Procrastination (Hindi: टालमटोल) is the action of unnecessarily and voluntarily delaying or postponing something despite knowing that there will be negative consequences for doing so. Oftentimes, it is habitual human behaviour. It is a common human experience involving delay in everyday chores or even putting off salient tasks such as attending an appointment, submitting a job report or academic assignment, or broaching a stressful issue with a partner. Although typically perceived as a negative trait due to its hindering effect on one’s productivity and often associated with depression, low self-esteem, guilt, and inadequacy. However, considering negative effects at large, Siddha Spirituality of Swami Hardas Life System can be of great help if simple methods are practiced to soothe negative effects.

What Is Procrastination?

Procrastination is the act of delaying or putting off tasks until the last minute, or past their deadline. Some researchers define procrastination as a “form of self-regulation failure characterized by the irrational delay of tasks despite potentially negative consequences.

Cultural perspectives of time management

Western and non-Western cultures

From a cultural and a social perspective, students from both Western and non-Western cultures are found to exhibit academic procrastination, but for different reasons. Students from Western cultures tend to procrastinate in order to avoid doing worse than they have done before or failing to learn as much as they should have.

Whereas students from non-Western cultures tend to procrastinate in order to avoid looking incompetent or to avoid demonstrating a lack of ability in front of their peers. 

Multi-active view of time

It is also important to consider how different cultural perspectives of time management can impact procrastination. For example, in cultures that have a multi-active view of time, people tend to place a higher value on making sure a job is done accurately before finishing. In cultures with a linear view of time, people tend to designate a certain amount of time on a task and stop once the allotted time has expired.

Procrastination is not unique to humans

A study of behavioral patterns of pigeons through delayed gratification suggests that procrastination is not unique to humans, but can also be observed in some other animals. There are experiments finding clear evidence for “procrastination” among pigeons, which show that pigeons tend to choose a complex but delayed task rather than an easy but hurry-up one.

Procrastination Prevalence

Academic procrastination

In a study of academic procrastination from the University of Vermont, published in 1984, 46% of the subjects reported that they “always” or “nearly always” procrastinated writing papers, while approximately 30% reported procrastinating studying for exams and reading weekly assignments (by 28% and 30% respectively). Nearly a quarter of the subjects reported that procrastination was a problem for them regarding the same tasks.

However, as many as 65% indicated that they would like to reduce their procrastination when writing papers and approximately 62% indicated the same for studying for exams and 55% for reading weekly assignments.

Procrastination in the industry

Another point of relevance is that of procrastination in the industry. A study from the State of the Art journal “The Impact of Organizational and Personal Factors on Procrastination in Employees of a Modern Russian Industrial Enterprise published in the Psychology in Russia”, helped to identify the many factors that affected employees’ procrastination habits. Some of these include:

• The intensity of performance evaluations,
• Importance of their duty within a company, and
• Perception and opinions on management and/or upper-level decisions.

Behavioral criteria of academic procrastination

Gregory Schraw, Theresa Wadkins, and Lori Olafson 2007 proposed three criteria for a behavior to be classified as academic procrastination: it must be counterproductive, needless, and delaying. Steel reviewed all previous attempts to define procrastination, and concluded in a 2007 study that procrastination is “to voluntarily delay an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay.” 

An approach that integrates several core theories of motivation as well as meta-analytic research on procrastination is the temporal motivation theory. It summarizes key predictors of procrastination (expectancy, value, and impulsiveness) into a mathematical equation.

The psychological perspective of Procrastination

The pleasure principle may be responsible for procrastination; one may prefer to avoid negative emotions by delaying stressful tasks. In 2019, research conducted by Rinaldi et al. indicated that measurable cognitive impairments may play a role in procrastination. As the deadline for their target of procrastination grows closer, they are more stressed and may, thus, decide to procrastinate more to avoid this stress. 

Some psychologists cite such behavior as a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision. Piers Steel indicated in 2010 that anxiety is just as likely to induce people to start working early as late and that the focus of studies on procrastination should be on impulsiveness. That is, anxiety will cause people to delay only if they are impulsive.

Coping responses

Negative coping responses to procrastination tend to be avoidant or emotional rather than task-oriented or focused on problem-solving. Emotional and avoidant coping is employed to reduce stress (and cognitive dissonance) associated with delaying intended and important personal goals. This option provides immediate pleasure and is consequently very attractive to impulsive procrastinators, at the point of discovery of the achievable goals at hand. 

Coping responses of procrastinators

There are several emotion-oriented strategies, similar to Freudian defense mechanisms, coping styles, and self-handicapping.

