Procrastination or the "I’ll do it tomorrow" syndrome: what is it and how to prevent it?

Some people leave everything for tomorrow. But what are the consequences of this attitude?

There is a common phenomenon that, although easily recognizable, is difficult to explain. It is procrastinationa curious word that refers only to the habit of procrastinating without justification. habit of postponing without valid justification activities or obligations that have to be attended to..

One of the characteristics of this type of procrastination, moreover, is the fact that we intend to perform the task sooner or later, since we somehow know that its completion is something we have to go through.

What is Procrastination?

However, it is not simply the typical behavior we might associate with a roguish or hedonistic person. In a past survey of 1,347 adults of various nationalities, a quarter of them report a strong tendency to procrastinate, regardless of gender or culture.

Another study indicates that each employee spends around one hour and twenty minutes a day procrastinating on his or her primary taskwith a consequent opportunity cost to the organization. In addition, about 32% of college students may have serious problems with procrastination, according to the Patterns of Academic Procrastination study. On the other hand, psychologist Piers Steel argues in his publication The Procrastination Equation that, where it is present, this tendency works against one's well-being in a broad sense: it contributes to poorer health and lower salaries.

In addition, it can lead to compulsive or very intense attitudes that serve to evade the main responsibility: eating too much, playing video games, etc.

A problem without a simple solution

However, since procrastination can be so problematic... why do we continue to allow it to happen? why do we continue to allow it to happen? In reality, it is difficult to justify postponing a necessary task, as long as we recognize it as such. We experience the strange notion of having entered into the constant cycle of "better tomorrow", justifying this decision once it has already been taken by an instance superior to our consciousness..

In this way, a deeply irrational and automatic mechanism is rationalized by covering it with a coating of words and justifications à la carte. What is the key that triggers this automatic mechanism of eternal delays? Piers Steel Piers Steel may have found it.

According to their research, there is a clear relationship between the tendency to delay tasks and impulsivity. In these studies, the presence or absence of the capacity for self-regulationthat is, the ability to control oneself in favor of future rewards, explained 70% of cases of procrastination.

There was evidence of a direct relationship between levels of impulsivity and the tendency to procrastinate. In more recent research, Steel has found grounds to support the hypothesis that impulsivity and this annoying tendency have the same genetic basis. If impulsivity involves difficulties in avoiding behaviors that don't suit, procrastination involves difficulties in acting on behaviors that do suit: they are practically part of the same phenomenon; a failure to follow the system of behaviors that lead to long-term goals.

What to do about it?

Based on this explanation of the mechanics of task procrastination, we can apply the same types of corrective procedures that we use with cases of impulsivity. In this case, the solution is to create work strategies that transform diffuse, general and distant goals into small, very concrete objectives that have to be accomplished immediately. that have to be achieved immediately.

In short, it is necessary to break up the goals that are not very limited and have little capacity to attract us in the face of other distracting stimuli, into very well determined activities that urgently demand our attention and that take us, one by one, from the here and now to the achievement of the final objective.

1. Small commitments

For example, in the case of having to write a 20-page paper, a good way to do this is to commit to writing one page before seven o'clock in the evening. If we find it difficult to fulfill these small commitments, we will make them even smaller and more concrete, so that we see their resolution as something perfectly possible, for example, we can write 15 lines before two hours have passed. The point is to bring closer in time, and at the same time make less uncomfortable, the pressure that we would suffer more and more as the days go by if we had not put our hands to work.

2. Avoid distracting elements

Another good tactic that can be combined with the first one in making it difficult for ourselves to access distractionsturn off the television that plays in the background, put away the smartphoneetc. We can weigh first of all which elements are those that can take us away from the target and do something to prevent them from tempting us too much. In a reasonable and moderate way, this also applies to the people around us.

In short, we have to try to that reason takes the reins over our short-term preferences by drawing a very clear roadmap. drawing a very clear road map. Create a kind of cognitive rails that will help us to achieve what we set out to do.