Procrastination Solutions: Perspective

While the mindset we take during the pursuit of a goal makes a big difference whether we’ll procrastinate or not, another important factor is our perspective. What we are focused on and how we frame things along the way also impacts whether procrastination is more likely or less likely.

Some strategies, then, recommended by Dr. Sirois in her book to make procrastination less likely are to look at our perspective on our own emotions, on the process of reaching our goal, and on the meaning of the goal for us.

Emotional Perspective

There are some things you should know about emotions, things that once you know them can shape how you approach just about anything in your life.

First, you should know that we are always making predictions about our emotions, about how we will feel in the future, or about how something in the future will make us feel. This is called “affective forecasting”.

Second, you should know that research has shown again and again that we aren’t very good at it. We’re actually pretty decent at predicting whether something will make us feel positive emotions versus negative emotions. But we make a couple of forecasting mistakes beyond that point.

One mistake we make is called the “intensity bias”. This means that we tend to overestimate how intense our emotion will be in the future. If we predict that something coming up in the future will be unpleasant, we tend to think it will be way more unpleasant than it actually is. And this goes the other direction too. If we predict something coming up will be pleasant or make us feel good, we tend to overestimate this too.

Another mistake we make is called the “durability bias”. As you might guess, this means that we tend to overestimate the duration of a future emotion. We think that we’ll feel a way for much longer than we actually do. If we experience something pleasant or if we experience something unpleasant, either way it doesn’t stay that way for as long as we predict ahead of time.

We have a kind of emotional balance system, a largely automatic psychological network of coping strategies that bring us back to emotional equilibrium, and which our predictions tend to forget about.

What this means for procrastination is that when we expect an upcoming task to be unpleasant and then turn to procrastination for relief, it can help to keep in mind that you may be predicting inaccurately. More than likely, the task will not be as unpleasant or as long-lasting as it seems before you start. Yes, doing the dishes may be a pain in the butt, but it’s likely to be more like 10% a pain rather than 80% a pain.

Looking to past experience to see how you actually handled a similar task can help correct these biases. If possible, try keeping a log of how bad you predicted a task to be, rate it from 0-100, and then rate the task again after you’ve done it to see how bad it actually was compared to your prediction.

Process Perspective

Have you ever heard the cliche “it’s about the journey, not the destination”? I’ve always found this to be confusing, because then what’s the point of having goals or destinations?

Let’s add some nuance to it, and change it to “It’s not just about the destination, but also about the journey”.

It turns out that there’s research to indicate that over-focusing on our goals can actually be detrimental to reaching them. Compare it to hiking up to a mountain peak. If the entire hike you’re only focused on whether you’re at the top or not, you’re going to be not-at-the-top most of the journey and probably really frustrated most of the time.

Or compare it to taking care of a house plant. If you want to have the plant grow to a certain height, and every time you measure it it’s not that height yet, you can quickly become defeated. But if you instead shift your focus to the care of the plant, watering it, providing it with nutrients, making sure it gets sunlight, you can do those things successfully the entire time on the way to the final goal.

For one last metaphor, imagine taking a long road trip. It’s good to have your final destination in mind, but it’s also good to enjoy the trip to that destination. If you can build in a number of fun places to stop along the way, then the entire journey can be enjoyable and not just an endless series of “are we there yet" thoughts.

When it comes to procrastination, being rigidly and overly-focused on the destination can create feelings of frustration, failure, impatience, or boredom that make procrastinating efforts toward that goal much more likely.

Instead, be clear with yourself about your goal but then shift your focus to the path toward that goal, on the smaller subgoals on the way there, and on opportunities to grow, learn, engage your values, or just enjoy yourself along the way.

Meaning Perspective

Despite not wanting to be rigidly focused on your goal, it turns out that there are certain times along the way that re-focusing on the destination can be helpful.

Thanks to that whole emotions-return-to-a-baseline phenomenon we talked about above, the path toward a destination can lose its novelty and excitement along the way. While we might feel excited or inspired when starting the journey, we can then start to get board with the same old scenery. The 25th time going to the gym isn’t so exciting as compared to the first few times when you imagine how in-shape you’re about to get.

When the steps needed to reach a goal become repetitive or predictable, we are built to “habituate” to the repetition. Meaning we stop wasting resources like attention on the repetitive thing and start to shift our attention to other things that aren’t so predictable. (Things like social media apps or Youtube are built with this in mind, and designed to stay engaging by not letting habituation kick in.)

It is moments like this where procrastination becomes more likely even after having already started the journey toward a goal. And it is moments like this where refocusing on the goal and what it means to us can help.

The more we can connect our goal to our intrinsic core values, the more likely we will stay engaged. It definitely helps if your goal is motivated by your own values in the first place, rather than external motivations like appearance, impressions, or what others think about you. But it’s usually still possible to find connection to your own values, whatever your current goal might be.

Try asking yourself a few things about your goal, recommended by Dr. Sirois.

How will completing your goal be valuable to how you see yourself? How will it be valuable to how you connect to others? How will it be valuable to your personal growth?

Such questions can remind you of your motivations to work toward the goal in the first place, turn the challenges of the journey into opportunities to engage your core values, and reduce the negative emotions that procrastination then tries to ease.