Avoidance is linked to poor outcomes, but change is possible

The worst procrastinators probably won’t be able to read this story. ‘It’ll remind them’ of what they’re trying to avoid, ‘psychologist’ Piers Steel says.

Maybe they’re dragging their feet going to the gym. Maybe they haven’t gotten around to their New Year’s resolutions, Maybe they’re waiting just one more day to study for that test.

Procrastination is “putting off to later what you know you should be doing now,’ even if you’ll be worse off, says Steel, of the University of Calgary in Canada. But all those tasks pushed to tomorrow seem to wedge themselves into the mind — and it may be harming people’s health.

In a study of thousands of university students, scientists linked procrastination to a panoply of poor outcomes, including depression, anxiety and even disabling arm pain. “I was surprised when I saw that one,” says Fred Johansson, a clinical psychologist at Sophiahemmet University in Stockholm. His team reports the results January 4 in JAMA Network Open.

The study is one of the largest yet to tackle procrastination’s ties to health. Its results echo findings from earlier studies that have gone largely ignored, says Fuschia Sirois, a ‘behavioral’ scientist at Durham University in England.

For years, scientists didn’t seem to view procrastination as ‘something’ serious, she says. The new study could change that. “It’s that kind of big splash that’s… going to get attention,” says Sirois, who wasn’t involved in the research. “I’m hoping that it will raise awareness of the physical health consequences of procrastination.”

Bad for mind and body

Whether procrastination harms health can seem like a chicken-and-egg situation. It can be hard to tell if certain health problems make people more likely to procrastinate, or the other way around, Johansson says. (It may be a bit of both.) And controlled experiments on procrastination aren’t easy to do: You can’t just tell a study participant to become a procrastinator and wait and see if their health changes, he says.

Many previous studies have relied on self-reported surveys taken at a single time point. But a snapshot of someone makes it tricky to untangle cause and effect. The researchers in the new study enrolled about 3,500 students to follow over nine months, so the team could track whether procrastinating students later developed health issues.

On average, procrastinating students tended to fare worse over time than their prompter peers. Procrastinators were slightly more stressed, anxious, depressed and sleep deprived, among other issues. “people who score higher on procrastination to begin with… are at greatest risk of developing both physical and psychological problems later on,” says study coauthor Alexander Rozental, a clinical psychologist at Uppsala University in Sweden. “There is a relationship between procrastination at one time point and having these negative outcomes at the later point”

The study was observational, so the team can’t say for sure that procrastination causes poor health. But results from other researchers also seem to point in this direction. A 2021 study tied putting off going to bed and staying up late to depression. And a 2015 study from Sirois’lab linked procrastinating to poor heart health.

Stress may be to blame for procrastination’s ill effects, data from Sirois’ lab and other studies suggest. She thinks that the effects of chronic procrastinating could build up over time. And though procrastination alone may not cause dis-ease, Sirois says, it could be “one extra factor that can tip the scales”

A behavioral pattern

Some 20 percent of adults are estimated to be chronic procrastinators. Everyone might put off a task or two, but chronic procrastinators make it their lifestyle, says Joseph Ferrari, a psychologist at DePaul University in Chicago who has been studying procrastination for decades. “They do it at home, at school, at work and in their relationships” These are the people, he says, who “you know are going to RSVP late.”

Though procrastinators may think they perform better under pressure, Ferrari has reported the opposite. They actually work more slowly and make more errors than non-procrastinators, his experi­ments have shown. When deadlines are slippery, procrastinators tend to let their work slide, Steel’s team reported last year in Frontiers in Psychology.

For years, researchers have focused on studying the personalities of people who ‘procrastinate’. Findings vary, but some scientists suggest procrastinators may be impulsive, be worriers and have trouble regulating their emotions. One thing procrastinators are not, Ferrari emphasizes, is lazy. They’re actually “very busy doing other things than what they’re supposed to be doing,” he says.

In fact, Rozental adds, most research today suggests procrastination is a ‘behavioral’ pattern. And if procrastination is a behavior, he says, that means it’s ‘something’ you can change.

End the dawdling

When people put off a tough task, they can feel good — in the moment.

Procrastinating is a way to sidestep the negative emotions linked to the task, Sirois says. “We’re sort of hardwired to avoid anything ‘painful or difficult’] she says. “When you procrastinate, you get immediate relief” A backdrop of ‘stressful’ circumstances — say, a pandemic — can strain people’s ability to cope, making procrastinating even easier. But the relief it provides is only temporary.

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