What Procrastination Is Linked To

What the research found

Psychologist Piers Steel (2007) gathered 691 correlations from studies on procrastination and analysed them together in a meta-analysis. Five factors stood out as most strongly linked to putting things off.

• Task aversiveness. Tasks that feel boring, unpleasant or hard are delayed more.
• Distance to the deadline. The further away the reward or consequence, the easier it is to postpone.
• Self-efficacy. People who doubt they can do the task procrastinate more.
• Impulsiveness. People who are easily pulled toward whatever is in front of them procrastinate more.
• Conscientiousness. People who tend to plan and follow through procrastinate less.

Procrastination is often dismissed as laziness, but the research points to a combination of task features (unpleasantness, distance) and personal traits (confidence, impulsiveness, planfulness).

How to read it

This is a summary of correlations, not an experiment showing that changing these five things reduces procrastination. It also doesn’t directly link procrastination to income or job performance.

Still, two of the five — how unpleasant a task feels and how far off the deadline is — are much easier to change than personality. Cutting a big job into small pieces makes it less unpleasant and brings the finish line closer.

A useful tool here is deciding in advance when, where and what you will do, called an implementation intention. In a meta-analysis of 94 tests by Gollwitzer and Sheeran (2006), people who specified a situation and an action were more likely to reach their goals than people who only held the goal, with an average effect size of d = 0.65. Because this combines experiments, we can say that making such plans led to higher goal attainment. A later, larger meta-analysis estimated a smaller effect, though (see our article on planning when and where).

The other three — confidence, impulsiveness and planfulness — are harder to change quickly. You can still work on them indirectly.

• Confidence. As small successes pile up, it gets easier to believe you can handle the next task. Finishing a small slice of work and recording it is also a way of collecting that evidence.
• Impulsiveness. Rather than trying to become stronger against temptation, it is more realistic to decide in advance when you will start. When the time and place arrive, start moving before you start debating.
• Planfulness. Conscientiousness as a trait is hard to change, but the behaviour of making a plan is something you can copy today.

These suggestions are based on the research findings, but each one has not been tested on its own in an experiment. Treat them as options and pick one that suits you.

A small step for today

Think of one task you have been putting off and try three things.

1. Cut it to the first five minutes. Not “write the proposal,” but “create the file and write three headings.” That lowers the unpleasantness.
2. Set a deadline today or tomorrow. Put a near goal in front of the far one.
3. Decide the time and place. “Tomorrow at 9, as soon as I sit down at my desk, I’ll write three headings.”

In the app, you can tick “Set when and where to do tomorrow’s key task” in the evening and “Planned the day in the morning” when you start your day. Changing the shape of the task, rather than blaming yourself, is the approach that fits the research.

Sources

• [C5] Steel (2007) The nature of procrastination: A meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure. Psychological Bulletin.
• [E3] Gollwitzer & Sheeran (2006) Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology.