Procrastination – A Clinical Psychologist Weighs In

“Procrastination is the cumulative effect of (covertly) trading in your own little lies. To stop procrastinating, start striving to be more truthful.”

Everyone procrastinates from time to time, this much is certainly true. However, like most everything in life the experience of procrastination, and one’s relationship to it, exists on a continuum. Too much of anything – confers the familiar adage – invariably leads to escalating negative consequences; and while most of us have some intuitive inkling of this by now, few think of procrastination along these same lines. Let us probe these ideas a bit further in this article on procrastination.

The Curious Case of Procrastination

What I find so interesting about procrastination, is this: depending on where one finds themselves on the continuum, and to the extent that they might have already begun to experience the negative effects of their procrastination habits, people still seem unable to (or are, perhaps, highly resistant to…) locate it in, and declare it to, themselves. This despite the frequency with which it might actually be occurring in one’s own life, or, if not readily found there, in the lives of others, given the prevalence with which it is noted in the everyday narratives we share. How it is that this association, even when given ample opportunity to learn about its deleterious effects via either direct personal or vicarious contact with it, still manages to elude the subject’s mind? Has procrastination, under the weight of the demands and expectations of contemporary life, succeeded in shrouding itself under a veil of its own construction, precluding thus its detection in oneself; or might it be that our relationship to it belies a more tacit agreement, one of a tolerance of its many inconveniences, which facilitates the extradition of some unconscious secondary gain?

How Does Procrastination ‘Present’ in the Psychologist’s Consulting Room

As a clinical psychologist, I frequently encounter this pejorative verb in my practice. Often times, the individual arrives complaining of a vague feeling of ‘depression,’ or they may report feeling a cyclical helplessness accompanied by an increase in frustration due to escalating negative consequences in their lives; or they may recount, with much trepidation, the unwelcomed return of their ‘imposter syndrome’ which has begun to emerge more prominently in recent weeks. It is in teasing out the threads of clinical presentations such as these that procrastination (and the underlying self-deception it covets) might emerge as a salient clinical symptom of interest undermining the patient’s functioning. Perceiving in oneself any number of these experiences, either in isolation or in tandem, is often what prompts a person to seek counselling in order to try to break the recalcitrant pattern of procrastination and its consequences which have entrained themselves in their lives. A client might say, ‘I find myself doing anything but studying, even though I know the deadline is tomorrow!’ Similarly, they might report, ‘I was late on my payment again, which is so frustrating because I was aware all of last week that payment was due today.’

My Goal as a Clinical Psychologist Regards Procrastination

I have spent many hours listening to the reported effects of how procrastination has negatively impacted people’s lives. Naturally, I started to think about what procrastination actually is, how it comes into existence, and what we could (or should) be doing in order to dismantle it. It’s not that I want to eradicate one’s tendency to procrastinate entirely – not at all. In fact, I believe it has its rightful place within the behavioural repertoires of ‘normal’ human functioning and might even be a naturally occurring phenomenon in nature more generally. However, I do find some people are notoriously effective at getting themselves entangled with it, and, when they do, find it very difficult thereafter to extricate themselves from its vices. My goal, then, is to highlight the nuances of one’s relationship to it, including its effects, at various stages along the continuum in order to help the individual learn how to regulate it.

What’s Happening ‘under the hood’ of Procrastination?

To the best of my observational knowledge, procrastination seems to represent the felt accumulation of an intricate psychological process – largely unconscious – in which minute acts are being ‘traded’ across overlapping, discrete and continuous timescales, which then converge upon, interact with, and ultimately counteract each other in the mind. These micro-interactions go on and on, time and time again, with neither the ‘trader’s’ awareness, nor his understanding of the implicit correlatory consequences that contractually bind these trades together (let alone when they are in breach).

Continuing along these lines of thought, the ‘sell’, namely the primary-projected thought (or intention, belief, image of oneself, or idea), which emerges from within oneself (e.g., ‘I can do that tomorrow.’) is later usurped via the associated act of ‘buying’ back the corresponding percept I was initially sold (i.e., the unactualized ‘self-introject’), and, perhaps most poignantly, without any bearing on reality itself. In this way only the intention was set, and, thereafter, no further effort was expended into action relative to the original, now unfulfilled, intention. This process, then, completes one such trade. If, on the contrary, the set intention does manage to transmute itself into a series of actions that are then acted upon the world in completion of a task (i.e., I do the thing I said I was going to do), then I, the subject, am not found to be in breach of the contract and feel instead the relief or satisfaction (at a neuro-chemical level) at having completed the required task. What matters, therefore, when tracking the cumulation of the effects of procrastination, is the degree to which I have consistently been found to be in breach of this implicit contract.

