Stop Procrastinating: An Expert Tells Us How

If you had a long list of tasks you wanted to complete this summer, but haven't gotten to it, join the club. There are legitimate reasons many of us procrastinate on activities we feel are important — like waiting until the annual RRSP deadline is looming before making any contributions, or filing income tax returns at the last minute — even though it's not in our best personal or financial interests to do so.

That's no surprise to Tim Pychyl, associate professor of psychology and head of the Procrastination Research Group at Carleton University in Ottawa. "Everything about money is scary," he says. "It's completely understandable why someone might put off these tasks."

That's because according to research by Pychyl and others, negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, resentment and boredom are the reasons why we procrastinate. It has nothing to do with poor time management, lack of will power or being lazy.

"You could be using a great time management app or to-do list, but when you get to the point in the day that you've scheduled that task you say, 'I don't feel like it — I don't want to do this," says Pychyl. "We think avoiding the task is going to make us feel better. But just like we think eating a bag of cookies or buying a new pair of shoes will make us feel better, that feeling is short-lived and comes back to bite us in the butt."

Indeed, studies on emotional intelligence have found that the ability to regulate emotion and tolerate frustration makes a person less prone to procrastination. And digital images from MRI scans show that chronic procrastinators have a larger amygdala — the "fight or flight" centre of the brain responsible for emotions and survival instincts. When faced with an unsavoury task, these people's amygdalas tell them to run away from it, in the same way they would flee from a predator.

So, does that mean some of us just need to resign to the fact that we will always procrastinate? Absolutely not, says Pychyl: "Biology is not destiny. People can learn to manage negative emotions."

Here are the steps Pychyl recommends to help you get through your financial to-do list on a timely basis.

Face your emotions

While you may not enjoy doing your taxes, it's important to confront that fact. "You have to recognize there's a good chance you'll never feel like doing it," says Pychyl. "We can't suppress our emotions, but we can develop a non-judgmental awareness of our emotions to gain more control over our behaviour."

Switch your focus to a small action

Once you're aware of a negative emotion related to a particular task, redirect your attention away from "feeling" toward "doing." The key, says Pychyl, is to think about the tiniest next action you could take if you were going to move forward with the task (even though you don't want to). For example, getting the box where you store your tax paperwork and receipts and putting it on the kitchen table.

"Make the threshold that small," he says. You're much more likely to follow through on "move box" than you are on "do taxes." Once the box is on the kitchen table, your next small action could be, "sort paperwork into categories," and so on. "Even a little bit of action on a goal will lead to an upward spiral of progress," he says.

Use a pre-commitment tool

To prevent the mad scramble before the RRSP contribution deadline, you could set up fund transfers ahead of time to have a portion of your paycheque automatically invested every month. Of course, the star procrastinators among us will then be facing what Pychyl calls "second order procrastination" — putting off the pre-commitment action. "You think, yes, I should set up an automatic transfer. But then that becomes the task you procrastinate on," he says.

In that case, you need to go back to the previous step, and find the next small action you can take. So, maybe it starts with just logging in.

Another pre-commitment device is to create an external consequence that may spur you into action. For instance, someone could get a friend or family member to be their accountability buddy and agree that if the task isn't completed, they will owe their loved one a week's worth of kitchen cleanup or handling the carpooling to the kids' extracurricular activities.

Don't beat yourself up

Finally, cut yourself some slack if you do succumb to procrastination. In one of Pychyl's studies, those who forgave themselves for procrastinating were less likely to procrastinate on the same task in the future than those who lacked self-compassion.

Do you procrastinate? How do you manage it? Leave a comment* to share your thoughts.

This article was featured in our special issue, as seen in the Globe and Mail. Download the full magazine HERE.

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**This article was updated on Feb. 11, 2020.