How to Beat Procrastination, According to Science
With the start of the academic year looming, many of us are beginning to dread studying for tests and writing essays once more. Sadly, we’re all well-acquainted with the culprit that so often makes studying — or accomplishing any goal for that matter — unpleasant: procrastination. In fact, scientists believe somewhere between 70% to 95% of students procrastinate. But science is here to help.
Dr. Timothy A. Pychyl, a retired associate professor of psychology at Carleton University, has researched and written extensively about how to beat procrastination. Let’s take a look at his writing, as well as the writings of other journalists and academics, to analyze our procrastination habits and see how to improve, according to science! (The techniques mentioned below are all based on Pychyl’s book Solving the Procrastination Puzzle, unless otherwise indicated.)
The More You Procrastinate, The Harder It Will Be to Stop
When you put off an aversive task, you immediately get a good and rewarding feeling. The feeling is short-lived and is soon replaced by fear or anxiety as the task’s deadline zooms closer and closer; but for now, you feel great! And that’s the problem. “Behaviours that are rewarded get repeated,” according to Pychyl. When you procrastinate, you’re telling your brain: “This feels good, let’s do it again.”
One strategy to stop this is to take note of the excuses you make when faced with a task that leads to procrastination. Maybe you like to say or think, “I’ll do it tomorrow when I feel more inspired” or “This assignment’s not even that important.” Pychyl calls these excuses flags or signals that warn you of your incoming procrastination. Think of them like the “low fuel” warning lights in cars — they shouldn’t be ignored and can save you from getting into a terrible situation.
So IF you begin to use an excuse like these when faced with a task that evokes negative feelings like anxiety or fear, THEN resist the urge to put off the task and just get started. The “if… then” structure of this statement is by design. Pychyl cites research that finds these types of statements (called implementation intentions) help us make a pre-decision. Instead of delegating our decision-making to the future when faced with a tough task, we’re making the decision now, making it less likely we procrastinate when the urge eventually arrives.
These implementation intentions can be used in other ways too. For example, you could say: WHEN I finish having lunch tomorrow, THEN I’m going to work on a section of my lab report for an hour. You’re creating a cue for yourself to perform a dreaded task that takes some of the decision-making out of the equation when the time comes to get to work.
A Form of Self-Esteem Insurance
Our self-esteem is precious to us, as it should be. But some people may use procrastination as a way to ensure their self-esteem is never hurt in any way. By putting themselves at a disadvantage (like studying for a test the night before instead of weeks in advance), students create a seemingly win-win situation: If they perform poorly, it’s because they didn’t even spend that much time studying; if they do well, then it’s a feat worthy of even greater celebration! It’s a form of insurance. The student never puts in a lot of work only to perform poorly, choosing instead to protect themselves from any feelings of negativity.
But like a sleazy insurance broker selling you an insurance package that sounds amazing but sucks in reality, procrastination is a terrible deal. There are many reasons why, but a critical one is that, according to a study cited by Pychyl, the tasks we avoid by procrastinating are rarely as terrible as we had thought they would be. Before beginning the task, our perception of how stressful or unpleasant it will be is skewed towards very stressful. But once we begin, we often find our perception was going in the wrong direction. In a podcast interview with The Atlantic writer Derek Thompson, Pychyl stresses that the task will most likely not be the most fun thing you’ve done that week, but it also ends up being not that bad.
We’re Terrible Mood Forecasters
We tend to think that we can perfectly predict our mood for tomorrow — and that tomorrow, we’ll feel more inspired to complete the task we’re currently putting off. But that’s just not true. Research around predicting our future mood, or affective forecasting as it’s known in psychology, says that we tend to swing too far one way or the other (positively or negatively) when it comes to predicting our moods when in fact, our mood often remains quite similar.
For instance, when we make a plan to exercise the next day, we feel good about our healthy decision. This positive feeling we get now leads us to incorrectly predict that our mood tomorrow (right before the planned exercise session) will be similarly positive — sadly, it likely won’t be.
In other words, you still won’t feel like completing that task tomorrow if you don’t today. So, stop waiting for that inspired feeling.
Instead, Pychyl suggests changing our mindset about our mood forecasts, just as we’ve learned to do with weather forecasts. We’re used to expecting a sunny day based on the forecast but getting lots of rain. Sure, we’ll be bummed out but not entirely surprised. We need to adopt the same mindset for our mood predictions.
As Pychyl says: “Expect to be wrong and deal with it.” Set the expectation that if you’ve planned for a task to be done tomorrow, you likely won’t want to do it tomorrow. But you still should to reach your end goal. It’s not a matter of feeling but doing.
On top of that, Pychyl has said (in the interview with Derek Thompson) that some techniques people use to combat “not feeling like” working aren’t entirely effective. For instance, the Pomodoro method doesn’t work in the long term for many people — it “extinguishes” in psychological terms. It might work for a while but after some time, you’ll realize you don’t have to listen to that clock because it’s just a clock! This isn’t to say that you should stop using the Pomodoro method if it works for you; but if it doesn’t, this may be why.
“Willpower is a Limited Resource”
When we think to ourselves, “I’ll feel like doing this tomorrow,” we often think that our willpower is infinite. We don’t feel like it now, but tomorrow my willpower will get me through the entire day. But studies show this isn’t true. Scientists conducted experiments where participants had to exercise self-regulation (by not laughing at a funny movie, for example) in the first stage, then perform another self-regulation-heavy task (like drinking an “unpleasant” drink). In the control group, the first stage had no self-regulation involved (participants could laugh) but the second stage was the same. Participants in the second group performed better on the second task!
