We procrastinate tasks that stir emotions for us, whether boredom, anxiety, resentment, overwhelm, or guilt and shame. People think they need better self-control to get things done when they’re having these emotions. That’s not the answer. People who are good at being disciplined are so because they approach tasks that inherently require less self-control. How? The bestContinue Reading

http://bit.ly/2n1hX76 2. People who deal with stress by putting problems in their ‘too hard basket’ are more vulnerable to getting depressed. There is a huge chicken and egg relationship here. If you ruminate about problems rather than tackling them head-on, it can contribute to worsening depression, but depression can alsoContinue Reading

https://bbc.in/2YQhchY 2) Look for the positives in the task you keep postponing One way of working out whether you’re a chronic procrastinator is to ask yourself whether you are putting the task off because you’re afraid of failure. After 15 years of research on procrastination, Fuschia Sirois from the UniversityContinue Reading

Harmon and Cullinan: I feel that same sense of relief every time a social engagement gets cancelled. Apparently, I am as addicted to cancelling plans as I am to making them! How does that translate to procrastination? Williamson: What if your sense of relief was actually driven by the satisfaction you getContinue Reading

https://medium.com/@dr_eprice/laziness-does-not-exist-3af27e312d01 For decades, psychological research has been able to explain procrastination as a functioning problem, not a consequence of laziness. When a person fails to begin a project that they care about, it’s typically due to either a) anxiety about their attempts not being “good enough” or b) confusion aboutContinue Reading

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dont-delay/201803/how-negative-repetitive-thoughts-relate-procrastination#_=_ Procrastination is best understood as an emotion-focused coping strategy. We use task avoidance to escape negative emotions associated with a task (e.g., frustration, boredom, stress, anxiety). As colleagues have explained so well before, “we give in to feel good,” prioritizing the management of aversive mood states over our goalContinue Reading

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201801/new-way-understand-procrastination Many psychologists have attempted to understand the causes of procrastination beginning, perhaps, with the great psychodynamic theorists. Freud related this behavior to problems stemming from poor toilet training, but the self-oriented psychodynamic theorists who followed him proposed more generally that people who procrastinate are showing signs of neurotic self-defeatingContinue Reading

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2015/10/29/to-end-procrastination-release-your-mental-resistance/ We are motivated to take action when we sense a feeling of reward at the end. If you look at your messy house in its entirety and feel like you won’t get that “reward” feeling unless the entire house is clean, then you will feel overwhelmed fairly quickly andContinue Reading

The psychological origins of procrastination – and how we can stop putting things off http://t.co/cmvI21nkYk pic.twitter.com/Zb8mG4wugh — The Conversation (@ConversationUK) October 11, 2015 When we write that procrastination is a side effect of the way we value things, it frames task completion as a product of motivation, rather than ability.Continue Reading