Procrastination: Why People Wait Before Doing a Task and How to Break This Pattern

People have struggled with procrastination since ancient civilizations, with even Cicero calling it "hateful" in the conduct of affairs. Even during those times, procrastination is not just hateful but also downright harmful, according to the Association for Psychological Science.

Studies show that people tend to procrastinate when they are under high levels of stress. The voluntary and unnecessary delaying of tasks is a complicated failure of self-regulation despite knowing that adverse outcome.

Additionally, a poor concept of time may exacerbate the problem, but procrastination's foundation is the inability to manage one's emotions.

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Procrastination: Why People Wait Before Doing A Task and How To Break This Pattern

What Causes Procrastination?

The cause of procrastination is not as simple as poor time management or sheer laziness of a person. The psychology of procrastination does not back up these claims, according to Science Focus.

Dr. Fuschia Sirois, from the University of Sheffield and a researcher who has studied procrastination for 20 years, said that there had been no convincing scientific evidence that procrastination is the result of poor time management. But there is evidence pointing to mood management because underneath procrastination is a poor emotional response.

Furthermore, Sirois explains that everyone faces stressful situations that trigger brain activity involving the amygdala, the part of the brain that processes the emotions and signals threats.

Sirois added that those who often procrastinate have greater grey matter volume in the amygdala, which means they are more prone to negative consequences of their actions, leading to negative emotions and procrastination.

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What Happens To The Brain When You Procrastinate?

Another factor for procrastination is temporal thinking or how close people see themselves in the future. An average person may suck at temporal thinking, but a procrastinator is well-versed in this fallacy.

A study by researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, entitled "Saving for the future self: Neural measures of future self-continuity predict temporal discounting," suggests that people probably imagine a future version of themselves as a completely different person.

Researchers used fMRI to see different sections of the brain are activated when a person process information of their present and future selves. They found that the same brain regions are activated when a person thinks of their future self and when thinking of a stranger.

"As your future self might feel psychologically distant to you now, you might also see them as a kind of superhero. You might say 'Future me will have all the ideas because they'll be well-rested' or 'Future me won't have writers' block'," Sirois said.

But in truth, a person does not change much in a short time, she added.

How To Break the Pattern of Procrastination?

According to Science Focus, Sirois identified two primary ways of breaking the negative pattern of procrastination at its root cause: self-compassion and cognitive re-framing.

She said that chronic procrastinators do not realize that they are extremely hard on themselves. So, rather than getting the job done immediately, they delay doing things.

Sirois advised that recognizing the fact that everybody screws up and stepping back for a minute could help overcome procrastinating.

Self-compassion is about reappraising and seeing meaning to the task to create a connection with it. Reappraising and turning down some of the negative emotions is a way to start overcoming procrastination.