Coping responses of procrastinators include the following:

• Avoidance: Avoiding the location or situation where the task takes place.
• Denial and trivialization: Pretending that procrastinatory behavior is not actually procrastinating, but rather a task which is more important than the avoided one, or that the essential task that should be done is not of immediate importance.
• Distraction: Engaging or immersing oneself in other behaviors or actions to prevent awareness of the task.
• Descending counterfactuality: Comparing consequences of one’s procrastinatory behavior with others’ worse situations.
• Valorization: Pointing in satisfaction to what one achieved in the meantime while one should have been doing something else.
• Blaming: Delusional attributions to external factors, such as rationalizing that procrastination is due to external forces beyond one’s control.
• Mocking: Using humor to validate one’s procrastination.

Problem-solving measures

Task or problem-solving measures are taxing from a procrastinator’s outlook. If such measures are pursued, it is less likely the procrastinator would remain a procrastinator. However, pursuing such measures requires actively changing one’s behavior or situation to prevent and minimize the re-occurrence of procrastination.

Neuroticism has no link to procrastination

In 2006, it was suggested that neuroticism has no direct links to procrastination and that any relationship is fully mediated by conscientiousness. In 1982, it had been suggested that irrationality was an inherent feature of procrastination.

“Putting things off even until the last moment isn’t procrastination if there is a reason to believe that they will take only that moment”. Steel et al. explained in 2001, “actions must be postponed and this postponement must represent poor, inadequate, or inefficient planning”.

Cultural perspective of Procrastination

Holly McGregor and Andrew Elliot

According to Holly McGregor and Andrew Elliot (2002); Christopher Wolters (2003), academic procrastination among portions of undergraduate students has been correlated to “performance-avoidance orientation” which is one factor of the four-factor model of achievement orientation. Andrew Elliot and Judith Harackiewicz (1996) showed that students with performance-avoidance orientations tended to be concerned with comparisons to their peers. These students procrastinated as a result of not wanting to look incompetent or to avoid demonstrating a lack of ability and adopting a facade of competence for a task in front of their peers.

Gregory Arief Liem and Youyan Nie

Gregory Arief Liem and Youyan Nie (2008) found that cultural characteristics are shown to have a direct influence on achievement orientation because it is closely aligned with most students’ cultural values and beliefs. Sonja Dekker and Ronald Fischer’s (2008) meta-analysis across thirteen different societies revealed that students from Western cultures tend to be motivated more by “mastery-approach orientation” because the degree of incentive value for individual achievement is strongly reflective of the values of Western culture.

By contrast, most students from Eastern cultures have been found to be “performance-avoidance orientated”. They often make efforts to maintain a positive image of their abilities, which they display while in front of their peers. In addition, Hazel Rose Markus and Shinobu Kitayama (1991) showed that in non-Western cultures, rather than standing out through their achievements, people tend to be motivated to become part of various interpersonal relationships and to fit in with those that are relevant to them.

Sushila Niles

Research by Sushila Niles (1998) with Australian students and Sri Lankan students confirmed these differences, revealing that Australian students often pursued more individual goals, whereas Sri Lankan students usually desired more collaborative and social goals.

Kuo-Shu Yang and An-Bang Yu

Multiple studies by Kuo-Shu Yang and An-Bang Yu (1987, 1988, 1990) have indicated that individual achievement among most Chinese and Japanese students was measured by fulfillment of their obligation and responsibility to their family network, not by individual accomplishments. 

Yang and Yu (1987) have also shown that collectivism and Confucianism are very strong motivators for achievement in many non-Western cultures because of their emphasis on cooperation in the family unit and community. Guided by these cultural values, it is believed that the individual intuitively senses the degree of pressure that differentiates his or her factor of achievement orientation.

Health perspective of Procrastination

Excessive procrastination can become a problem

To a certain degree, it is normal to procrastinate and it can be regarded as a useful way to prioritize between tasks, due to a lower tendency of procrastination on truly valued tasks. However, excessive procrastination can become a problem and impede normal functioning.

When this happens, procrastination has been found to result in health problems, which include:

• Stress,
• Anxiety,
• A sense of guilt and crisis as well as loss of personal productivity and social disapproval for not meeting responsibilities or commitments,
• Difficulties seeking support,
• Social stigmas, and
• The belief is that task-aversion is caused by laziness, lack of willpower, or low ambition, and
• In some cases, problematic procrastination might be a sign of some underlying psychological disorder.

