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Almost everyone procrastinates at some point, delaying a task they know they should do, often while fully aware that the delay will make things worse. For a long time, this habit was widely regarded as a problem of time management, or simply of laziness. The solution seemed obvious: make a better schedule, set clearer goals and try harder.
Over the past two decades, however, many psychologists have come to see procrastination quite differently. Researchers such as Fuschia Sirois and Timothy Pychyl have argued that it is, at its heart, a way of managing emotions rather than time. When a task makes us feel anxious, bored, frustrated or insecure, putting it off provides immediate relief. We open a social media app, tidy a drawer or answer an unimportant email, and for a moment the unpleasant feeling disappears. The cost, of course, is simply moved to the future, where it is usually larger.
This perspective helps to explain some puzzling features of procrastination. It is not that procrastinators cannot plan; many are excellent planners who produce detailed timetables they then fail to follow. Nor are they necessarily lazy; people often work extremely hard on other activities while avoiding the one that matters. What distinguishes the delayed task is not its difficulty but the feelings attached to it. A report that may be judged by a demanding manager, or a phone call that could bring bad news, is far more likely to be postponed than a task of similar size that carries no such emotional weight.
Another factor is what psychologists call "present bias": the tendency to give more weight to how we feel now than to how we will feel later. Some researchers have suggested that, at a certain level, people treat their future selves almost as strangers, so it seems acceptable to leave the problem for that other person to deal with.
If procrastination is mainly an emotional problem, then purely practical solutions are unlikely to work on their own. Some approaches have shown promise. One is to make starting easier, by breaking a large task into a first step so small that it feels almost silly not to take it. Another, perhaps surprisingly, is self-forgiveness. In one study of university students, those who forgave themselves for putting off revision before a first exam procrastinated less before the next one. Harsh self-criticism, it seems, only adds to the negative feelings that caused the delay in the first place.
None of this makes procrastination harmless. Persistent delay has been linked to higher stress, poorer health and lower performance at work and in education. But understanding it as an attempt, however unhelpful, to feel better in the short term may be the first step towards changing it.