Procrastination: 7 reasons why you put everything off until tomorrow
2 October 2014
Read by 2890 persons
Procrastination, or the art of putting things off until later. A flaw that has become a national sport, in which we all excel more or less, whether young, old, big or small. Because ultimately that's what procrastination is: social fabric in the form of chips-beer-sausage, like a good evening of football.
Despite its friendly side, procrastination is a real problem for professionals. In short, it spoils life and traps us in a paradox: constantly thinking about what we should do, without finding the strength to resolve it. How to get out of it? Perhaps by becoming aware of the roots of this evil.
No, laziness is not the only answer and here are 7 reasons to convince you. Hoping that you will read to the end of the article... if you have the strength.
1. Because there is always something to distract you
Not only does procrastination make us fatter, dumber and more helpless, but it's gaining ground. This is roughly the conclusion of Piers Steel, a Canadian psychologist, who conducted a ten-year investigation on the subject.
According to Piers Steel, in 1978, only 5% of Americans said they were procrastinators. Today, they are close to 30%.
But what is the reason for such an explosion of putting things off until later? For the psychologist, the reason is simple. It takes the form of an iPad, a TV, a game console, a DVD player, it depends on the case. In short, technology distracts us and prevents us from being efficient.
Throw away your TV!
2. Because some things are not that important
As English blogger Paul Graham reminds us, there are two types of procrastination: bad and good.
What do you mean, good? According to him, procrastination can be good if it makes us put off small, unimportant tasks in favor of a more important task. Imagine. You are a researcher, you are about to discover a revolutionary vaccine against cavities, but something is on your mind: you forgot to empty the cat's litter box, which tends to be delicate about such things.
Well, with procrastination, the cat's litter box will wait. And goodbye cavities.
To put it simply, according to Paul Graham, most of the things we put off are unimportant. A way of seeing the glass half full.
"These are tasks that will never be mentioned in your obituary," he explains. "At the moment, it's difficult to know what is most important, but there are a whole series of tasks that can easily be put aside: shaving, doing laundry, cleaning, writing thank-you notes."
And Paul Graham adds that the people who know how to put these small tasks off are the ones who succeed the best.
3. Because you think small things can be done in a minute
As we have seen, the tasks we put off are often the least important. For this reason, we tend to think that they will not take long to complete, and therefore that we will be able to take care of them at the last moment.
The problem is that we are all very bad at estimating durations, according to a study conducted by the US Department of Labor.
Our friends across the Atlantic call this "planning error", the reason why we end up not doing the small jobs at all because WE SIMPLY DON'T HAVE THE TIME ANYMORE!
4. Because you are simply born that way
According to a study published in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, procrastinators, a tribe that has new members every day (see No. 1), would probably also be prone to problems with self-control, training and concentration.
Researchers go even further: according to them, these deficiencies would be due to differences in brain structure (particularly in the prefrontal cortex). There you go, fellow procrastinators, now you have an excuse for not clearing your living room of the 3724 bottle corpses littering the floor: you are not made like others.
5. Because you are a confirmed pleasure-seeker
It's 8 pm. You are on your sofa with the apple of your eye and you decide to watch a movie. The choice is yours, a mediocre comedy that will allow you to empty your jar of Nutella while laughing your head off, or a Palme d'Or winner, a bit slow, a bit intellectual on the edges, and which is good to mention at dinners.
For the Onlinecolleges website, the choice is quickly made: it's the cheesy, even a bit rubbish, big thing that will win your favor whatever happens. And the masterpiece in black and white, a small pearl of sociological study tinged with a certain insolence, will, inevitably, be relegated to oblivion. Why? Because, even when it comes to a pleasant activity like watching a movie, we want to take pleasure im-me-di-ate-ly.
The intellectual film requires a certain amount of concentration and adaptation, an effort that we are often not ready to make, in the evening, on the sofa, with a large jar of Nutella. An effort we are simply not ready to make.
6. Because you may lack a little self-confidence
Researchers at DePaul University in Chicago have found links between procrastination and lack of confidence.
A logical link, in short: people with the least self-confidence would tend to be defeatist, and therefore to put off their tasks for fear of failing. Joseph Ferrari, who led the study, explains:
"This is not about poor time management. Telling a chronic procrastinator to do something is a bit like asking a depressed person to be cheerful."
Another study, this time English, published in the British Journal of Educational Psychology, showed that the more anxious a student was about their exams, the more likely they were to postpone their revision, and therefore to enter a vicious circle: putting off the hardest things until later and not having enough time to complete them.
In short, follow this adage from Jennifer Lopez: "It's by having self-confidence that one becomes sexy."
7. Because you rely too much on others
This is a bit of the eternal debate between the man who builds his happiness by himself and the one who needs others.
We all believe that having a third person to support us in our projects would help us work, lose weight, write our autobiography... Nothing of the sort, a 2011 study, published in the Wall Street Journal, shows that this person would rather tend to slow us down in our progress.
The reason? According to our researchers, the fact of morally relying on someone else would prevent us from moving forward and would also prevent us from feeling guilty if we do nothing. "It's okay, you'll get there soon", "The battle is lost, not the war", repeat the friends. So, appeased by this kind of spiritual balm, we do nothing. And, in the end, the war is lost. That's clever.
8. Uh...
We could have written an eighth part but we preferred to put it off until another time. We're joking, actually, we preferred to put together a little slideshow on the best ways to fight procrastination: The rest of the article.
