Preventing Procrastination

By Alex Soltoff

I went to bed on Friday, March 11th believing that I’d get up in the morning at nine to do some intensive research for this article. I managed to wake up at nine, but because I had fallen asleep in the middle of an episode of Girls, I had to finish it before I could start writing because, to be honest, the suspense was killing me and I was too tired to start reading. One episode of Girls became three, which led to a headfirst dive into the World Wide Web and, well, we all know how that goes. I did not pick up a journal article until two. The irony of this situation is not lost on me. It’s the very reason I’m writing this article. I procrastinate. All the time.

But why? Why do I let Netflix count me down into another episode of Breaking Bad when I know have to start writing a lab report? Why do I wait until I’m on my last pair of underwear to do my laundry? Why am I only writing this article now, one day before I’m supposed to hand it in to my editor? I’m engaging in behavior that so clearly makes my life harder. So again, why do I procrastinate? And, more importantly, is there a cure?

By studying differences between fraternal and identical twins, Dr. Daniel Gustavson and his team at the University of Colorado were able to determine that procrastination is around 46 percent heritable, meaning 46 percent of procrastination can be attributed to genes. They also found that these genes are directly linked to our genes for impulsivity. Really though, we don’t yet know any specifics about the genetics of procrastination. Most of what we know about what causes people to procrastinate is based on observed correlations.

In 2007 Dr. Piers Steel of the University of Calgary ran a meta-analysis on 216 studies regarding procrastination, and compiled his results into a review on the nature of procrastination published in The Psychological Bulletin. The results of the study, while mostly intuitive, are enlightening.
As one might expect, Steel found that there is a strong correlation between task aversiveness (how unpleasant we find a task) and procrastination. “The more people dislike a task, the more they consider it effortful or anxiety producing, the more they procrastinate,” he said. Though straight-forward, this is an important concept. It’s why many students procrastinate writing term papers or lab reports, the work is simply unpleasant.

Steel’s analysis also determined that age has a negative correlation to procrastination. Most people tend to develop ways to overcome procrastination over their lifetime, so as we get older, we tend to procrastinate less.

Steel found that procrastination can be correlated to an individual’s personality traits. There are a few ways to categorize personality traits, but when it comes to procrastination, researchers mainly use the big-five model. This model separates personality into five components: extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience, each of which can be extended further into various facets.

Steel’s analysis found that there are no real connections between procrastination and one’s openness to experience or agreeableness.

When it came to extraversion, our tendency to be sociable, expressive, energetic and outgoing, two facets in particular showed strong correlations to procrastination, a proneness to boredom, and impulsiveness. People prone to boredom have a higher likelihood of finding a broader range of life’s tasks boring (surprise!), which can result in higher levels of procrastination for reasons identical to task aversiveness. According to Steel, “[impulsive people] often pursue immediate gratification, neglecting, or ignoring longer term responsibilities.” Thus, they often procrastinate on those longer term responsibilities. Seven years after Steel’s analysis, Gustavson determined that procrastination and impulsivity share the same genes, so it makes sense that they were observed to have a phenotypic connection.

In theory, researchers thought that if people procrastinate because tasks are stressful or anxiety producing, then those people more prone to anxiety and stress should procrastinate more. Surprisingly, Steel found no connection between neuroticism (the tendency for people to experience negative emotions such as anxiety, depression, fear etc…) and procrastination. Anxious people may in fact worry more about completing tasks, but they don’t seem to put off doing them more than non-anxious people. That being said, the analysis found procrastination to have a strong negative correlation to neuroticism’s facet of self-efficacy, the belief that one is capable of successfully completing a task. If someone does not believe that they are able to complete a task, they are more likely to put it off.

Of all five components of personality, Steel’s analysis showed that conscientiousness is most strongly connected to procrastination. By far. Steel had expected this. Conceptually, low-conscientiousness is closely related to procrastination itself. Steel describes conscientiousness as the ability of individuals to diligently fulfill objectives. People who lack an ability to diligently fulfill objectives are essentially procrastinators. The analysis found that low self-control/self-discipline, distractibility, and organization are all facets of conscientiousness with strong correlations to procrastination.

