How Procrastination May Affect Your Health
February 2nd, 2023
5.5 min read
The up-to-date science on procrastination and what to do about it.
Written by Simon Spichak
Procrastination - just how bad can it possibly be? If you’re a chronic procrastinator, you probably understand the stress of writing an essay or finishing an assignment at the very last minute. But procrastination comes with a toll - it might be time to learn how to stop.
About half of university students are chronic procrastinators. This means postponing studying for midterms and exams, submitting papers at the very last minute before midnight, and often regretting it the next day. From a psychological perspective, procrastination is a failure of self-regulation that is sometimes linked to personality traits like impulsiveness and distractibility.
All About Procrastination
So why do we procrastinate? When a task is aversive - meaning we don’t want to do it because it is either challenging or time consuming - we are more likely to push it off. Let’s look at an example of this.
Saul has trouble with exams. Last semester, he pushed off studying until the day before and almost failed his class. It has fueled his anxiety, and this year he is even more anxious about exams, making it harder for him to start studying. He wants to do well, but he just can’t get started with studying.
Remember that procrastinating doesn’t mean you’re lazy, simply that you have trouble starting a daunting project. Instead, we tend to procrastinate tasks we are most averse to. Taking the first steps toward getting started feels like climbing a mountain. This is linked to various mental and physical health problems.
How Procrastination Affects Your Health
A new study published by researchers in the journal JAMA Open Network looked at 3525 Swedish university students to see how procrastination affected their physical and mental health over the course of nine months. They used a psychological scale to measure how much students procrastinated.
Students who procrastinated more over the course of nine months were more likely to also have higher levels of:
Stress
Anxiety
Depression
Arm pain
Poor sleep
Physical inactivity
Loneliness
Economic difficulties
Even though this is one of the largest studies of procrastination to date, it is still difficult to determine cause-and-effect. The results of the study also back-up previous work which associated many of these health conditions with procrastination.
Learning to Stop Procrastinating
There are lots of strategies that can help you stop procrastinating. One of the most effective ways to do this is through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). This is a common therapy technique that helps you spot and change the thought patterns that cause procrastination in the first place. If you’re not ready to take a dive into therapy yet, here are a few other tips to get you started.
Tip #1: Break up large tasks into small chunks
Many people procrastinate because they feel a task is too big, too challenging, or too time-consuming. One way to tackle these tasks is to break them down into small-measurable chunks. If you’re writing a paper, this might involve breaking it down into these tasks:
Writing an outline
Doing preliminary research
Filling out the outline with notes from research
More research to get at unanswered questions
Turning the bullet points in the draft into sentences
Editing the paper paragraph by paragraph
Tip #2: Creating a distraction-free study zone
It is much easier to avoid procrastinating if you get rid of all the distractions around you. This means turning off your phone or putting it on silent, closing off every other tab on your computer, disconnecting from the Wi-Fi, and making sure that the only thing left to focus on is your task. As tough as it might feel to face an aversive challenge, pushing through the negative feelings will ultimately feel rewarding.
Takeaway
Procrastination is very common in university students. Unfortunately, it is also linked to various physical and mental health conditions. By learning to break up large assignments into manageable chunks and getting rid of your distractions, you can power through procrastination. If you are still having trouble, you may want to schedule an appointment with a therapist who can help using CBT.
Please note that this post is written for educational purposes, it is not therapy. If you need to talk to a professional please book a consultation with a psychotherapist through Resolvve.