Matthieu Carlier.
Huffingtonpost.fr
Published April 25, 2013.
Posted online October 2, 2014.
Despite its friendly side, procrastination is a real problem for professionals. In short, it spoils life and traps us in a paradox: constantly thinking about what we should do, without finding the strength to resolve it. How to get out of it? Perhaps by becoming aware of the roots of this evil.
No, laziness is not the only answer and here are 7 reasons to convince you. Hoping that you will read to the end of the article... if you have the strength.
1. Because there is always something to distract you
Not only does procrastination make us fatter, dumber and more helpless, but it's gaining ground. This is roughly the conclusion of Piers Steel, a Canadian psychologist, who conducted a ten-year investigation on the subject.
According to Piers Steel, in 1978, only 5% of Americans said they were procrastinators. Today, they are close to 30%.
But what is the reason for such an explosion of putting things off until later? For the psychologist, the reason is simple. It takes the form of an iPad, a TV, a game console, a DVD player, it depends on the case. In short, technology distracts us and prevents us from being efficient.
Throw away your TV!
2. Because some things are not that important
As English blogger Paul Graham reminds us, there are two types of procrastination: bad and good.
What do you mean, good? According to him, procrastination can be good if it makes us put off small, unimportant tasks in favor of a more important task. Imagine. You are a researcher, you are about to discover a revolutionary vaccine against cavities, but something is on your mind: you forgot to empty the cat's litter box, which tends to be delicate about such things.
Well, with procrastination, the cat's litter box will wait. And goodbye cavities.
To put it simply, according to Paul Graham, most of the things we put off are unimportant. A way of seeing the glass half full.
"These are tasks that will never be mentioned in your obituary," he explains. "At the moment, it's difficult to know what is most important, but there are a whole series of tasks that can easily be put aside: shaving, doing laundry, cleaning, writing thank-you notes."
And Paul Graham adds that the people who know how to put these small tasks off are the ones who succeed the best.
3. Because you think small things can be done in a minute
As we have seen, the tasks we put off are often the least important. For this reason, we tend to think that they will not take long to complete, and therefore that we will be able to take care of them at the last moment.
The problem is that we are all very bad at estimating durations, according to a study conducted by the US Department of Labor.
Our friends across the Atlantic call this "planning error", the reason why we end up not doing the small jobs at all because WE SIMPLY DON'T HAVE THE TIME ANYMORE!
4. Because you are simply born that way
According to a study published in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, procrastinators, a tribe that has new members every day (see No. 1), would probably also be prone to problems with self-control, training and concentration.
Researchers go even further: according to them, these deficiencies would be due to differences in brain structure (particularly in the prefrontal cortex). There you go, fellow procrastinators, now you have an excuse for not clearing your living room of the 3724 bottle corpses littering the floor: you are not made like others.
5. Because you are a confirmed pleasure-seeker
It's 8 pm. You are on your sofa with the apple of your eye and you decide to watch a movie. The choice is yours, a mediocre comedy that will allow you to empty your jar of Nutella while laughing your head off, or a Palme d'Or winner, a bit slow, a bit intellectual on the edges, and which is good to mention at dinners.
For the Onlinecolleges website, the choice is quickly made: it's the cheesy, even a bit rubbish, big thing that will win your favor whatever happens. And the masterpiece in black and white, a small pearl of sociological study tinged with a certain insolence, will, inevitably, be relegated to oblivion. Why? Because, even when it comes to a pleasant activity like watching a movie, we want to take pleasure im-me-di-ate-ly.
The intellectual film requires a certain amount of concentration and adaptation, an effort that we are often not ready to make, in the evening, on the sofa, with a large jar of Nutella. An effort we are simply not ready to make.
6. Because you may lack a little self-confidence
Researchers at DePaul University in Chicago have found links between procrastination and lack of confidence.
A logical link, in short: people with the least self-confidence would tend to be defeatist, and therefore to put off their tasks for fear of failing. Joseph Ferrari, who led the study, explains:
"This is not about poor time management. Telling a chronic procrastinator to do something is a bit like asking a depressed person to be cheerful."
Another study, this time English, published in the British Journal of Educational Psychology, showed that the more anxious a student was about their exams, the more likely they were to postpone their revision, and therefore to enter a vicious circle: putting off the hardest things until later and not having enough time to complete them.
In short, follow this adage from Jennifer Lopez: "It's by having self-confidence that one becomes sexy."
7. Because you rely too much on others
This is a bit of the eternal debate between the man who builds his happiness by himself and the one who needs others.
We all believe that having a third person to support us in our projects would help us work, lose weight, write our autobiography... Nothing of the sort, a 2011 study, published in the Wall Street Journal, shows that this person would rather tend to slow us down in our progress.
The reason? According to our researchers, the fact of morally relying on someone else would prevent us from moving forward and would also prevent us from feeling guilty if we do nothing. "It's okay, you'll get there soon", "The battle is lost, not the war", repeat the friends. So, appeased by this kind of spiritual balm, we do nothing. And, in the end, the war is lost. That's clever.
8. Uh...
We could have written an eighth part but we preferred to put it off until another time. We're joking, actually, we preferred to put together a little slideshow on the best ways to fight procrastination: The rest of the article.
Matthieu Carlier.
Huffingtonpost.fr
Published April 25, 2013.
Posted online October 2, 2014.
