If you procrastinate, you must have wondered at some time why you are paralysed by procrastination? These are critical questions to ask because knowing why you procrastinate is essential if you want to learn how to stop.
Based on decades of study, we have proposed the psychological process underlying procrastination and a thorough list of why individuals postpone. With Do With Coach, You will also learn how to utilise this knowledge to figure out why you procrastinate and how to use it to conquer your procrastination.
Procrastination:
Procrastination is the process of delaying decisions or actions that are unnecessary. For example, if you need to write a report and wind up squandering time online while knowing you should be writing, you’re procrastinating.
Procrastination is destructive to people’s capacity to achieve their goals. It is related to poor academic records and a lower income at the workplace. Furthermore, procrastination is linked to various other difficulties, including increased stress and poor physical and mental health.
Why do people get paralyzed by procrastination?
People frequently believe procrastination is just a question of willpower, but the truth is considerably more complex.
When presented with a decision to make or a chore to accomplish, we rely on our self-control to get tasks completed. Furthermore, our enthusiasm, established in the anticipation of earning some reward for our labor, can enhance our self-control and increase the likelihood that we will complete tasks on time.
Yet, there are various aggravating situations that we might encounter that have the opposite impact on our drive, making us more prone to postpone. Anxiety, fear of loss, and other negative feelings, for example, might induce us to wait unreasonably, as does being assigned an undesirable duty.
Moreover, several obstacles conflict with our self-control and drive, making us more prone to procrastination. For example, tiredness caused by working hard all day might make it increasingly challenging to exercise self-control if it’s already past midnight. Similarly, a big gap between the time we finish a project and the time we will receive the payment for doing it might cause us to devalue its worth, reducing its motivating effect.
We manage to complete our tasks on time as long as our self-control and drive overcome the impacts of demoralizing influences, notwithstanding the impediments that hinder them. However, when all negative emotions exceed our self-control and drive, we delay or defer our task permanently or until the balance flips in our favor.
Overall, we procrastinate because demotivating forces such as worry and fear of failure overwhelm our self-control and drive, which may be hampered by weariness and benefits that are far in the future.
It leads us to fail to self-regulate our behavior, which indicates we delay tasks unreasonably, even when we know we should accomplish them. Thus, procrastination frequently results in a gap between how we plan to act and act.
The process described above is the key one that reveals why individuals postpone.
Reasons Of Procrastination:
This section offers a detailed overview of why individuals delay, depending on the psychological mechanism described in the preceding part.
If you’re wondering why you procrastinate, read through this listing and attempt to find out which of these procrastination factors relate to you. Try to be thoughtful and realistic with yourself because discovering the grounds of your procrastination is critical if you want to get over it.
The Main Reasons for procrastination are:
Abstract objectives:
People are more inclined to postpone when their objectives are ambiguous or abstract, as opposed to distinct and well-stated goals.
Goals like “become healthy” or “start exercising” are ambiguous. Hence, prone to lead to procrastination. A goal like “go to the gym directly after work on weekdays and spend an additional 30 minutes on the treadmill, jogging at high speed” is clear. Therefore, such goals are far more bound to lead to action.
Furthermore, circumstances like a lack of a clear description might make a goal feel abstract. Objectives that are viewed as very implausible, for example, are also regarded as relatively abstract, according to construal-level theory. It indicates that if a person believes it is improbable that they will achieve a specific objective, they may consider that objective as vague, increasing the probability that they would procrastinate on it.
Outcomes that are far in the future:
People frequently procrastinate on activities connected with results (e.g., penalties or rewards) that they will only receive after finishing the work since people are more likely to underestimate the importance of long-term consequences. This phenomenon is known as temporal discounting or delays discounting since it is based on the timing of results.
As a result, people frequently exhibit a present bias when they participate in activities that benefit them in the near term over tasks that would result in better long-term benefits.
It is worth noting that the link between the time it takes to get a reward and its perceived value is generally erratic since the rate of discounting diminishes over time.
