Treat procrastination as a way to avoid discomfort, not as a sign of laziness or lack of effort
Grade AMedium benefitTimeFreeLittle timeSome willpower
How unpleasant the task is, whether you feel you can do it, how easily something right in front of you pulls you away, and how strong your self-control is have the strongest link with procrastination. A nervous, easily upset personality, and a taste for thrills, have only a weak link. So you can first make the task less unpleasant and make the first step smaller, instead of only scolding yourself and then forcing it.
- Cost
- No cost at all. The only change needed is in how you judge the situation: first ask yourself where the discomfort lies, then figure out how to address it.
- Benefit
- A meta-analysis that included 691 correlation coefficients found several factors with a strong, consistent link to procrastination: how aversive the task is, how much time remains until the deadline, self-efficacy (the belief in one’s ability to succeed), impulsivity, and conscientiousness — including self-control, susceptibility to distraction, organization skills, and achievement motivation. In contrast, neuroticism, rebelliousness, and sensation-seeking show only very weak connections to procrastination. The authors explain these results using time motivation theory: the immediate appeal of a task drops rapidly as the expected reward is pushed further into the future.
- Notes
- This guideline only provides general direction rather than specific actionable steps, so its overall benefit is rated as moderate — no quantitative estimate of time saved has been calculated. Concrete actions are outlined in item 1 of this section (which specifies exact times, locations, and concrete actions to take), item 7 (which advises breaking large tasks into smaller sub-tasks), and item 8 (which recommends setting a deadline even for tasks without any external deadline). Keep in mind this is a summary of correlational research, so it should not be interpreted as evidence of direct causal relationships.
Sources · 1
- Steel P (2007). The nature of procrastination: a meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure. Psychological Bulletin, 133(1), 65–94. doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.133.1.65