What is Procrastination?

“No idleness, no laziness, no pro- crastination; never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.”

– Phillip Stanhope

Recently, I have been reading Piers Steel’s 2007 meta-analysis on procrastination The nature of procrastination: a meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure. Steel is seen as one of the foremost authorities in the field of procrastination. His book The Procrastination Equation is a best-seller and comes highly recommended on sites such as Goodreads.

Steel’s work, specifically his meta-analysis, has been some of the most useful literature I have found on procrastination. Obviously, as a review of procrastination based literature up till that point, the paper provides an overview of not only the history of procrastination but also a breakdown of the personality types most associated with procrastination. Further to this, there are quantitative data analyses as well as equations on the statistical likelihood of procrastination to occur when certain factors are met.

Definition

Of course, there are as many definitions of procrastination as there are papers written on the subject. Likely the most used comes from the Oxford dictionary: “procrastination (noun) the action of delaying or postponing something.” While helpful in a short term analysis of the word, this definition leaves something to be desired – the human element or response to delaying action. While humans are not the only animals who engage in procrastination behaviours, rats and pigeons have both been observed ‘procrastinating’ (Zental et al, 2019), we are the only creatures to be aware of the fact that we procrastinate. This self-awareness is key. Largely animals are not observed to associate consequences to their actions in the same way that humans are, and consequence is key in procrastination. It would not have such negative associations attached to it if there were no negative consequences.

It follows that any working definition of procrastination must have the added element of consequence within it to be accurate. The Cambridge dictionary’s definition is slightly more helpful in this regard: “procrastination (noun) the act of delaying something that must be done, often because it is unpleasant or boring.” While the human element is featured in this definition, the identified cause is misleading. As a procrastinator, I can attest to the fact that I have procrastinated doing tasks that I enjoy or that will potentially have positive consequences for me in the future. I have simply favoured more immediate sources of gratification over long term goals, and that is partly why I have procrastinated. An example of this would be my choice, pre-pandemic, to going shopping with my friends rather than work on an essay I needed to write. Animals have also been known to procrastinate, not due to a task being boring, but because the gratification of one task is more immediate than with another. I will expand on the psychology behind procrastination a little later in this blog.

This brings us to Steel’s own definition of procrastination. I find it to be the most accurate of the ones I have read so far. It seems fairly obvious that a specialist in procrastination would give the best definition of the term, but it has been my experience that many definitions leave out the element of personal consequence which is so central to procrastination as a behavioural experience. Steel’s definition “..to procrastinate is to voluntarily delay an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay.” not only encompasses the consequences felt by those who procrastinate, but the voluntary element in the behaviour. Procrastinators actively choose to procrastinate. We are usually aware that we may experience negative consequences when we delay necessary action, and we do it anyway!

The History of Procrastination

Until reading Steel’s analysis I had not thought much of procrastination as having a history per se. When thinking about it, I imagined it always being a present behaviour in both humans and animals. However, I did think that it was related very closely to ideals, notions and values of time and put me in mind of a proverb I often heard as a child:

“There are three things that you cannot get back: time, a spoken word and a sped arrow.”

Although I think exploring the relationship between time and procrastination is important, I have decided to do this in a separate blog. However, I will touch on it briefly here as Steel raises some interesting points about historical literature surrounding procrastination. The first, is that most of the authors he cites in his analysis are male. Second is that barring one quote from The Bhagavad Gita, they are Western although Steel does quote Greek philosophers in his text they are largely seen as existing within the Western tradition. Third is that they all appear to be from cultures that largely have a colonial, hierarchical and/or Capitalist mentality. I would be curious to see what literature, if any, on procrastination exists from cultures that do not have these factors present in their worldview. Perhaps procrastination has always existed historically. However, I am curious to know if the standpoint that procrastination is a negative was historically ubiquitous globally?

What is clear from Steel’s analysis is that while procrastination does feature in historical writings, it becomes a specific problem to be tackled when a culture becomes more technologically advanced.

“The first actual historical analysis on procrastination was written by Milgram (1992), who argued that technically advanced societies require numerous commitments and deadlines, which gives rise to procrastination. Consequently, undeveloped agrarian societies are not so afflicted. In their book, Ferrari, Johnson, and McCown (1995) took a similar although softened stand. They contended that procrastination has existed throughout history but that it only acquired truly negative connotations with the advent of the industrial revolution (circa 1750). Before then, procrastination was viewed neutrally and could be interpreted as a wise course of (in)action.”

Steel, P (2007) The nature of procrastination: a meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure.