This all sounds rather sinister, but I do believe that the impetus to procrastinate is, at least initially, well-intentioned (even the prefix ‘pro-’ connotes a sense of ‘movement forward’ or ‘bringing into existence’). It seems plausible to consider that the will to procrastinate is an attempt to ‘bring into existence’ a dose of subjective, transient relief in the form of an agentic ‘as if’ feeling that I am able (or am going to be able) to be in control of everything, and, with such omnipotence at hand, can duly manage sufficiently well the achievement of all my concurrent goals. It must feel ‘good,’ you might agree, to be in possession of such a thought in one’s mind, especially when, in reality, I am not doing so well as I flounder towards completion of my final English essay at university (i.e., in stark contrast to my well-intentioned thought, my biomarkers – cortisol levels, dopamine levels, galvanic skin response readings etc. – indicate that I am, in fact, overwhelmed and objectively stressed).

The ‘problem’ with procrastination is that it begins to escalate when I extrapolate the experience of trading in this manner over many days, months, or even years, and across multiple activities and experiences. Under such circumstances, I will eventually be beset with a web of inertia so pronounced that extrication from it now becomes exceedingly confusing and difficult. Perceiving oneself this far down the continuum – and at a great distance, therefore, from the agency and resources I might spontaneously require to complete a given task – is when most people tend to double down on the trade one last time, as if now purely by habit, hoping that this time it will buy oneself some fantastical relief from reality, which, of course, it never does. Finally, after such injudicious use of the aforementioned contact, it seems that the ‘sell’ has lost its original value and the buyer has moved on, leaving just the web of confusion behind. This is when people relent to the notion that they are a ‘procrastinator,’ and, in all cases that I have witnessed such revelations in my practice, it has never been with a tender, sympathetic voice.

So, What’s the Antidote for Procrastination?

As a psychologist, I believe in the inherent importance of all of us having some subjective, reasonably well-formed, and enduring construction of ‘the truth’, which need necessarily correspond, in turn, to a further inner approximation – equally significant – representing ‘my truth’ (in relation to the former). This is highly individualized, of course, and some people’s constructions, as well as the relationship that governs their interaction, are more robust and reliable than others. But if I am told over and over again that you are going to do ‘thing A,’ and then the following week I note that ‘thing A’ is not being done (again), I will call attention to this and inquire what might be happening within you that this is occurring. This is where psychological counselling can help, and here’s how…

In the course of treatment, I begin to slowly introduce an intentional focus to import a sense that when a person misleads themselves, whether or not they know it, and regardless of how innocuous it might feel initially, they are invariably going to experience this trade-off in time to come with diminishing returns (if they aren’t already). Simply put, it is precisely because they are not being sufficiently truthful with themselves and are getting away with being allowed to buy back the herrings of their own misguided intentions (however well-meaning they once were), that they will soon enough be plagued with a particular cluster of emotional consequences.

These consequences might be anything ranging from a sense of confusion and self-doubt (of varying degrees), to an ever harsher inner critic, or the fixation of an imposter-like feeling, or, perhaps worst of all, a disturbing lack of continuity in one’s very selfhood (read colloquially as a severe lack of self-esteem). None of these psychological consequences can be readily dismissed as frivolous, but there is at least some semblance of an answer to be found in reality, I feel, that is able to reliably combat the problem of procrastination. This is why I espouse the importance of orientating ourselves and clients (whenever possible and over time) towards some ‘truthfulness’ in respect of our conduct, including foremost our innermost thoughts and the actions they are intended to actualize, as we become more adept, one hopes, in our ability to discern between it – the ‘truth’ – and the otherwise vacuous temptations masquerading themselves in front of our many anxieties who claim to have the spurious answers to our lives’ many problems.

Bryn O’Reilly is a South African-born clinical psychologist living in the Central Algarve, Portugal. It is from there that he runs his private practice, offering both in-person and online counselling services. Should you wish to contact Bryn, please click here