Procrastination in Perpetuity

"Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day. I'll do it tomorrow."

Sound familiar? Procrastination hunts us all, waiting to strike when it matters most. It is a rotten plague. It drains society of the will to do what is right, and what is needed of us.

But what is it?

In this blog post I'll be exploring some research and my thoughts on what procrastination is and how one might be able to overcome it. Let me preface this by saying, I am by no means a professional psychologist or behavioural therapist. I do hope that my thoughts might be able to guide some readers in the right direction towards tackling their own procrastination problems, but I can't guarantee that. My words here are my own. Take them as you wish. If you really really struggle, there is no shame in seeking professional help.

On the surface procrastination appears to be quite a simple concept. Procrastination is the act of delaying a task. We try to do something else, anything else, but the task we should be doing. But if we stop for a moment and really think about what procrastination is and why it happens, it becomes a very complicated beast. I suppose the most interesting thing about it is that for the most part, we know it is bad for us. In fact, we often deliberately make ourselves feel worse for doing it. While our procrastination is ongoing we keep telling ourselves that we really should do that task, but something else always crops up. And when we finally complete the task we've been avoiding, for some time after, we tell ourselves we should've done it sooner.

A more peculiar aspect of procrastination is that it isn't always idle procrastination. There are definitely times where we might browse Netflix looking for a show to watch while never actually deciding on something. However we often find ourselves doing odd little tasks. We might clean up our kitchen or the bathroom. We might do our laundry. We might organise our hard drives and delete the things we no longer need. We might alphabetise our bookshelf. We do things that do have a positive contribution to our lives at some level, it just isn't the most important contribution we could be making.

So why do it? Why do we put ourselves through such emotional torment? What good do we get out of doing these low priority tasks that, in the moment, outweighs the benefits of doing the task we really need to do? I have spent quite a bit of time reflecting on this. I've already had a solution that allows me to commit to tasks for a while and it has been working great, but I really wanted to understand what was going on. I started reading around and came across a paper titled "Procrastination and the Priority of Short-Term Mood Regulation: Consequences for Future Self". I would encourage anyone interested in this topic to give it a read, but I'll summarise it here.

Rather than any kind of fear of failure, fear of commitment, or laziness. This paper suggests that procrastination is all about mood control. Fundamentally, we prioritise our current mood, rather than the mood of our future self. If we take cleaning the kitchen as an example, it is easy for us to see how our current mood can improve by completing that task. If there is a smell, we'll get rid of that. Our kitchen will look cleaner and tidier. We won't have to clean before we next cook something. Our friends and family can visit and we won't be embarrassed about it. Doing that will make us feel good. But if we chose to work on our essay instead, what are the benefits? We get the relief that it is done, but we also consider the stress of doing it. The uncertainty of the result, because it will take our professor some time to grade it. In the case of revising for an exam in 3 months. Why bother? We find it difficult to appreciate that learning something now can set the path of neurons that we just need to revisit at a later date, making the process easier. We also don't appreciate that it gives us time to learn topics that we may not realise are so complex. Doing our essay or revising for our exam doesn't give us an immediate mood improvement. Our potential future mood goes unappreciated because we perceive our current mood as more important.

If we take this idea in hand with causes that people commonly associate with procrastination, like the fear of failure, or fear of commitment, I find that we can reduce these to a commonality that is mood control. Say we fear failing our upcoming exam. We can delay that fear by delaying our exam revision. If we delay the exam revision then we won't struggle to understand the topic, so we won't feel stressed or scared, and we won't hold that fear of failure. For now at least.

So how do we combat this? Well, if we change our definition of procrastination such that it is: the prioritisation of tasks based on their potential for mood regulation rather than the task's importance to our future self, we can look at a few things.

Let's break them down.

1. Reduce negative mood associated with past procrastination.

To deal with this we need to accept that we have procrastinated. We need to accept that it is in the past, and that we must move on from it. We can accept it as a mistake and we now have the opportunity to learn from it. I find that it helps us to move forward if we acknowledge that this mistake is going to make us a better person. It is okay that we have done this, it may actually be a good thing that it happened, because now we can do something positive about it.

2. Reduce positive mood associated with current procrastination.

To deal with this I think we can trick ourselves into reducing the perceived positive benefits of procrastination by comparing our current and future mood potential for our intended task vs procrastination. What I mean by that is we should write down a list of the positive and negative feelings we will have if we procrastinate, and also for if we complete our task. In most cases, I believe that with a good amount of reflection time (perhaps 10-15 minutes) we can come up with a list of far more real positives for doing our task, and far more real negatives for avoiding it. By approaching this logically, I think we can convince our emotional side to see the real value in completing our task, and to see how avoiding that task is detrimental to our emotional state in the short term and long term.

3. Reduce negative mood associated with the important task.
4. Increase positive moods associated with the important task.

For me, I believe both of these points can be solved together with the technique I use to organise my day. Fundamentally I think our negative feelings toward a task often come from the potential mountain of work we see in it. Even if the task turns out to be a relatively short one, without looking more deeply into it, we aren't sure how long it will take, nor how much work it will be. So the first thing I do to start my day is write down the list of things I need to do on a piece of paper in order of priority. The fact I use a paper and pen is important. If you're going to try this, don't use an electronic list, use pen and paper! My initial list might look something like this:

• Finish implementing new contact form - JIRA ticket 692
• Implement new styling rules - JIRA ticket 701
• Stand up meeting
• Implement light theme on personal website

This list combines things I need to do for work, and also some personal objectives.

Next, I'll take my first task, and break it down into smaller chunks. "Finish JIRA ticket 692" might turn into:

• Complete send email function
• Test contact form validation
• Test contact form functionality
• Refactor & clean up code
• Retest functionality
• Submit PR

Great! Now I've got a much more granular list of things I need to complete. This makes it much easier for me to see what I need to do, and estimate how much effort is needed.

Let's tackle #4. We need to boost our positive mood related to this work so we're going to take a page from the book of gamification. Video games hook us because we generally do a lot of small tasks that "feel good" because we get rewarded. If we kill an enemy we get experience, or money, or a new weapon. If we find a secret location we get a bonus. We get achievements for doing certain tasks. We can translate this into real life. Each time we complete something from our list, we're going to reward ourselves. This could be in the form of a snack (keep it healthy!) or a 5 minute break. Those breaks could include anything from going to pet your dog, walking around the house, grabbing a drink from the kitchen, doing some short exercises, or stretching. As long as it is an enjoyable thing, something we can limit while we work, and something that gets us up away from our work space. On top of that, we're going to scribble the heck out of whichever item we completed from our list. And I mean really cross that thing out. It feels good. Rinse and repeat for the rest of the list. Don't worry about any leftover tasks at the end of your working time. Leftovers can go to the top of the list tomorrow!

By following this method you might just find yourself being more productive, and being less likely to procrastinate. It might not work for you. You might need to experiment. But give it a shot, it never hurts to try. At the very least after reading this you might have a better understanding of what procrastination really is. You might be able to figure out a solution that works for you. Or maybe you'll get round to it tomorrow.