Besides recognizing that your willpower is limited and learning to use it strategically, there are steps you can take to maximize your willpower. First off, use the aforementioned implementation intentions; it’s been found that participants who did the self-regulation task in the first stage could perform just as well as the control group when using implementation intentions. Sleeping enough and keeping your blood sugar at a normal level by eating food like fruit is also very important.
The Procrastination Doom Loop
A concept coined by Derek Thompson, the procrastination doom loop begins with us procrastinating on an unpleasant task. Soon, we begin to feel guilty or ashamed because we’re procrastinating. These feelings of shame make us feel worse which means we’ll be in an even worse mood for completing the task — and we’re back where we started.
In Pychyl’s interview with Thompson, Pychyl affirms Thompson’s “doom loop” concept and adds that it may turn into a downward spiral if you’ve consistently procrastinated before. You now not only feel terrible about procrastinating on your current task, but also feel bad about every other time you’ve procrastinated, leading you to spiral down further and further each time you engage in procrastination.
One scientifically backed way to combat this is self-forgiveness. In one study cited in Pychyl’s book, students who forgave themselves for procrastinating on studying for an exam were less likely to procrastinate when studying for their next exam. Don’t let yourself get away with procrastinating all the time, but we all make mistakes. When you do, brush it off, forgive yourself, and get started.
Your Personality Traits: Good Friend or Destructive Enemy?
Scientists have found that our traits — which “describe how we expect a person to act in most situations” — can have critical effects on our tendency to procrastinate. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on which traits we have, these traits can make us more or less likely to procrastinate.
For instance, higher self-efficacy — or feeling that you are competent — can mean that you are more resilient to procrastination. Meanwhile, feeling pressured by others to always be perfect (called socially prescribed perfectionism) makes you more prone to procrastination.
To combat traits that make you more likely to procrastinate, Pychyl once again suggests implementation intentions as well as eliminating distractions if you’re usually very impulsive. This can mean putting your phone in a different room when you have to study and saying “IF my friends invite me to go out, THEN I’ll wait at least 10 minutes before I respond to decrease the likelihood of making an impulsive decision.”
Pychyl also notes that “personality should not be an excuse.” Take some time to think of your traits and how they may make you more resilient or prone to procrastination. This acknowledgement and recognition on its own can be powerful.
Another interesting finding related to our regular behaviour and habits is with regard to committed action. In psychology, committed action is “flexible persistence in actions that are linked to chosen values and goals even in the occurrence of psychological obstacles, such as difficult feelings, thoughts and urges.” In a study by Joel Gagnon, Frédérick Dionne, and Pychyl, participants (which in this case were Canadian university students) were asked to fill out several questionnaires, one of which was the Committed Action Questionnaire. The questionnaire included statements like “I can remain committed to my goals even when there are times that I fail to reach them” and asked participants to rate, on a scale, how often this statement and others like it are true for them.
The researchers found that there was a statistically significant negative correlation between self-reported procrastination and scores on the Committed Action Questionnaire — in which a higher score reflects better committed action.
Though the study doesn’t necessarily show that better committed action will lead to lower procrastination, it’s an interesting finding. The authors of the paper suggest that creating “concrete long- and short-term goals linked with personal values” may be of help due to these findings.
Structured Procrastination
Thus far, we’ve treated procrastination as the enemy. But it can be used to our advantage too, as described in a popular essay by Dr. John Perry, a professor emeritus of philosophy at Stanford University. Let’s first get one thing straight: Procrastination on its own is not helpful. Research has shown many times that, overall, procrastination equates to worse performance. For most people, the excuse that you work better under pressure is just that — an excuse. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t use your habit of procrastination against itself.
John Perry calls it structured procrastination. Derek Thompson’s friend (whose name I have trouble deciphering from the aforementioned interview) calls it procrastinating down. I call it “productive” procrastination. You can pick your own name. What’s important is what it means and how to achieve it.
The basic idea is that chronic procrastinators do other less “useful” tasks as a way of avoiding the task they dread the most — which is coincidentally often the task at the top of the to-do list. So by creating a difficult task and nudging it to the top of your list, you’re creating an environment where your previously most dreaded task now becomes one you’ll do just to avoid doing the new aversive task.
Pychyl notes in the podcast interview that while this is a fascinating concept, creating fake tasks to deceive your brain into doing other important tasks can be difficult. If it’s clear to your brain that the task is fake, you’ll likely still procrastinate on everything. Here, external pressures like getting someone else to assign you aversive tasks may be helpful. If you can master how to deceive yourself, you’ll become a pro at structured procrastination.
As Perry writes at the end of his essay, regarding self-deception, “What could be more noble than using one character flaw to offset the bad effects of another?”
There is lots of other research on procrastination that may help you. But the most critical piece of advice I took away from Pychyl’s book is to just get started and commit yourself to changing. Pychyl notes near the end of his book that “techniques and technologies can never be a substitute for a commitment to change” (emphasis added).
So, let’s make a promise to each other: We’ll both commit to changing our procrastination-breeding habits. Who’ll break their promise first?
About the Author
Parmin Sedigh is a 17-year-old stem cell and science communications enthusiast as well as a student researcher. She’s also an incoming first-year student at the University of Toronto, studying life sciences. You can usually find her on her computer following her curiosity. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
