How to Treat Procrastination

Today we’re going to talk about procrastination, better known as “I’ll do it tomorrow”, “I’ll get on it later”, “I’ll finish it in a bit”… and all their variations. We all put things off; it’s common and doesn’t have to be a problem unless it’s taken to extremes. Problematic procrastination can be linked to different things: sometimes it’s simple laziness or carelessness taken to a certain point; other times it’s down to poor time management; other times it’s linked to fears or insecurities (of not being capable or not being good enough, of failure…), to difficulty making decisions or to low self-esteem; it also shows up in perfectionists, whose standards – often unattainable – force them to keep putting things off; sometimes anxious and depressive states are also linked to procrastination… In any case, it’s considered dysfunctional and maladaptive, because it can end up interfering very negatively in the patient’s life at every level: personal, family, relationships, work…

According to research on the subject, procrastination is considered more of a personality trait than a state – in other words, people who procrastinate do so regardless of the context and the activity itself. To put it simply: it’s part of who that person is.

In my experience, patients who put things off or procrastinate don’t come to therapy for that reason; they come for other reasons, and the habit of postponing ends up surfacing as something they “tend to do and realise causes them problems”. Sometimes what they put off are trivial things that, on the face of it, don’t matter at all: replying to WhatsApp messages, signing up for the gym, the annual check-up, meeting up with a friend… It’s not what they put off, but the general attitude of “I’ll do it later”, because that later often never comes, and sometimes that leads to a problem the person could have avoided if they’d done things when they needed doing.

When people ask me for help to change this, we use several strategies. They’re all very basic, but it’s like dieting: we all know what we should eat to lose weight, but even so, we sometimes need a professional to set out a meal plan, motivate us and support us along the way. One strategy, when it comes to putting off habits or actions that happen weekly, is to make ourselves a timetable, a plan. The plan has to meet one basic requirement: it has to be realistic. The more realistic it is, the more likely we are to stick to it, and so the more chances there are for positive reinforcement. For example, if you’ve been putting off going to the gym for a year, setting yourself a plan with four gym sessions a week in the first week may not be very realistic; better to start with two and, if we see we’re managing them, then increase. It also has to be realistic in the sense that the activities we include have to fit the person’s day-to-day life and routine.

Another strategy, for more one-off tasks, is setting deadlines. Some people respond well to deadlines, because having that date in their sights gives them a point of reference, a little pressure to meet their goal. Sometimes I combine this with reward systems to motivate change. We plan a series of rewards in proportion to the goals to be achieved (proportion matters: sticking to your study timetable isn’t worth planning a holiday, just as finally calling the doctor isn’t worth buying a €200 shirt), trying to make them as immediate as possible to boost motivation.

Then, depending on the underlying cause of the procrastination, we work more deeply on certain patterns and ideas that drive and maintain the problem. For example, with perfectionists, we’d work on their irrational beliefs about perfection at a more general level, while training the patient to do different activities at a “not so perfect” level, then assess the consequences and compare them with their predictions. To give another example, if the procrastination is rooted in indecision, we’d focus more on the fears behind it and on practising decision-making, starting with unimportant everyday things and then gradually moving up a level…

In short: first we bring some order so that procrastination interferes as little as possible in the patient’s life, and then (or at the same time, depending on the case) we work at a deeper level on what led them to that situation.