INTHEBLACK February 2023 - Magazine - Page 50
AT A GLANCE
Experts say that everyone
procrastinates to some degree
and for different reasons.
Awareness of procrastination
can vary, depending on the
situation.
There are strategies to
minimise the negative impact
of procrastination.
Story Abigail Murison
Kick procrastination
to the kerb – for good
If you always put off until tomorrow what you could do today,
give these procrastination-busting strategies a try.
“Everyone procrastinates, but not
everyone is a procrastinator,” says Professor
Joseph Ferrari from DePaul University in
Chicago. From his research, Ferrari estimates
about 20 per cent of American adults are
chronic procrastinators, delaying action at work,
home and in relationships.
People who procrastinate put a
disproportionate weighting on the present
and not enough emphasis on the future,
says Professor Stephen Knowles from the
Department of Economics at the University
of Otago. This might also explain why
procrastination has been linked to impulsivity,
especially difficulty with setting and successfully
pursuing short-term and long-term goals.
“I am a terrible procrastinator, by the way, so
I can talk about this both first-hand and based
on research,” Knowles confesses.
Knowles is what he calls a “sophisticated”
procrastinator. Sophisticated procrastinators
50 INTHEBLACK February 2023
know they procrastinate and use different
strategies to counter this and keep on task.
“A ‘naive’ procrastinator is someone who
doesn’t know they do it,” says Knowles. “That’s
much harder to deal with.”
UNDERSTAND WHY
“People procrastinate for so many reasons, often
outside of their own awareness. Sometimes
we know we are doing it and it is intentional,
other times it is habitual and we are not even
conscious of it,” says Dr Marny Lishman,
health and community psychologist and author.
Lishman says procrastination is our mind
moving us away from activities, tasks and duties
that elicit a negative or painful emotion, which
could be anger, frustration, stress, fear, boredom,
guilt or shame. We may be avoiding things we
do not like, or something about the process itself
that we do not like, or the fact that completing a
task ultimately will not give us any pleasure.