Breaking the procrastination doom loop

Original post:  Sep 2, 2014

Now that the summer is "officially" over, it may be time to start tackling those difficult projects that we delayed again and again. Procrastination is a tenacious combatant. Inertia inevitably exerts its undeniable force and we end up doing something like this:

You may be surprised to learn about some of the more recent research into procrastination:

In the last few years, however, scientists have begun to think that procrastination might have less to do with time than emotion. Procrastination "really has nothing to do with time-management,” Joseph Ferrari, a professor of psychology at DePaul University, toldhttp://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/2013/april-13/why-wait-the-science-behind-procrastination.html Psychological Science. “To tell the chronic procrastinator to just do it would be like saying to a clinically depressed person, cheer up.”

Instead, Ferrari and others think procrastination happens for two basic reasons: (1) We delay action because we feel like we're in the wrong mood to complete a task, and (2) We assume that our mood will change in the near future.

The best way to cut through the loop is to apply external pressure. This usually requires a deadline of some sort.

To hack your way to productivity, you could schedule one-shot reminders as late as possible—even slightly after you were supposed to start the project. Not only will the last-second reminder and looming deadline break the doom loop and shock you into action, but also it won’t give you time to put off—and, potentially, forget about—the task.

For pathological procrastinators, recognizing that we need deadlines to bind ourselves to our responsibilities is the first step. The second step is recognizing that our own deadlines are less effective than other people's deadlines.

Perhaps we may need to change the way we think:

A more theoretical approach, from Yanping Tu and Dilip Soman writinghttp://www.jcr-admin.org/files/pressPDFs/081414081253_677840.pdf?utm_source=Recent+Findings+from+the+Journal+of+Consumer+Research%3A+August+2014&utm_campaign=Constant+Contact&utm_medium=email in the new Journal of Consumer Research, aims to change "the way consumers think about the future." Tu and Soman point out that people have a habit of managing goals and tasks in specific time categories—we plan activities by the day, expenses by the month, and resolutions by the year. This way of thinking can separate us from future selves. When we say “I’ll start that project next week,” or “I’m starting my diet next month," what we're really saying is "I hope that after an arbitrary amount of time, I will be in a better mood to bind myself to this task."

One study in their paper asked consumers to open a savings account within six months. One group was given a December deadline in June and a second group was given a January deadline in July. Although each group presumably contained a similar number of procrastinators, significantly more people in the first group chose to open their account immediately. When the deadline was a calendar year away, people were more likely to rationalize that they could put it off.

Here is a link to the full article:  The Procrastination Doom Loop—and How to Break It - The Atlantic