Procrastination is one of the most common problems students suffer from. This step looks at the causes of procrastination and possible ways to resist it.

Procrastination means putting off doing tasks. A widespread and common phenomenon, it is one of the biggest difficulties we face when managing time and work. Studies clearly show that procrastination can lead to poor academic performance, negative emotions such as shame and guilt, stress and depression.

What are the causes of procrastination?

Emotional causes
Procrastinators often feel helpless. They believe they have lost control of tasks. Procrastination is a symptom of fear of failure and perfectionism. Procrastination usually occurs in situations where something is particularly important to us and our self-worth is at stake. In an academic context, it presumably helps us maintain our self-esteem by avoiding situations where we might fail.

Cognitive causes
Procrastination can also be caused by cognitive issues. These include problems with working memory, attention switching or inhibition, that is to say aspects of our brain that are responsible for planning and managing time and our physical environment.

Technology
We often use the internet, and especially social media, to distract us from our work and to procrastinate. Likewise, when we’re using the internet, avoiding procrastination is a major challenge.

What can I do to combat procrastination?

Smaller units of time
Thinking about time in smaller units makes the future feel closer and we’re more likely to start tackling a task. Do we need to complete something in three days? Then imagine we have 72 hours to do it. If a deadline is in one month’s time, think of it as 30 days.

Reminder notes
We can put physical reminders such as post-it notes in highly visible places to remind ourselves to complete a particular task. There are of course also numerous digital tools and apps that send notifications to remind us of tasks and deadlines. These are usually pre-installed calendar or to-do apps such as Tasks.

Rewards
We should reward ourselves with something nice after we have worked for a certain amount of time. For example, we can promise ourselves: “If I work for an hour, I’ll go for a walk afterwards.” Or we can watch a YouTube video as a reward for completing a task – but not before we’ve done the work.

Bits-and-pieces approach
In the same way as we break down goals into intermediate goals, we can also break down tasks into smaller segments. Instead of ignoring and putting off the entire task, we can decide to tackle part of it every day. A big piece of research will be easier to do if we research even just one or two keywords every day. A similar approach is the “Getting Things Done” method (GTD) which can be used with various apps.

Five-minute plan
This strategy consists of working on a task for five minutes and then deciding whether you want to work on it for another five minutes. This often promotes the tendency to want to stay focused on an unfinished task.

Social support
It can help to form study groups with others who are less prone to procrastination. These people can serve as positive role models and motivate one another.

Routine
Routines help to establish regular time management. For example, we can set a specific time of day to do a particular task. Or we can always decide on a plan for the day as soon as we wake up.

Change surroundings
Some places can encourage procrastination, such as a room with a television, for example. In order to focus on the tasks at hand, it helps to change our surroundings – ideally to a place with fewer distractions.

Beliefs
Another way to deal with procrastination is to question and change our beliefs and misperceptions. When we procrastinate, it’s often due to misperceptions like “There’s still plenty of time to finish the task.” Or: “I’ll feel more motivated later.” We can counteract such misperceptions with self-instruction. For instance, we can say to ourselves: “It’s never too early! If you make a start now, you can make good progress and do the task well.” Or: “If you wait until the last minute, you’ll just end up doing everything in a rush.” Or: “You may never feel in the mood to do the task. If you start now, you might be in a better mood to get things done.”