Is procrastination friend or foe to health and creativity?

Many of us are familiar with the act of procrastinating — putting off tasks until, or past, their deadline. Why do people procrastinate? Does it only bring them disadvantages, or does it also have some benefits? We investigate in this Spotlight feature.

Procrastination typically gets a bad name as a habit that impacts productivity and holds people back from fulfilling their potential.

Some researchers define procrastination as "a form of self-regulation failure [...] characterized by the needless delay of things one intends to do despite the expectation of negative consequences."

Medical News Today spoke to some people who seem to shun procrastination, afraid that putting things off will affect their productivity and create more stress.

One person told us: "I never procrastinate because if I do even for a little while, I will never do the job. It makes it hard to prioritize, and it can be stressful, but I feel in control."

However, she also noted that never procrastinating on anything can also mean that she sometimes ends up doing unnecessary work.

So is procrastination all doom and gloom, or can it bring us certain benefits? And why do some people tend to procrastinate in the first place?

In this Spotlight feature, we look at the reasons behind procrastination, its effects on health and productivity, as well as some instances in which procrastination may prove helpful.

 

When referring to procrastination, some people may think of it as poor time management, an inability to organize and prioritize tasks, meaning that we do them at the last minute, or even past their deadline.

We may procrastinate to reduce stress in the short-term.

Increasingly, research has shown that procrastination is, in fact, a complex, often maladaptive reaction to various perceived stressors.

One study found that procrastination is positively related to psychological vulnerability. Other research pointed out that people who tend to put tasks off until the last moment may have lower self-esteem than their peers.

Moreover, Fuschia Sirois, Ph.D. — now based at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom — also found that people who procrastinate tend to have higher levels of stress and lower levels of self-compassion.

Sirois explains that "serial" procrastinators are stuck in a vicious cycle, in which the thought of previous uncompleted tasks haunts them, paralyzing them, and stopping them from completing present tasks, as well.

"The lower levels of self-compassion among chronic procrastinators [...] indicate that treating oneself harshly, with self-blame, criticism, and a general lack of kindness and acceptance after failure to act on intended actions may contribute to the stress associated with procrastinating and further compromise well-being, and potentially physical health.

-Fuschia Sirois, Ph.D.

A study published in in 2017 supports this idea. It shows a correlation between certain types of procrastination and neuroticism, a personality trait that denotes a high susceptibility to feelings of anxiety, worry, or frustration.

And last year, research whose findings appeared in the journal Psychological Science indicated that the people who are most likely to keep on procrastinating seem to have larger amygdalae than non-procrastinators.

The amygdala is a brain region that plays a crucial role in the regulation of emotions, particularly processing anxiety and fear. In their paper, the authors explain that "[r]egarding action control, this could mean that individuals with a larger amygdala volume have learned from past mistakes and evaluate future actions and their possible consequences more extensively."

"This, in turn," they add, "might lead to greater concern and hesitation, as observed in individuals with low [decision-related action orientation] scores."