Why do now what you can put off until after you check Facebook, watch YouTube, text friends and catch a movie?
Procrastination is epidemic. Humans have always been drawn to short-term pleasure over long-term reward, but now we face a superabundance of temptations, says Piers Steel, psychology professor at the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary.
Steel, 43, author of The Procrastination Equation, has analyzed why we habitually put things off, and he’s researched ways we can train ourselves to choose today over mañana.
Steel spoke to the Star about motivational oomph — like Victor Hugo getting naked — and how to keep your New Year’s resolutions.
What’s the difference between laziness and procrastination?
The two often get confused. For procrastination, you honestly intended to do the work. Not caring about the work in the first place, that’s laziness.
Modern life, you say, has created a pandemic of procrastinating. How so? What are the worst temptations?
We’ve always tended to go for the short-term pleasure instead of something more rewarding but longer term. So we do a lot of things like Facebook or video snacking at the cost of long-term and larger goals. What predicts procrastination is not just who you are, but also your environment — the amount of temptation around you. We now live in a world supersaturated with powerful short-term temptations. Our environment has become motivationally toxic.
Around the world, the biggest temptation is still television. But then there’s also the Internet with its capacity to subsume all TV programming. By contrast, in 1911 there was talk of the lure of the hammock.
Are we hard-wired to put things off?
We are hard-wired to value the short-term more than the long-term. Inordinately so. It fit perfectly in a hunter-gatherer society where food rots in a day or so. The short-term was all you could control. Today, on a societal level, we have such environmental and financial problems, but they are difficult to address because they are long-term. As a species we don’t do long-term well. Some people, of course, are less impulsive than others. But we all tend to be more impulsive than we need to be, considering the world we live in.
I’m more creative under pressure. What do you say to that?
It’s a common myth. It’s a procrastinator trying to justify doing less work on a project. A lot of creativity requires an incubation period. That means you do the task, take it as far as you can, then put it away for awhile. When you come back to it, you see new connections.
At 3 a.m., the night before a project is due, no one is at their peak creativity. Dozens of studies have confirmed this.
Psychologically, why do we procrastinate?
There are three pieces to it. First, your confidence in your ability to finish the task. The less confident you are, the harder it is to get motivated. Second, whether the task feels rewarding. If it’s boring, your mind slides right off it. Third, when the rewards aren’t experienced until the task is finished. Do you like writing or having written? Having written is rewarding, not writing.
Do you have tips on how to kick the habit? Let’s say low confidence is the reason you’re putting something off.
All three reasons could be operating at the same time, or just one or two. If it’s low confidence, we take our cues about what’s possible by seeing what others do. Inspiration and confidence tend to be contagious. If you hang out with people who are positive and doing things, it’s easier to be infected.
What if you hate the task, or you see no value in it? Just grin and bear it?
You can artificially pack some rewards for yourself at the end for completing the work. Or you can mentally reframe it. You don’t like cleaning your house, but you like socializing with friends. So you reframe it: I want an inviting place for my friends. You add extra motivational oomph from seeing the task from a better angle.
What if you procrastinate for the third reason, that the rewards are long-term, not immediate?
There are two fun approaches. First, precommitment: You do something now to prevent yourself from doing otherwise later. For instance, Victor Hugo stripped naked and gave all his clothes to his valet to make himself write. The valet would return with the clothes only at an appointed hour.
Some people like Clocky, an alarm clock on wheels, which prevents you from turning off the alarm or hitting the snooze button. As soon as the alarm goes off, Clocky scoots off the table, runs around the room and tries to hide under the bed, with the alarm still ringing.
The idea is to prevent temptations. Turn off and put away the cellphones and other electronics.
The other approach is to imagine the very worst outcome. You put off doing the report until the last minute. But you fall sick and can’t do it. At the office, you are whisked in front of a podium to present your report. Everyone in the packed room is waiting for your findings. The company president is there. You have nothing. You look like a buffoon. On his cellphone, a colleague makes a video of you and posts it on YouTube.
The idea is that bad things can happen from delay. Every time we procrastinate, we’re rolling the dice.
New Year’s — all those nagging resolutions. Any advice for how procrastinators can stay true to their promises?
Expect setbacks and have a contingency plan. Your resolution is to go to the gym more often. What do you do when you stop going? What’s the rip chord you pull to get yourself back to the gym?
Also break the resolution down into something concrete, not abstract. Instead of “I want to eat healthy,” you resolve: “I want to eat salads for meals five times a week.” The more real and concrete it is, the more likely you are to follow through.
Are you a procrastinator? What’s your weakness?
I was a procrastinator and it caused me a lot of frustrations. I feel like an infomercial saying this. For me, it was video games. I liked the real-time feedback and sense of accomplishment.
I was doing good work, but not consistently good. Then I found something I loved, the topic of procrastination. It was natural to apply different attempts and techniques to my own life. A lot of people call research “me search” — that was the case here.
How late were you with this book?
I was on time. Strictly speaking, they gave me a year to write it and I took two.
Sounds like procrastination.
Okay – you write your first book that fast. Not all delays are procrastination. Some are purposeful.
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