The term ‘technological advancement’ puts me in mind of another quote from Yuval Noah Harari on the subject of the domestication of wheat. Or rather, wheat’s domestication of Homo Sapiens. Harari posits that instead of humans being the instigators of an agricultural evolution, it was our desire for a reliable food source that allowed wheat to domesticate us.

“Within a couple of millennia, humans in many parts of the world were doing little from dawn to dusk other than taking care of wheat plants. It wasn’t easy. Wheat demanded a lot of them. Wheat didn’t like rocks and pebbles, so Sapiens broke their backs clearing fields. Wheat didn’t like sharing its space, water, and nutrients with other plants, so men and women labored long days weeding under the scorching sun. Wheat got sick, so Sapiens had to keep a watch out for worms and blight. Wheat was defenseless against other organisms that liked to eat it, from rabbits to locust swarms, so the farmers had to guard and protect it. Wheat was thirsty, so humans lugged water from springs and streams to water it. Its hunger even impelled Sapiens to collect animal feces to nourish the ground in which wheat grew.

The body of Homo sapiens had not evolved for such tasks. It was adapted to climbing apple trees and running after gazelles, not to clearing rocks and carrying water buckets. Human spines, knees, necks, and arches paid the price. Studies of ancient skeletons indicate that the transition to agriculture brought about a plethora of ailments, such as slipped disks, arthritis, and hernias. Moreover, the new agricultural tasks demanded so much time that people were forced to settle permanently next to their wheat fields. This completely changed their way of life. We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us. The word “domesticate” comes from the Latin domus, which means “house.” Who’s the one living in a house? Not the wheat. It’s the Sapiens.”
Yuval Harari

Harari, Y Sapiens

Although this is a long passage, I think it is particularly relevant, especially the sentence I have placed in bold. Prior to being a species that thrived from agriculture, humans were largely hunter-gatherers. However, this changed quite quickly once humans began to cultivate wheat, and advanced technologically in terms of creating tools to help with the process. It is possible that the cementing of the equation of time or timeliness + action = production/productivity in our collective consciousness arose because of the demands of agriculture. The need of early humans to pay closer attention than ever to time and the passing of the seasons to ensure that crops were planted and harvested on time would have been closely linked with survival. Consequently, it could have also caused them to notice, and judge, those who procrastinated. From a standpoint of survival, early farmers who procrastinated in planting their crops may have put the rest of the community in jeopardy, creating a negative assosciation with procrastination which did not previously exist. To continue Harari’s facetous tone: is it possible then that alongside domesticating humans, wheat also planted the seeds for the concept of procrastination?

Psychology behind procrastination

Seen from a historical standpoint then, procrastination is not only behaviour that has the potential to cause unhappiness for the individual, it can potentially have disastrous effects on a group. Understanding the psychology behind procrastination is complex, with multiple factors contributing to the type of person who procrastinates but also the way that they procrastinate. Steel points out that prior to his undertaking of the research, the primary culprit in procrastination psychology was thought to be a combination of neurosis and perfectionism. However, until Steel’s work, the main quantitative analysis of procrastination had been done by behavioural psychologists, who used their clients as test subjects. The qualities of neurosis and perfectionism being what they are, the majority of procrastinating clients had self-referred, the result was a chicken and egg scenario of self-selection. Procrastination was seen as a perfectionist issue because only perfectionists had been studied regarding procrastination.

Steel posits that there are four main components which factor into procrastination behaviours:

1. Genetics – studies conducted on fraternal and identical twins show that identical twins are more likely to procrastinate in the same ways and to the same degrees than fraternal twins are. This is despite the fraternal twins experiencing the same environmental factors such as growing up in the same household etc. (Arvey et.al, 2003)
2. Timing – if the procrastinator does not see the task as being in immediate need of attention, they are more likely to put it off until it is. An example of this would be our collective tendency to save inadequately for retirement until it is too late. (O’Donoghue & Rabin 1999)
3. Task aversion – how enjoyable the task is or is not. This is largely predictable but also comparative. E.g. if given the choice most of us would rather do something that we find easy that we also enjoy over something we found harder but also enjoy. (Steel 2007)
4. Personality type – there are 5 personality traits that have a direct correlation to people’s tendency to procrastinate: neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness (how open the person is to new experiences), intelligence/aptitude, conscientiousness.