It is known as hyperbolic discounting, contrasting with exponential discounting, a moment model of temporal discounting in which a longer wait before getting a reward has the same impact on its perceived value regardless of just how distant in the future it is.
A discontent from our future self:
People postpone because they see their future selves be separated from their existing selves, a phenomenon called temporal self-discontinuity or temporal disjunction.
Like, even though the doctor has advised them that consuming nutrition is vital, they may put it off since the detrimental effects of their current diet will only become a big issue in a few years, which they see as someone else’s responsibility.
People who are disconnected from their current and future selves may delay in several ways. For example, it may lead individuals to believe that their present self should not be concerned about the future because their future self will be responsible for any chores that they postpone, as well as any repercussions for failing to accomplish those activities on time. Similarly, it may lead individuals to believe that their current should not bother getting things accomplished now if they would receive the benefits of their activities in the future.
Optimism or Pessimism:
People may procrastinate on projects because they are overconfident in their capacity to fulfill them in the future. For example, a student may opt to put off starting a lesson due in a few weeks because they believe there will be enough time to do it later.
This type of confidence may occur for miscalculating the time required to complete the tasks. This phenomenon is known as the planning fallacy, and it can cause both procrastinators and non-procrastinators to believe that they will accomplish upcoming tasks sooner than they actually can.
Pessimism, on the other hand, can drive individuals to procrastinate in some instances, such as when they feel that their attempts to accomplish a work will fail. Therefore, there’s no use in attempting in the first place.
Feeling overwhelmed:
People may delay because they are overwhelmed by the duties that they must do. Overwhelming may arise for various reasons, including having a single task that feels massive in scope or having a lot of minor chores that pile up. When this occurs, a person may avoid the responsibilities at hand or attempt to tackle them but get paralyzed before completing them.
For example, if you need to paint your entire apartment, the idea that the activity would take so long and entail so many elements may lead you to feel burdened, and you may avoid starting it in the first place.
Anxiety:
People may delay because they are apprehensive about work that needs to be completed.
This issue is exacerbated when a person’s anxiety rises because of procrastination. Thus, one starts getting anxious about a particular task causing them to procrastinate rather than completing it, which tends to make them even more stressed, which leads them to procrastinate much more.
Task aversion:
People frequently postpone because they dislike the chores that must be completed.
It happens because the more individuals dislike a work, the more inclined they are to avoid it, and hence the more prone they are to postpone.
Several factors might lead a person to be averse to work, causing them to procrastinate. One may postpone because they view work as annoying, monotonous, dull, or challenging.
Fear of evaluation or negative feedback:
People may postpone because they are worried about being judged or getting negative comments from others.
People’s anxieties in this respect are sometimes overly exaggerated or unfounded because the possibilities of obtaining an unfavorable response are minimal or because the repercussions of such feedback aren’t as severe as they believe.
Furthermore, in some situations, fear of assessment or anxiety feedback might make people less prone to procrastinate by driving them to do their tasks on time. The impact of this anxiety, whether good or bad, is determined by several elements, including how worried a person is about the approaching examination and how confident they are in their skills to complete the work at hand.
Fear of failure:
Individuals frequently procrastinate because they are afraid of losing to finish the work. This fear of failure may promote procrastination in various ways, like encouraging people to postpone completing a chore or starting one in the first place.
Moreover, some personality qualities, such as poor self-esteem and low self-confidence, are linked to a higher fear of failure, making those with these features more inclined to delay. Furthermore, fear of failure is a particularly significant issue for people with self-doubts having terrible, illogical views about their talents.
Remember that while psychological distress and fear of negative feedback are connected. A person might be impacted by the combination of these elements. For example, someone may feel confident in their ability to accomplish effectively yet be concerned about getting unfair negative criticism from others and may be concerned about losing at something even though no one is aware of it.
