I bet you’re procrastinating while reading this right now.
But before discussing the topic of the actual article itself, let’s address my credentials to write about this subject.
Am I qualified to speak about procrastination? Instead of just saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’, there are two ways we could go about deciding this.
On one hand, we could look at my pretty extensive track record of procrastination. Because I still haven’t figured out how to stop procrastinating, we could say that no, I’m not qualified to speak about procrastination. A camel can’t teach a human how to swim.
But on the other hand, we could look at my past history not as a limitation, but as an achievement. Perhaps instead of “I haven’t figured out how to stop procrastinating yet”, we could look at it as, ‘I’ve got a long-standing record of procrastinating, and I don’t plan to stop until I break a world record.” It could be that I’m a procrastinator who’s very passionate about their branch of study. For all we know, I’ve devoted my entire life to participating in hands-on research in the field of procrastination. In that case, I’d be incredibly qualified to write this article.
It’s a bit of a ‘glass half-empty glass half-full’ situation. I’ll leave the decision to continue reading up to you.
Procrastination
It’s an exaggeration to say that procrastinators never finish tasks. We do finish tasks – for example, I recently finished rearranging my entire closet, quite a significant achievement. Except it was 12:53 AM, I had six other unfinished tasks, and a major project due the next day of which I had only written the title. So yeah, we do finish tasks, just typically not the important ones. What’s even stranger is that it’s not us being unaware that we’re choosing to complete less important or useless tasks instead of the urgent ones. In fact, we’re extremely cognizant of the fact that we’re actively making bad decisions.
So, do we just not manage our time well, or is there an underlying reason behind our choices? For answers, to Wikipedia we go!
It turns out that the definition of procrastinating, as explained by Wikipedia, is choosing to do something else instead of important tasks while being actively aware that it’s a bad decision to do so. Unsurprisingly, procrastination thrives on the fact that most of us choose short-term gratification over long-term benefits (doing tasks that we want to over those that we need to).
But don't we all have a sense of self-preservation? If we know something's harmful, wouldn't we stop doing it?...not if we had effective negative coping mechanisms.
Negative Coping Responses
1. Avoidance: Steering clear of the location/situation associated with the task.
Though it might not seem like it, avoidance habits are pretty common when procrastination takes place. Running away from someone to avoid having a difficult conversation with them, anyone?
2. Denial and trivialization: Acting as though one’s own procrastination is not actually procrastinating, but instead a task that’s more urgent than the one being avoided. It may also be thought that the necessary or needed task doesn’t have urgent importance.
“Hm, doing my homework? Sure, but I can always do that tonight. On the other hand, if I don’t complete this limited-time game event right now, I’ll never be able to get that character I’ve always wanted!! Wait, but the homework’s due tonight...who cares. I know my priorities.”
3. Distraction: Being engaged in another behavior to avoid one’s own awareness of a certain urgent task.
One activity that I find particularly helpful in achieving this is simply going to sleep. You can't be conscious of your impending responsibilities if you aren't conscious at all, right?
Of course, if you suffer from bedtime procrastination, you might find this counter-intuitive. Or ingenious. Attempt to trick yourself into 'procrastinating' by going to sleep...which was actually what you were procrastinating from.
4. Descending counterfactuality: Forming a comparison with consequences faced from procrastinating with worse circumstances faced by other people.
Perhaps this is the root of why we judge other people who procrastinate so harshly. We're all just projecting on each other, aren't we?
5. Valorisation: Identifying or drawing attention to what one has accomplished while they should’ve been working on another, more urgent, task.
"Okay, uh, I didn’t end up studying for the exam tomorrow...but on the other hand, look! I color-coded all my notes for another class."
6. Blaming: Rationalizing one’s own procrastination by accrediting it to external, uncontrollable factors.
This feels like how we justify our actions when we believe that there is no other option, regardless of if another decision could have been made.
7. Mocking: The use of humor when rationalizing procrastination.
The memes. There are SO MANY MEMES, a perfect example of this.
Avoidance and Distraction
What do most of these coping responses look like to you? Personally, I’d say it’s mostly just rationalization rephrased five different ways. But two of these coping responses stand out among the others: avoidance and distraction. I would say that both of these actions are the only ones directly contributing to the procrastination process – if we’re ignoring whatever we’re working on and pretending it doesn’t exist, I’d say that’s definitely a part of procrastinating.
If we choose to do easier tasks on our list instead of tackling the one that we’ve been putting off for so long because we feel overwhelmed by it, we’re avoiding that task. When we throw ourselves entirely into our hobbies to forget about that exam next week that we know we’ll struggle with studying for, we’re intentionally distracting ourselves.
Do we avoid things because they stress us out? Are we afraid that they won’t be perfect? Do we feel like there’s still time left to complete the task?
Whether we choose to procrastinate or not, it’s important to know that we’ll eventually have to face our fears. That deadline is getting closer, and the more we wait, the longer stress will build up.
So throw caution to the wind, even if it doesn’t turn out how you wanted to. Because at least you tried.
To learn more about dealing with procrastination, check out this article by Johns Hopkins University.
Thank you to Maya B for editing this article!
Sources:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrastination
- https://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/sleep-revenge-bedtime-procrastination
- https://academicsupport.jhu.edu/resources/study-aids/overcoming-procrastination/