Steel expands on these traits further:

Procrastination, personality and executive function

From what I have read so far, there appears to be a correlation between the type of procrastination behaviour, personality traits associated with procrastination and specific executive functions or dysfunction. I have tried many times to create a graph that represents these accurately but put simply every time I started I felt like I was missing something. Instead, below are two graphs I have found helpful in demonstrating the associations between executive functions and procrastination behaviours.

Most of these are about the behaviours of children, specifically children who experience ADHD or who have other specific learning difficulties. However, as Paula Moraine notes in her book Everyday Executive Functions: The Attention Fix

“Executive functions develop slowly, reaching maturity only after nearly three decades. This means that our children, teenagers, and young adults are all in a maturing process, and so at any given moment are on a continuum of executive function development and maturity. So, knowing how often our expectations are out-of-sync with the reality, do we have the right understanding or attitude regarding the development and education of behaviours that are central to executive function? Do we explicitly teach children the skills needed to develop their executive functions in a systematic way?”
Paula Moraine

Moraine,P. Everyday Executive Functions: The Attention Fix. (2012)

From this we can surmise that procrastination and other executive dysfunction behaviours largely relate to a nature over nurture paradox. Particularly with regards to students who are neurodivergent or have disabilities, it is patently ridiculous to blame them for their procrastination behaviours when, as Moraine states, they are frequently given no tools to build their executive functioning skills as children. Consequently, when they reach HE at young adulthood and beyond, learners are still struggling to navigate the executive function soup with little guidance or support. This is particularly relevant if their disabilities are undiagnosed, or if they are wary of teachers due to negative experiences in the past.

The ‘pull yourself up by the bootstraps’ narrative which is pervasive in conversations around procrastination, does not help with this. We can look to works such as Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People for a place to lay some of the blame in this regard. Although the science behind Covey’s work may have been cutting edge at the time, cognitive psychology and neuroscience can now provide a better working understanding of how the brain functions. Put simply, we are hardwired for procrastination. Our limbic system, or ‘lizard brains’ are some of the oldest and deepest rooted parts of the brain. This system is largely responsible for our first or initial response to things and for our pleasure/pain receptors. Largely, humans have evolved to prioritise immediate needs and pleasures (making a sandwich, playing video games) over distant or long-term goals and pleasures (long-form projects, saving for retirement). (Pycyl 2010) & (Steel 2007).

“We have a brain that is selected for preferring immediate reward. Procrastination is the present self saying I would rather feel good now. So we delay engagement even though it’s going to bite us on the butt.”
Dr Tim Pychyl

Pychyl, T The Procrastinator’s Digest: A Concise Guide to Solving the Procrastination Puzzle. (2010)

With this in mind, Covey’s habits seem counterintuitive. For example, habit number 3 “put first things first” overlooks human hardwiring – we are immediate creatures. Additionally, multiple studies have found that the limbic systems of procrastinators are more active than those who do not procrastinate and that their reward pathways are more developed. This data was also concurrent with incidences of addictive personality traits, suggesting a link between addiction, procrastination and executive dysfunction (Friden, 2020).

“…people tend to favor tasks that are more pleasant in the short term, even if they are detrimental to themselves in the long term. Second, the more intrinsically unpleasant a task is, the more likely people are to avoid doing it.”
Piers Steel

Steel,P. The Nature of Procrastination: A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review of Quintessential Self-Regulatory Failure (2007)

“When students were asked how much they would procrastinate under various conditions, they indicated that their procrastination would diminish as the task neared completion or as a deadline approached (Schouwenburg & Groenewoud, 2001; Strongman & Burt, 2000).”
Piers Steel

(Schouwenburg & Groenewoud, 2001; Strongman & Burt, 2000) in Steel,P. The Nature of Procrastination: A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review of Quintessential Self-Regulatory Failure (2007)

Further to this, the “first things first” adage overlooks the fact that priorities are different for different people. Students, in particular, are juggling social lives, new experiences, study, work, families etc. Learners who experience executive dysfunction already have more difficulty with time and task management than students who do not, the additional factors of stress, fatigue and general overwhelm add up to an increased likelihood that those students will procrastinate and deal with the most immediate issue/ priority for them at the time.

Cognition VS Application

The overall difficulty most people who procrastinate have is not necessarily a problem with cognition but with application of principles (Steel 2007). Again, this is something that procrastinators have in common with other people who experience self-regulation failure or executive dysfunction (Friden 2020). In an academic context, students very rarely procrastinate because they do not understand what they have been taught, often they have an excellent grasp of the subject. They may need longer to process that knowledge overall and this is when procrastination behaviours or displacement activity kick in. In this time, procrastination can become positive, allowing the student time to cogitate over what they have learned while they immediately focus on something mundane like the washing up. Although this is usually labelled as a displacement activity, it is actually allowing the student time to process particularly if the task set or the information absorbed feels overwhelming or ‘scary’.

In the case of those who experience executive dysfunction, there is very often a gap between knowledge acquired and the application of that knowledge to a specific task or test (Moraine 2012). For example, a student who procrastinates may read literature that gives them multiple tools and techniques to help their procrastination behaviour and understand it very well. However, the skills that allow them to understand how those techniques can be applied to their lives or work are underdeveloped. What results is a lot of self-awareness, frustration and low self-esteem with very little practical change. Both Steel and Moraine outline that the way students feel about themselves has a direct impact on their ability to do the work in the first place. If this is the case, educators labelling procrastinating students as ‘lazy’ or ‘stupid’ is not only unkind, it compounds the issue.

The Procrastination Equation

In his meta-analysis, Steel develops an equation for understanding procrastination which subsequently formed the basis of his 2012 book The Procrastination Equation.

Motivation = How motivated you are to do the task. The opposite of procrastination
Value = How much you enjoy doing the task/how much you’ll enjoy the reward from completing the task.
Expectancy = How much you expect to succeed at doing the task/ how quickly you expect to acquire the reward.
Impulsiveness = How likely you are to be distracted and how good you are at staying focused. This could fluctuate depending on environmental factors such as social media or if you have young children. Or it could vary as a result of personality, energy levels, genetics, mental health etc.
Delay = The further away you are from the tasks’ reward or completion, the lower the motivation.

Higher value and higher expectancy increase your motivation; higher impulsiveness or more delay lowers it. For example, a student may be more motivated to go to an event rather than start a project with a deadline 6 weeks away because they expect to receive a more imminent reward from socialising.

Steel’s methodology provides a more humane method of combatting procrastination than other, older motivation methodologies. Assuming that you cannot change the delay involved in a task, e.g. deadlines assigned by tutors, Steel outlines three ways of fighting procrastination:

• Increase the expectancy of success.
• Increase the task’s value.
• Decrease your impulsiveness.

Steel then outlines multiple ways procrastinators can increase the above. I will write more about these and how they relate to executive functions in a separate blog. What I think is interesting about all of them though, is that they tap into the reward systems that are so developed in the procrastinating brain, and they do not rely on shaming tactics or other pejorative methods in order to motivate people into completing tasks. Despite these tactics being presented as commonplace solutions to the problem of procrastination, research suggests that negative motivation is not half so successful as positive motivation. Put simply, most beings on this planet are far more motivated by the prospect of the carrot than they are by the prospect of the stick.

Bibliography

Zentall, T.R., Peng, D., House, D. et al. (2020) Animal procrastination: Pigeons choose to defer experiencing an aversive gap or a peck requirement. Learn Behav 48, 246–253 . https://doi.org/10.3758/s13420-019-00397-2

Arvey, R. D., Rotundo, M., Johnson, W., & McGue, M. (2003, . The determinants of leadership: The role of genetics and personality. Paper presented at the 18th Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Orlando, FL.

Harari, Yuval. (2015). Sapiens. Harper, New York.

O’Donoghue, T., & Rabin, M. (1999). Incentives for procrastinators. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 114, 769–816.

Executive function image 1: https://www.learningsuccessblog.com/8-key-executive-functions-infograph

Executive function image 2:https://ldaamerica.org/info/the-reading-brain-executive-function-hard-at-work/

Moraine,P. (2012) Helping Students Take Control of Everyday Executive Functions: The Attention Fix, ppg 16. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London.

Pychyl, T., 2010. The Procrastinator’s Digest: A Concise Guide to Solving the Procrastination Puzzle. . Canada: Howling Pines Publishers.

Covey, S., 1989. The 7 habits of highly effective people. Simon & Schuster: New York.

Fridén, I. (2020) Procrastination as a form of Self-regulation Failure: A review of the cognitive and neural underpinnings. [online] Available at:
<https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1446687/FULLTEXT01.pdf>

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:10.1037/0033-2909.133.1.65

Steel, P. (2012). The Procrastination Equation. Murdoch Books, Sydney.

Procrastination equation image source: https://commoncog.com/blog/a-user-review-of-the-procrastination-equation/

Steel, P. & Klingsieck, B. K (2016) ‘Academic Procrastination: Psychological Antecedents Revisited’, Australian Psychologist 51, 36–46, doi:10.1111/ap.12173