Procrastination — what the research actually shows

Classic: Friday deadline, I start Wednesday evening, finish Thursday at 3am with the feeling that “next time I will start earlier for sure.” Next time the same. For years I thought it was laziness or a bad system. The research says something else — and something far more interesting.

Steel and the procrastination equation

Piers Steel (2007, Psychological Bulletin) compiled a meta-analysis of 691 procrastination studies. He proposed Temporal Motivation Theory, where motivation (and thus the probability of starting a task) is a function of four variables:

Motivation = (Expected value × Probability of success) / (Delay sensitivity × Delay)

Conclusion: you procrastinate when the reward is low or uncertain and the punishment is far away. Writing a Friday report on Monday scores badly on all four. The same writing on Thursday evening — certainty (deadline tomorrow) and delay (hours, not days) suddenly flip to the action side. Hence the “I work best at the last minute” folklore.

Sirois and Pychyl: this is not a time problem

Fuschia Sirois and Tim Pychyl (2013, Social and Personality Psychology Compass) redefined the field. They showed procrastination correlates with negative emotions toward the task (anxiety, boredom, frustration) more strongly than with impulsivity or weak planning skills. Putting things off is short-term mood regulation — I avoid the discomfort of even thinking about the task.

Practical consequence: “better timer” or “better list” apps help only on the surface, because they do not address emotion. What helps: shrinking the first step to absurd (“open the document and write one sentence”), self-compassion instead of self-flagellation, naming the emotion (“I am afraid this will be bad”).

Tice and Baumeister: short-term relief, long-term cost

Dianne Tice and Roy Baumeister (1997, Psychological Science) tracked students through a semester. Procrastinators reported lower stress and fewer illness symptoms early on than non-procrastinators. By the end of the semester — reversed. Net: more stress, more doctor visits, worse grades.

So putting things off really does bring relief — it is a loan at a high interest rate. Each “I'll do it tomorrow” is small relief today and bigger stress tomorrow. Over months the balance is clearly negative — what Tice calls “self-defeating behaviour.”

Hyperbolic discounting: why “tomorrow-me” looks better

Ainslie (1975) and Laibson (1997) showed that people value rewards not linearly but hyperbolically — very steeply at first, flat later. Hence 100 dollars today vs 110 in a week: most pick today. But 100 in a year vs 110 in a year and a week: most pick the larger.

The same works for costs. Work today (immediate cost) vs work tomorrow (delayed cost) — tomorrow looks cheaper. So “Monday me” believes “Wednesday me” will be more disciplined. Hal Hershfield (2011) showed in fMRI that the brain treats “future self” somewhat like another person. Hence the ease of dumping work on them.

What works

Out of these studies comes a coherent recipe that worked for me better than any list system:

• Shorten the delay artificially. Instead of a Friday deadline, your own deadline on Tuesday with a specific person (“I'll send you a draft Tuesday at 5pm”).
• Shrink the first step. Not “write the report,” but “open an empty document and name the file.” The rest usually follows.
• Implementation intentions. Gollwitzer (1999): “Tuesday 9 to 10 I write section 1.” A concrete when-where-what beats a vague “I have to do this.”
• Self-compassion, not self-flagellation. Sirois (2014): people practising self-compassion after a slip procrastinate less the next week, not more.
• Write letters to your future self. Hershfield showed that vividly visualising yourself in a year reduces procrastination. Sounds soft, works.

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
2. Sirois, F. M., & Pychyl, T. A. (2013). Procrastination and the priority of short-term mood regulation: Consequences for future self. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 7(2), 115–127.
3. Sirois, F. M. (2014). Procrastination and stress: Exploring the role of self-compassion. Self and Identity, 13(2), 128–145.
4. Tice, D. M., & Baumeister, R. F. (1997). Longitudinal study of procrastination, performance, stress, and health. Psychological Science, 8(6), 454–458.
5. Ainslie, G. (1975). Specious reward: A behavioral theory of impulsiveness and impulse control. Psychological Bulletin, 82(4), 463–496.
6. Laibson, D. (1997). Golden eggs and hyperbolic discounting. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 112(2), 443–478.
7. Hershfield, H. E., et al. (2011). Increasing saving behavior through age-progressed renderings of the future self. Journal of Marketing Research, 48(SPL), S23–S37.
8. Gollwitzer, P. M. (1999). Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans. American Psychologist, 54(7), 493–503.