Procrastinate Less By Forgiving Yourself

Procrastinate Less By Forgiving Yourself

Without self-forgiveness procrastination can snowball.

People often dislike, criticise and put themselves down for their procrastination.

But is this self-blame counter productive? Researchers followed 119 first-year students through two midterm examinations. They tested whether self-forgiveness about procrastination before the first midterm was associated with less procrastination before the second midterm.

Although we tend to think that letting ourselves off easy will lead to more procrastination, the research found the reverse: “Forgiveness allows the individual to move past their maladaptive behaviour and focus on the upcoming examination without the burden of past acts to hinder studying.”

This may work because: “…forgiving oneself for procrastinating has the beneficial effect of reducing subsequent procrastination by reducing negative affect associated with the outcome of an examination.”

Another way of thinking of this is in terms of approach and avoidance behaviours. Because we tend to avoid things that make us feel bad, pent up guilt about a task will make us avoid that task in the future. Self-forgiveness, though, may reduce guilt and so make us more likely to approach the task.

This explanation highlights the fact that we don’t just have emotional relationships with people, we also have them with tasks. Some tasks we like and look forward to like trusted old friends, while others feel more like muggers stealing away hours of our lives.

The design of this study doesn’t tell us how easy it is for those who are hard on themselves to begin exercising self-forgiveness because it only examined what participants did naturally. Unfortunately psychologists have little evidence about the process of self-forgiveness, they only know it’s ‘A Good Thing’.

Perhaps just knowing that self-forgiveness is healthy is beneficial. A new study found that considering tasks in concrete terms wards off procrastination. For those living in technically advanced societies, procrastination has become a ‘modern malady’: everything must be done now or, even better, three weeks ago. For good or evil there are now endless to-do lists to work through, appointments that must be kept and commitments that have to be fulfilled. Such is modern life.

Whatever the cause, many people certainly view their procrastination as a problem. Psychologists have found that college students consider themselves champion procrastinators with almost half considering it problematic. Adults are not far behind with some 15-20% self-identifying as ‘chronic procrastinators’. Meanwhile the rest of us are guaranteed to procrastinate from time to time.

A simple technique for avoiding procrastination that has been examined experimentally: using deadlines. It was found that self-imposed deadlines were effective in improving task performance but, watch out, people aren’t as good at setting their own deadlines as they are at conforming to deadlines set externally. Strangely, when left to their own devices, people seem prone to handicapping themselves with irrational deadlines.

Self-control and procrastination

In a study participants were being asked to carry out a task they didn’t place much value on and was very easy, it was just something that had to be done at some point, a chore. In other words people weren’t debating with themselves whether the task had to be done, just when it had to be done. It’s the dimension of time that most distinguishes between procrastination and self-control. Concrete, low-level constrains help you start a task sooner but don’t help you decide to do it in the first place.

A second study looked at how to get big projects done. This added another piece to the picture, suggesting that a low-level, task focus was a great way of coping with demotivating failures on hard tasks. This adds another piece to the jigsaw puzzle of how we can get things done. In fact, taken together these studies start to uncover the complexities inherent in procrastination and self-control.

Summary: how to get things done

Here’s a summary of the main conclusions from all the studies discussed:

1. To avoid procrastinating on a task, focus on its details and use self-imposed deadlines.

2. To stick to a task and carry it out now, it is beneficial to keep the ultimate, abstract goal in mind.

3. When evaluating progress on a hard task, when the chance of failure is high, stay focused on the details of the task.

Once tasks are easier or the end is in sight, a more abstract, goal focus is once again the psychological approach to choose.

Studies show that a very simple manipulation of our thought processes can be incredibly powerful.

article: PsyBlog

image: www.teencollegeeducation.org

www.AnnaMorten.com