Physiological roots of procrastination

Research on the physiological roots of procrastination has been concerned with the role of the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain that is responsible for executive brain functions such as impulse control, attention, and planning. This is consistent with the notion that procrastination is strongly related to such functions, or a lack thereof.

The prefrontal cortex also acts as a filter, decreasing distracting stimuli from other brain regions. Damage or low activation in this area can reduce one’s ability to avert diversions, which results in the poorer organization, a loss of attention, and increased procrastination. This is similar to the prefrontal lobe’s role in ADHD, where it is commonly under-activated.

Procrastination Management

Psychologist William J. Knaus estimated that more than 90% of college students procrastinate. Of these students, 25% are chronic procrastinators and typically abandon higher education (college dropouts).

Perfectionism

Perfectionism is a prime cause for procrastination because pursuing unattainable goals (perfection) usually results in failure. Unrealistic expectations destroy self-esteem and lead to self-repudiation, self-contempt, and widespread unhappiness. To overcome procrastination, it is essential to recognize and accept the power of failure without condemning it, to stop focusing on faults and flaws, and to set goals that are easier to achieve.

Behaviors and practices

Behaviors and practices that reduce procrastination:

• Awareness of habits and thoughts that lead to procrastinating.
• Seeking help for self-defeating problems such as fear, anxiety, difficulty in concentrating, poor time management, indecisiveness, and perfectionism.
• A fair evaluation of personal goals, strengths, weaknesses, and priorities.
• Realistic goals and personal positive links between the tasks and the concrete, meaningful goals.
• Structuring and organization of daily activities.
• Modification of one’s environment for that newly gained perspective: the elimination or minimization of noise or distraction; investing effort into relevant matters, and ceasing day-dreaming.
• Disciplining oneself to set priorities.
• Motivation with enjoyable activities, socializing and constructive hobbies.
• Approaching issues in small blocks of time, instead of attempting whole problems at once and risking intimidation.
• To prevent relapse, reinforce pre-set goals based on needs and allow yourself to be rewarded in a balanced way for accomplished tasks.

Completion of tasks

Making a plan to complete tasks in a rigid schedule format might not work for everyone. There is no hard-and-fast rule to follow such a process if it turns out to be counter-productive. Instead of scheduling, it may be better to execute tasks in a flexible, unstructured schedule that has time slots for only necessary activities.

Better time management

Piers Steel

Piers Steel suggests that better time management is a key to overcoming procrastination, including being aware of and using one’s “power hours” (being a “morning person” or “night owl”). A good approach is to creatively utilize one’s internal circadian rhythms that are best suited for the most challenging and productive work. Steel states that it is essential to have realistic goals, to tackle one problem at a time, and cherish the “small successes”.

Brian O’Leary

Brian O’Leary supports that “finding a work-life balance…may actually help us find ways to be more productive”, suggesting that dedicating leisure activities as motivation can increase one’s efficiency at handling tasks. Procrastination is not a lifelong trait. Those likely to worry can learn to let go, and those who procrastinate can find different methods and strategies to help focus and avoid impulses.

Safer approach for tackling procrastination

After contemplating his own procrastination habits, philosopher John Perry authored an essay entitled “Structured Procrastination”, wherein he proposes a “cheat” method as a safer approach for tackling procrastination: using a pyramid scheme to reinforce the unpleasant tasks needed to be completed in a quasi-prioritized order.

The negative impact of Procrastination

Can be persistent and tremendously disruptive

For some people, procrastination can be persistent and tremendously disruptive to everyday life. For these individuals, procrastination may reveal psychiatric disorders. Procrastination has been linked to a number of negative associations, such as depression, irrational behavior, low self-esteem, anxiety, and neurological disorders such as ADHD.

Others have found relationships with guilt and stress. Therefore, it is important for people whose procrastination has become chronic and is perceived to be debilitating to seek out a trained therapist or psychiatrist to investigate whether an underlying mental health issue may be present.

Less stress and physical illness

With a distant deadline, procrastinators report significantly less stress and physical illness than non-procrastinators. However, as the deadline approaches, this relationship is reversed.

Procrastinators report more stress, more symptoms of physical illness, and more medical visits, to the extent that, overall, procrastinators experience more stress and health problems. This can cause the quality of life to decrease significantly along with overall happiness. Procrastination also has the ability to increase perfectionism and neuroticism, while decreasing conscientiousness and optimism.

This can lead to insomnia

Procrastination can also lead to insomnia, Alisa Hrustic said in Men’s Health that “The procrastinators—people who scored above the median on the survey—were 1.5 to 3 times more likely to have symptoms of insomnia, like severe difficulty falling asleep, than those who scored lower on the test.” Insomnia can even add more problems as a severe and negative impact.

Correlates to the complex arrangement

Procrastination has been linked to the complex arrangement of cognitive, affective, and behavioral relationships from task desirability to low self-esteem and anxiety to depression. A study found that procrastinators were less future-oriented than their non-procrastinator counterparts. This result was hypothesized to be associated with hedonistic perspectives on the present; instead, it was found procrastination was better predicted by a fatalistic and hopeless attitude towards life.

A correlation between procrastination and eveningness was observed where individuals who had later sleeping and waking patterns were more likely to procrastinate. It has been shown that Morningness increases across the lifespan and procrastination decrease with age.,

Perfectionism

Traditionally, procrastination has been associated with perfectionism: a tendency to negatively evaluate outcomes and one’s own performance, intense fear, avoidance of evaluation of one’s abilities by others, heightened social self-consciousness and anxiety, recurrent low mood, and “workaholism”.

However, adaptive perfectionists—egosyntonic perfectionism—were less likely to procrastinate than non-perfectionists, while maladaptive perfectionists, who saw their perfectionism as a problem—egodystonic perfectionism—had high levels of procrastination and anxiety. 

Academic Procrastination

According to an Educational Science Professor, Hatice Odaci, academic procrastination is a significant problem during college years in part because many college students lack efficient time management skills in using the Internet.

Also, Odaci notes that most colleges provide free and fast twenty-four-hour Internet service which some students are not usually accustomed to, and as a result of irresponsible use or lack of firewalls these students become engulfed in distractions, and thus in procrastination.

Procrastination Benefits

Potential benefits of procrastination include the following:

• Procrastination can potentially give you more time to think before acting, which can sometimes help you make better decisions, especially in certain cases, such as those where it gives you more time to gather information.
• It can potentially help conserve your resources, for example when it leads you to postpone a task that ends up being canceled.
• Procrastination can potentially help you prioritize your work, for example when it forces you to choose which tasks to complete when you’re under strict time constraints due to upcoming deadlines.
• It can potentially help you work in a more efficient manner when it forces you to complete tasks under intense time pressure (this is associated with Parkinson’s law, which denotes that “work expands so as to fill the time which is available for its completion”).
• Procrastination can potentially help you focus on your work and enter a flow state while working.
• It can potentially improve your ability to solve problems in a creative way.
• Procrastination can potentially increase your motivation to work, for example, if it makes an otherwise boring task feel exciting because it leads you to work on it under intense time pressure.
• It can potentially increase your feelings of autonomy and control, for example when it allows you to rebel against schedules that were imposed on you by others.
• Procrastination can potentially reduce your stress, for example, if you’re currently worried about a task for which the deadline is still far away.

These potential benefits are most strongly associated with positive types of procrastination, which involve procrastinating in more beneficial ways than traditional procrastination, though even traditional procrastination can potentially lead to some benefits in some cases.

Procrastination disadvantages

The many downsides to procrastination include the following:

• Procrastination is associated with various academic issues, such as worse exam scores, worse grades, increased course failures, increased course withdrawals, and an increased likelihood of dropping out.
• It is associated with various employment and financial issues, such as earning a lower salary, having shorter durations of employment, and having a higher likelihood of being unemployed or under-employed (as opposed to working full‐time).
• Procrastination is associated with worse well-being, for example, due to increased negative emotions, such as frustration, guilt, and shame.
• It is associated with various mental and physical health issues, such as increased stress and an increased rate of illness.
• Procrastination is also associated with various other issues, such as a delay in getting treatment for one’s problems.

Some of the caveats that apply to the benefits of procrastination also apply to its downsides, such as the use of correlational evidence. However, the body of research on the downsides of procrastination is much more robust as a whole, and overall, procrastination is much more likely to lead to negative outcomes than positive ones, which is important to keep in mind when considering its potential benefits.

How do you overcome procrastination at a personal level?

Nobody wants to procrastinate, so you may as well start by trying to address the problem directly as a whole. There exist a plethora of different strategies for conquering this habit that individuals have found effective, and you would do well to encourage these where you can. Such time-management techniques can be instrumental in changing the way a person does work, but the downside is that you generally can’t force employees to use them. Some of the more salient points to consider promoting in your workplace are as follows:

Start with it

Dedicate the first 30 or so minutes of work time to doing that work without any distraction or interruption, even from work-related tasks. If you can manage to fulfill this obligation before turning to minor tasks like checking email, you will probably find it much easier to continue because you have gotten into the groove of it.

