I'll Do It Later...

It's ten o'clock at night on the last day this editorial is due to my PRESENT eLearning editors. They're getting irritated, because I waited to the last minute to submit this. I've procrastinated, and now I'm out of time.

It's hard for me to do things at the last minute. I'm one of those people who like to get things done well in advance. I enjoy having time to leisurely revisit a task, edit, fix, fix some more, and then finish. However, that doesn't always happen. Life gets in the way.

Procrastination is as human as having eyes on the front of our faces. For some of us, it's a behavioral problem. For others, it's a motivator.

Consider the significance of procrastination. Just recently, we heard that the Affordable Care Act reached 8 million people signing up with the health insurance exchanges. What's interesting about this is that the last 2 million or so people signed up after they extended the enrollment period 2 weeks. In fact, the government expected this last minute rush to sign up, because it's the same thing that happened in Massachusetts when they started their universal health covered some time ago.

Last minute procrastination on a high order!

In my little world, I often have students come to me for academic advice for class presentations the day before – sometimes the day of – their presentations. It often surprises me how many things we do at the last minute. My son loves to procrastinate with activities like brushing his teeth and making the bed.

Why Do We Procrastinate?

I found an interesting explanation on a lay psychology website.¹ According to Phil Stutz, MD, practicing psychiatrist and Barry Michaels, practicing psychotherapist, we procrastinate because "Taking action will cause us a certain amount of pain." They go on to explain that by avoiding pain – in whatever form that pain takes – we instinctively retreat to a comfort zone.¹ We avoid the pain until the last minute, when circumstances force us forward.

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From my very nonscientific exploration of the online psychological commentaries, it appears there is a difference between someone who procrastinates on certain tasks (most of us) and others who procrastinate regularly. This last behavior is considered abnormal by psychological professionals and worthy of further attention and self-reflection.

Is Procrastination Beneficial?

But wait (yes, even you procrastinators can wait)!

If we just finished discussing procrastination as something "bad", why am I asking if it could be beneficial? Some interesting work in 2005 by Chu and Choi discussed a somewhat more nuanced aspect of procrastination.² They broke procrastinators into two types: passive and active. The passive procrastinator is the typical type we have been discussing here, the individual that is paralyzed to act due to indecision, feels pressured in a negative sense, becomes pessimistic, and either fails to complete tasks on time or does so at the last minute. The active procrastinator does so by choice, thriving under pressure, becoming more optimistic, and increasingly motivated.

When these researchers divided the two groups by behavioral and cognitive functions, they hypothesized important differences. In essence, active procrastinators were more similar to nonprocrastinators in the following ways:

	•	Time: An improved ability to use time effectively and a perceived control over time.
	•	Self-Efficacy: Confidence that one can complete a task required for goal achievement. Active procrastinators and nonprocrastinators have positive self-efficacy.
	•	Motivational Orientation: Nonprocrastinators are motivated by internal and external factors. Active procrastinators are more motivated by external versus internal motivating factors. Procrastinators are motivated less so by internal or external factors (ie, active procrastinators thrive from outside pressures in a positive way).
	•	Stress-coping strategies: In a stressful situation, active procrastinators, similar to nonprocrastinators, use a task-oriented approach to reduce stress (that is, get the job done so you don't feel stress anymore) while procrastinators use emotional- or avoidance-oriented methods (avoidance of the emotional cost of the stressor).

Their study, using a survey of 230 undergraduate students from three Canadian universities, confirmed the above hypotheses.

This study adds an interesting perspective to the otherwise procrastination bad/nonprocrastination good dichotomy. Perhaps it would be more useful for us to consider where each of us lay in a spectrum of behaviors as the first step to figuring out why we procrastinate. We may then be empowered to focus on the causes of our behaviors and actively change those we feel are problems and embrace those that may, in fact, be positive motivational forces in our lives.

For example, a person who tends toward the active procrastination side might assign themselves specific time oriented goals to create that necessary pressure to thrive. Similarly, a procrastinator who tends to become paralyzed by time demands and avoids emotional stress could set up multiple small goals as part of a larger project to prevent feeling overwhelmed.

In the end, it's about knowing ourselves and why we do the things we do. I think I'll go sit down and consider where I am on this continuum. Or...maybe I'll just get to it later...

Best wishes,

Jarrod Shapiro, DPM
PRESENT Practice Perfect Editor
[email protected]

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References

The Real Reason We Procrastinate (And What to Do About It). Last accessed 4/19/2014.
Chu A and J Choi. Rethinking Procrastination: Positive Effects of "Active" Procrastination Behavior on Attitudes and Performance. The Journal of Social Psychology. 2005;145(3): 245-264.