Self-Handicapping:
People occasionally postpone and deliberately put obstacles in their path, so their failure may be blamed on their procrastination instead of their skills, a habit known as self-handicapping.
As a result of this defensive mechanism, some procrastinators devote considerable time procrastinating if they feel they are prone to failure, especially if failure would reflect adversely on them.
Self-sabotage:
People postpone because they engage in self-defeating activities, which means they intentionally attempt to impede their development.
People participate in self-sabotage for various reasons, and those who procrastinate for this reason are more likely to engage in other related behaviors, such as drawing away from people who treat them well.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD):
A person may procrastinate because their ADHD makes it difficult to focus on a single activity for long periods, especially when it becomes monotonous. Thus, they frequently move from one task to the next, never accomplishing any of them.
Evidence indicates a strong link between participating in ADHD-related activities and procrastinating. It is considered that several ADHD behaviors can cause procrastination. Thus, procrastination is seen as a primary indicator of ADHD.
Yet, not all types of ADHD are connected with procrastination. Studies show that signs of ADHD related to attention deficit are more directly related to procrastination.
Depression:
Some individuals postpone because they are depressed. It is because depression may produce exhaustion, trouble concentrating, and a loss of enthusiasm for tasks, all of which can contribute to procrastination.
Someone sad may constantly put off his chores because he does not have enough mental energy.
Insufficient energy:
People are more inclined to postpone if they have poor energy levels, either physically or mentally.
Somebody who is weary after working hard all day may find it hard to practice self-control when they arrive home late, causing them to delay tasks such as cleaning.
The low ability of self-control :
Self-control is a person’s capacity to self-regulate their conduct to bring themselves to follow through on their objectives and take measures that are in their best interests, especially in the long run. People who lack self-control are far more prone to postpone, which is not unexpected considering that self-control is essential for enabling people to self-regulate their behavior.
People who lack self-control may postpone on their own, but they are also more inclined to procrastinate because of other concerns, such as work aversion or fear of failure.
It’s worth noting that, in many circumstances, a lack of self-control might drive people to participate in simple and convenient activities, even if they’re not naturally enjoyable, rather than focusing on projects that are more intrinsically appealing but require more effort.
Lack of persistence:
Perseverance is the capacity to persist in goal-directed conduct in the face of adversity. People who lack tenacity are more inclined to procrastinate when completing work already in process.
A lack of tenacity may force someone to abandon their favorite side project because they believe they have reached a challenging and demanding point in growth.
Distractibility:
Distractibility is the incapability to concentrate your mind on one subject at a time. Extreme levels of neuroticism can contribute to procrastination by changing the focal point of people.
Rebellion:
People often procrastinate as an act of rebellion, against some form of authority (e.g., an authorized person), by deferring a duty they dislike being assigned.
Similarly, individuals may procrastinate for identical motives, such as vengeance and anger, particularly on responsibilities that aren’t necessarily assigned to them explicitly.
Ways to stop procrastinating:
Here are the methods you should consider if you want to get over your procrastination:
Define your objectives:
Begin by defining your objectives. When doing so, specify your aims as precisely as possible and that they are substantial enough to allow you to make meaningful progress while still being realistically achievable.
Identifying the core of your procrastination:
Identify the core of your procrastination issue. You may accomplish this by recalling instances in which you procrastinated and then pinpointing when, how, and why you were victim to it.
Make a strategy for action:
This approach should include a variety of anti-procrastination strategies that will enable you to cope with circumstances where your procrastination problem is stopping you from accomplishing your goals.
Put your strategy into action:
As time passes, keep track of your success and adapt your strategy by changing or eliminating anti-procrastination plans based on how well they serve and constantly updating if you believe that may be beneficial.
Conclusion:
Individuals procrastinate for various reasons.
Recognizing why individuals procrastinate can make you comprehend why you procrastinate, which can help you figure out how to overcome your procrastination problem. You can also seek help from DWC. We are here to brighten your days up by providing guidance to cope with your mental health.
