We all do it. Put off tasks that we don’t feel like doing, all the while spending time doing something else. And then once we’ve put the task off for long enough, we feel shame for wasting time.
Instead of looking deeply into why we do it, in an effort to avoid doing it again, we beat ourselves up for having done it in the first place.
However, according to psychology, there are a few ways to curb procrastination and prevent feelings of guilt and shame.
Read More: Why Do We Procrastinate?
What Causes Procrastination?
Procrastination simply means that you have something to do that seems like it will be unpleasant and maybe not rewarding, and you see a different activity that looks like it will be more rewarding, Daniel Willingham, a professor of psychology at The University of Virginia and author of the book Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning Is Hard and How You Can Make It Easy, told Discover.
“You see that one activity will be more pleasant, so you make a choice to do the more pleasant thing rather than the less pleasant thing,” Willingham said. He adds that we’re more likely to procrastinate when we’re bored, tired, or our motivation feels low.
Explore All OptionsAt work, some people procrastinate more than others, likely because they have found it rewarding in the past. And even if it’s a career that, for the most part, you find fulfilling, you still may tend to procrastinate around certain tasks associated with that job because those tasks seem less appealing than other portions of the job.
And then, after we’ve put off a task long enough, we wallow in self-blame, Anne-Laure Le Cunff, founder of Ness Labs at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, where she researches the neuroscience of curiosity, told Discover.
“Procrastination has been moralized,” Le Cunff said to Discover. “We’ve been told that it’s associated with a lack of willpower, lack of discipline, and laziness.” As a result, she added, when we are putting off our work, we feel like we’re doing something wrong.
How To Stop Procrastinating
Le Cunff explained that when we’re procrastinating, we should spend our energy trying to figure out why we’re putting off doing the task rather than shaming ourselves for putting it off. This means that the first step to stopping ourselves from procrastination is to “remove the moral layer that we have put on top of it,” Le Cunff told Discover.
“Treat procrastination like what it is, a signal from your brain that something is wrong with the task,” Le Cunff said.
She also added that you need to identify whether procrastination is coming from “the head, the heart, or the hand.” This means that if it’s coming from the head, you’re not fully convinced that you’re the right person to be doing this task. Maybe the task shouldn't be done at all, or at least not by you. In this case, consider talking to your team members about whether you should be doing the task at all.
If resistance is coming from the heart, you don’t feel on an emotional level that this task is going to be enjoyable. In this case, consider rewarding yourself while you’re doing the task and setting up a scenario that will make it more appealing. Like having your favorite snack while you’re doing it. And if the resistance is coming from the hand, it means that, at a practical level, you don’t believe that you have the tools to successfully carry out the task.
“Even if the head says yes and the heart says yes, if the hand says no, that means you have no idea how you’re going to go about doing the task,” Le Cunff told Discover.
In this case, according to Willingham, it helps to break the task up into pieces. For example, if you set out to write a book and you feel like you won’t be able to accomplish the task, think about breaking it up into chapters or smaller bites that help you to get the task accomplished. And if you don’t know how to break the task down, don’t be afraid to seek help.
Additionally, we tend to convince ourselves that a task we don’t want to do will be worse than it actually is. This is why, Willingham told Discover, sometimes you just need to get started, and you’ll realize it wasn’t as bad as you thought it would be.
Read More: Procrastination, Perfectionism, and Self-blame are Modern Symptoms of Primeval Survival Instincts
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
- This article references information from the University of Berkeley: Two Counterintuitive Ways to Stop Procrastinating
- This article references information from Georgetown University: How to Stop Procrastinating: There Is a Science to It
