Attn. Procrastinators: Why Do We Procrastinate, And How Can We Stop? Experts Have Answers

Washington Post, July 9, 2021. - Ed.

If you’re reading this article instead of tackling one of the many projects you meant to do during the pandemic, or before starting the report due tomorrow at work, or as an alternative to changing your car’s year-old oil, feel no shame: This is a safe space, procrastinators, and you’re among friends. Joseph Ferrari, a professor of psychology at DePaul Univ. in Chicago and author of “Still Procrastinating?: The No Regrets Guide to Getting It Done,” has found that about 20% of adults are chronic procrastinators. “That’s higher than depression, higher than phobia, higher than panic attacks and alcoholism. And yet all of those are considered legitimate,” “We try to trivialize this tendency, but it’s not a funny topic.”

Ferrari was speaking while on a road trip with his wife, who chimed in to say that she’s a procrastinator. Her tendencies helped spur her husband’s research interests. He doesn’t procrastinate — he has a 107-pg. résumé, he said, because he gets things done — but he’s built a career around understanding those who do. Among his findings: Chronic procrastination doesn’t discriminate based on gender, race or age; we’re all susceptible. “Everybody procrastinates, but not everyone is a procrastinator.” And contrary to popular belief, procrastinating has little to do with laziness.

It’s far more complicated, he added, than simply being a matter of time management.

Why do we procrastinate? To understand what causes procrastination (outside of conditions such as ADHD, where executive functioning issues might interfere with completing tasks), it’s important to be clear about what it is — and isn’t. Procrastination is different from delaying a task because you need to talk to someone who isn’t available, or not getting around to reading a classic such as “Moby Dick.” Fuschia Sirois, a professor of psychology at the Univ. of Sheffield in England, defines it this way: “The voluntary, unnecessary delay of an important task, despite knowing you’ll be worse off for doing so.”

On its surface, procrastination is an irrational behavior, Sirois said: “Why would somebody put something off to the last minute, then they’re stressed out, and they end up doing a poor job or less than optimal job on it? They feel bad about it afterward, & it may even have implications for other people.” The reason has to do with emotional self-regulation- &, in particular, an inability to manage negative moods around a certain task. We don’t typically procrastinate on fun things. We procrastinate on tasks we find “difficult, unpleasant, aversive or just plain boring or stressful.” If a task feels especially overwhelming, or provokes significant anxiety, it’s often easiest to avoid it...

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