Make a date

Expand the starting process to encompass larger, concretely defined work sessions. Instead of setting vague goals that you can push back without a thought, start scheduling important tasks for non-negotiable windows of time that you must show up for, just like when you agree to meet a person.

Be more self-aware

Try to become cognizant of your procrastination process, which may involve either difficulty in starting a task or difficulty in staying focused on a task. Either way, you become locked in a familiar pattern of rationalization, starting with the stress of needing to start and ending in the temporary relief of that stress which reinforces the behavior and makes it easier to fall prey to procrastination again. Once you learn to acknowledge it for what it is, the urge to “take a quick break” should pass.

Eliminate distractions

Willpower is a limited resource, and it can be depleted like any other form of energy. Resisting temptation takes effort that makes you more susceptible to procrastinating later in the day. Solve this by eliminating anything that might tempt you, blocking problematic websites, and imposing other restrictions on yourself to ensure that accessing these diversions takes effort too.

Your office may be able to help with some of this. Save distractions to use as rewards outside of work so that you can give yourself a real break.

Be satisfied with imperfection

Learn to let go of perfectionistic tendencies that render a task more difficult than it needs to be. If a project is so intimidating that you don’t want to begin, start it anyway and write whatever first comes to mind. Imagine that it’s a rough draft, and remember that any work accomplished is better than no work at all. You have more energy than you think.

Change the way you think about doing work

If you can’t be effective using your current process, then maybe it’s time to try something different. Alter your thought process. Change your method of organizing tasks, or learn to prioritize through systems such as Eisenhower’s Urgent/Important Principle. Keep taking risks until something works.

How do you overcome procrastination at an organizational level?

Often a behavior requires more than mere encouragement to be properly corrected, so it is rather fortunate that many of the common fixes for procrastination can be enforced through the system. While many of these strategies may also be applied as personal principles, it is notable that they provide your company’s management with a number of options, which may be decided upon through trial and error according to their necessity and effectiveness. Specific measures that might be taken within your organization include the following:

Change the way tasks are assigned

This might be done in any number of ways, for instance, structuring tasks with more minor deadlines and check-ins to give procrastination less opportunity to strike. What is important here is that the addition of structure in almost any form can be a powerful control of procrastinatory tendencies.

In this way, you may supply employees with work in more manageable segments that help them to prioritize and prevent any task from seeming larger than life. Concrete, short-term rewards provide motivation, while failure to persist is caused by a failure to see the link between efforts and their benefit. In the interest of maximum efficiency, you might also try to play to the strengths of your employees and make them feel that their role is significant by assigning tasks of varying importance.

Reward performance

Offer bonuses or other, smaller incentives to employees who finish work ahead of time. Make it a real competition, remembering that procrastination is ultimately about motivation. Reminders and prizes have been shown to improve satisfaction and stress levels among workers while at the same time increasing their output and achievement. Similarly, you may find creative ways to punish procrastinatory behavior, however, you may choose to define and recognize it.

Hold employees accountable

A good way to do this is to pair employees up to work on important projects, which will make them feel obligated to do the job faster. Putting one person in charge of a task with little outside influence is not typically a recipe for effectiveness.

If it comes down to it, you might consider including the entire team on certain assignments, as open collaboration will foster responsibility. Another way to encourage accountability is to hold a meeting each morning with the entire team and to ask the potential procrastinators on the spot about their progress.

Make the message clear

Employees might not know the extent to which they can slow a project down, so be as frank as possible in discussing the issue of procrastination and what it does—use hard numbers to communicate the problems it is causing. Make it consistently clear that this is a matter you value addressing, that employees are promoted because of their ability to work faster and that procrastination will not be tolerated.

You might have a lot of options and freedom, but by supplying employees with just the right combination of internal and external pushes, you can fairly easily produce the conditions for motivation that lead to unprompted persistent success in the workplace. In theory, all it should take to tip the balance between effort and benefit is a single application of pressure.

Teach employees what you want

Anytime you are looking to make a change in behavior or a culture change, it’s important to provide easy access to supporting resources. In addition to clearly explaining your expectations to employees, show them how to meet your expectations through training. People learn best through experience, so make sure that the training resources and other support systems are readily available at the time when they need them most.

Conduct Yoga classes 

If feasible, try to implement yoga classes on a regular basis, which would help employees stay away from stress, anxiety, etc, and help in maintaining their physical as well as mental health, which would be beneficial an individual as well as organizational benefits. Simple and less time-consuming but highly beneficial asanas e.g. Padmasana, Siddhasana, etc can be of immense help.

Frequently asked questions

Before posting your query, kindly go through them: