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On top of the lapse in concentration many people have been struggling with while working from home, you might have found yourself confronted with a similarly frustrating issue – procrastination.
As anyone who has ever been angry at themselves for procrastinating will know, it’s a phenomenon that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Even when you know a task is important or have a deadline looming over you, procrastination has the ability to sneak up and rob you of your motivation and focus.
It’s almost like having a little devil on your shoulder, just waiting to strike at the most inconvenient of times.
For many people, working from home has made it harder than ever to block out this devil. Not only are there more opportunities to procrastinate when working in a home environment, but without the physical ‘work’ atmosphere of the office to keep you on track, it’s much easier to slip into procrastination mode when presented with a particularly stressful or overwhelming task.
This isn’t necessarily a problem if it happens every so often – after all, we all have those days where concentration escapes us. But when we begin to find ourselves procrastinating on a regular basis, it can have wide-scale implications for not only our career, but our mental health.
Why? Because procrastination can’t be explained by poor time-management or a lack of motivation – in fact, it’s got a lot to do with how we manage our emotions.
“Procrastination is rarely, if ever, due to laziness, incompetence or lack of pride in our work – in fact, it’s usually the opposite,” explains Harley Street psychologist Dr Meg Arroll. “I work with many clients who have mental roadblocks which lead to delaying an inevitable task, and usually this stems from fears of failure, anxiety and maladaptive perfectionism.
“Put simply, procrastination is often because we care about a task and/or the outcome of that task too much, rather than too little.”
This idea of procrastination as a way for us to handle difficult emotions isn’t anything new, despite the common assumption that procrastination is a sign of laziness. In fact, it’s an explanation which has been scientifically proven – according to a 2013 study by psychology professors Dr. Tim Pychyl and Dr. Fuschia Sirios, procrastination is a type of coping mechanism we use for “short-term mood repair”.
However, the issue with using procrastination as a coping mechanism is that, while putting something off may boost our mood in the short-term, we still have to face those difficult emotions at a later date – alongside all of the additional problems created by procrastination.
It’s a scenario which psychologists describe as a conflict between our present and future selves – even though we know that future us will pay for our actions, the immediate emotional boost we get as a result of putting something off seems worth it in that moment.
In reality, that short-term emotional boost is rarely ever worth it – in fact, it can have a detrimental impact on our overall mental health. Not only can procrastination exacerbate our stress levels by leaving us with more to do in a shorter period of time, it has also been shown to cause feelings of low self-esteem, make us more vulnerable to anxiety and depression and increase general psychological distress.
With this in mind, it’s clear that managing our impulse to procrastinate is crucial, especially while working from home. Although it may seem like the smart choice in the moment, we need to continue to remind ourselves that procrastination will make us feel worse in the long-run – and that, even though the task in front of us may trigger feelings of anxiety or self-doubt, it’s worth confronting those emotions rather than pushing them away for a couple of hours.
So, alongside being more mindful about the impact procrastination can have on our mental health, what else can we do to avoid this harmful behaviour? To find out more, we asked Dr Arroll to share her top tips for avoiding procrastination – here’s what she had to say.
“Chunk work by time, not task”
Instead of setting yourself unrealistic expectations like “I’m going to get this whole project done this morning,” start out by breaking the work into bite-sized chunks.
“Chunk work by time, not task,” Dr Arroll explains. “Set an alarm for 15 minutes – our concentration only lasts for 20 minutes so the time chunk should be less than this – and work only on the task for this amount of time. Then take a break, no matter where you are in the job, for five minutes.
“Try it – you’ll be surprised how long 15 minutes can seem and also how much you can get done in this time if all other distractions are put aside (it’s a good idea to turn off your phone and close your browser and doors).
“Schedule in a task you hate”
It may sound counter-intuitive, but if you’re struggling to get started on the task in front of you, Dr Arroll recommends scheduling in a project that you find boring for after you’ve finished.
“Find a task that you hate or are even more fearful of and schedule this in,” she says. “It’s amazing how easy it is to get on with something that you’ve been putting off for ages when there’s something even more tedious on the horizon – it’s all relative.”
“Place a wager on it”
Although it’s important to reward yourself for making progress, if you want a powerful motivator for a particularly tricky task, get someone else to withhold the reward until the task is done.
“Place a wager on it – research shows loss aversion is indeed a powerful motivator,” Dr Arroll explains. “Don’t just make the bet with yourself – it must be placed with someone who will keep you to it.
“Our minds are clever and will ignore this forced accountability if it’s not actually serious.”
For more helpful tips and tricks on how to stop procrastinating, you can check out Stylist’s guide here.