According to Steel, low conscientiousness and a lack of self-control are at the heart of procrastination behavior. As Steel defines it, to procrastinate is, “to voluntarily delay an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for it.” According to one study in Steel’s analysis, a lack of self-control was attributed as the proximal cause of procrastination. This can almost be proven by simply thinking about how having self-control relates to procrastination. When we are able to control our behavior and are well-disciplined, we do not procrastinate, we do not “voluntarily delay in our intended course of action”. Piggybacking off this, when we are well organized and not distracted, we tend not to procrastinate.

So, with all this in mind, how do I cure myself? How do I stop procrastinating? By this point, I hope we’ve all gathered that procrastination cannot be attributed to any sole cause, so we can’t stop the behavior through any single method. Methods for decreasing procrastination will depend on the driving force(s) behind it. Four such methods are listed presently:

1. Expect Success (or Die Trying)

As mentioned earlier, procrastination can be attributed to a low self-efficacy. Steel points out that, “one way of decreasing procrastination for a given task is to increase one’s expectancy of success.” This occurs when we prove to ourselves that we are capable of completing a task on our own. Steel cites the example of procrastinating on taxes. “Many people would likely finish their taxes sooner if they were more confident about completing the task successfully. Such confidence is bought largely with empirical confirmation. People must demonstrate to themselves they are capable of such success,” he said. Proving to ourselves that we are capable of success is hard. It is not the quickest fix out there. I put off reading journal article because I often doubt my ability to understand them. Applying this method to my procrastination would require me to keep reading articles until I became confident in my reading comprehension, a long process, but one that I believe would help.

1. Limit Distractions

“Procrastinators tend to be impulsive, distractible, and lacking in self-control; thus they are very sensitive to delays,” Steel says. In other words, procrastinators have difficulty delaying gratification. This may be the most universal trait of procrastinators. We like our rewards to be immediate. Why would I work for three hours to experience the joy/relief of finishing a term paper when I can get a rush of dopamine immediately by playing FIFA or Facebook stalking people I went to high school with? To answer myself, it would be because papers are important, videogames aren’t real, and Facebook stalking, though fairly ubiquitous these days, is still creepy. But that’s beside the point. Video games and entertaining websites/apps are distractions. Limiting distractions like these is key to decreasing procrastination.

This is much easier said than done, especially in college, where we’re surrounded by sirens (read friends) who can tempt us away from work in just under a million different ways. All is not lost though. By surrounding ourselves with cues that remind us of our goals and eliminating forms of immediate gratification, we can dramatically limit potential distractions. This is called stimulus control. As a student and chronic procrastinator, I do this by working at library computers, and I would strongly suggest that any other student prone to procrastination does the same. The library’s computer lab has an open floor plan. I can see what all of my neighbors are doing and vice versa. Students working in the computer lab consistently appear focused and on task, which causes me to focus and stay on task due to what I would call a peculiar power of suggestion. I try not to bring headphones with me, which eliminates any potential to watch Netflix or get distracted on YouTube. Even when I bring headphones, I get self-conscious when I feel like people around me are watching my screen, so I don’t spend much time on non-academic sites. If I had a smart phone (I think I might be the only person left under the age of 50 without one), I would turn it off and put it out of sight to limit any and all distractions that they so infamously cause.

1. Pair Unpleasant Activities with Pleasant Activities

When people procrastinate because they find a certain task to be unpleasant, one solution is to pair that task with an activity they like. Steel offers an example of students who enjoy socializing forming a study group. “Though the exam may be far off, the pleasant interaction with fellow students can be experienced in the present,” he said. Another example could be rewarding oneself with a cup of coffee after completing one hour of writing.

1. Set Short, Specific Goals

Sometimes we procrastinate because we tell ourselves that the task at hand is going to be so terrible or so unpleasant that we just cannot get ourselves to start it. One effective method of goal setting is to set a goal of working for a short period of time, say ten to fifteen minutes. This forces us to confront the task, while giving ourselves an easy goal to meet should the task really be as awful as we made it out to be. Once we start a seemingly daunting task, we often realize that it is not as bad as we thought, and end up finding the motivation to complete it in the process.

1. …

I would offer more advice, but I have an exam tomorrow that I haven’t started studying for. First things first though, a new episode of Girls came out tonight and my DVR is beckoning.