our job; whatever the task, we busy ourselves avoiding it even though, somewhere inside, we know the sensible course would be to simply begin. Scolding ourselves, sadly, does nothing to prevent the next bout — indeed, few responses are more counterproductive. Why should any of this concern us? Because, as my own work has demonstrated, putting things off costs us far more than lost hours; it keeps company with a whole range of other difficulties.
B
BPopular opinion pins procrastination on idleness or an inability to organise time, yet neither explanation stands up. What the scientific evidence points to instead is a failure to manage our moods. The link makes sense once we notice how readily we shelve jobs we simply have no appetite for. Should merely picturing a task chip away at our sense of self-worth, or leave us feeling anxious, the pull towards delay grows all the stronger. This is borne out by brain-imaging research: among people who procrastinate habitually, the regions that handle the spotting of threats and the steadying of our moods turn out to look measurably unlike those same regions in people who rarely put things off.
C
CThe likeliest candidates for delay are jobs that feel emotionally charged or hard going, and revising for an examination is a textbook case. A fragile sense of self-esteem makes the habit more common, and so does perfectionism, since perfectionists live in fear that others will find fault with what they produce. The reasoning is plain enough: a report never finished, or home repairs never begun, is work that nobody can yet judge. To dodge the task is also to dodge the disagreeable feelings tied to it, and because that escape feels rewarding, we are slowly conditioned to reach for delay whenever our mood wants mending. Turning to something more enjoyable delivers a further lift. Over the longer term, though, this is a poor way to keep our moods in check, for the 'mood repair' it offers is only fleeting. What usually comes next is guilt, which both sinks the mood lower and tightens the grip of the very habit behind it.
D
DWhy should all this trouble us? Pressed to name the price of procrastination, most people picture a loss of output, and the evidence bears that out: delay has been shown to drag down how well students perform. Yet the harm spreads beyond coursework. Tracking some 2,500 Dutch undergraduates across a single academic year, researchers found that those who admitted delaying their university work were also readier to slip into academic wrongdoing, from copying to passing off others' writing as their own. The behaviour bound most tightly to procrastination, though, was the invention of dishonest excuses to prise extra days out of a deadline. A similar pattern surfaces at work. Employees, on average, let close to a fifth of each working day drain away into delay, and the consequences are again unwelcome: a survey of more than 17,000 Canadian workers showed that self-described regular procrastinators earned less and clung to their jobs less securely, with yearly earnings sliding by roughly CA$12,000 for every single-point rise on a scale of chronic procrastination.
E
EHealth and well-being suffer alongside all this. A leaning towards delay travels with poorer mental health, depression and anxiety included. Pooling my studies, I have found that habitual procrastinators report a greater load of physical complaints — headaches, coughs and colds, and stomach trouble among them — while also carrying more stress and sleeping badly. Wholesome routines such as balanced eating and steady exercise are the first to lapse, and when pressure mounts these people lean more often on self-defeating ways of coping. One project of mine, following roughly 850 volunteers, showed that a disposition to procrastinate brought a 58% greater risk of poor cardiac health, even after other features of personality and background had been allowed for.
F
FOne way out of this self-feeding trap is to grow more skilful at handling what we feel. A sensible first move is to take charge of our surroundings and of the way we frame the task ahead. A number of research-backed techniques exist for beating back the distractions that flood our minds at exactly the moment we ought to be bearing down on the job in front of us. Calling to mind why a task genuinely matters and where its worth lies, for one, can warm our feelings toward it. Self-forgiveness and a measure of compassion after a bout of delay help, too, in loosening the cycle: we can own up to feeling bad without tipping into harsh self-reproach. Recalling that we are neither the first to have delayed nor the last blunts the sting of the criticism we aim at ourselves — and all of this makes the return to work that much smoother.

Question 1 - 3

Which paragraph contains the following information?

a description of the sorts of activity people turn to instead of the task they are avoiding

examples of physical ailments commonly reported by frequent procrastinators

a link between delaying academic work and dishonest conduct

a description of the sorts of activity people turn to instead of the task they are avoiding

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