In this series we publish blog posts written by our first year undergraduate students for the PB101 Foundations of Psychological Science course. Here, Jiner Dai argues that procrastination, despite its negative connotations, can actually be good for us.  

Photo by Tara Winstead from Pexels.

Due Tomorrow? Do Tomorrow!

Have you ever wondered which day will be the busiest? If you answered: “Tomorrow”, you’re not alone. Tomorrow is truly a mystical land where 99 per cent of all human productivity and achievement is stored. Research shows that over 80 per cent of college students procrastinate, and 20 per cent of adults self-identified as chronic procrastinators. But what exactly is procrastination? While often viewed as an unnecessary delay with negative consequences, it is crucial to set aside preconceived outcomes. The term “procrastination” originates from the Latin verb “procrastinare,” which means “to put off or postpone until another day”. However, what if I told you that procrastination is not only not that harmful, but it even has some potential benefits?

Understanding Procrastination

Before we delve into its benefits, let’s first understand some proximate explanations of procrastination:

• Time discounting tells us we value immediate comforts more than future gains, and procrastination allows us to temporarily get out of the pain.
• Perfectionists tend to procrastinate more due to the fear of failing to meet their irrationally high standards. With an “all or nothing” mindset, getting things done can be challenging.
• Anxiety from critiques may make us feel overwhelmed. Thus, we procrastinate as a coping mechanism.
• Individual differences are also associated with procrastination. People with low self-esteem and low self-regulation tend to procrastinate more than confident and disciplined individuals.

The Benefits of Procrastination

Photo by Julia Avamotive from Pexels.

Contrary to being a mere hindrance, here are four reasons why procrastination can sometimes help you.

1. Inspiring Creativity
Some degree of procrastination carves out a psychological space from the daunting task, which allows you to enter an incubation period. Although you don’t make substantive progress, your mind continues to process the task in the background. Too mysterious? Think of it as a catalyst that activates relevant clues, helping you solve problems, but the benefits don’t end there. Instead of rushing, your brain can think divergently, allowing you to explore the essence of the task and creatively recombine different ideas. A study on Korean employees found people who engage in moderate procrastination get a higher creativity rating compared to those who procrastinate more or less. However, this study is very limited in terms of geography and population.

Photo by Rakicevic Nenad from Pexels. 

2. Improving Decision-Making
Stepping back through an evolutionary lens, procrastination can be ultimately explained as a form of strategic delay inherited from our ancestors. People tend to procrastinate more in unpredictable environments. Why? Because the effort invested now may be wasted in the future. When nomadic tribes were faced with unpredictable weather, they were supposed to postpone immediate hunts. They can conserve energy and increase the likelihood of a successful hunt by waiting for more favourable conditions. As a fast life history strategy that has been embedded in us thousands of years before, procrastination has its value. The reason is simple: delayed decision-making can sometimes lead to more informed choices, especially when uncertainty is high.

3. Optimising Performance

Adapted from The Temporal Dynamics Model of Emotional Memory Processing:
A Synthesis on the Neurobiological Basis of Stress-Induced Amnesia,
Flashbulb and Traumatic Memories, and the Yerkes-Dodson Law

As the famous Yerkes-Dodson Law suggested, you perform best when stress levels are at optimal arousal. Surprisingly, moderate procrastination can place you in a beneficially stressed state, pushing you into peak productivity. A study of U.S. graduates shows a procrastination frequency and grade outcome are positively correlated when the fear of the test medium is low. Haven’t we all been there? Those moments when you find yourself distracted easily at work. Then, before the deadline, something magical happened. Your focus is laser-like and your productivity soars. Cognitive efficiency can explain this phenomenon because you must maximize your learning with the least amount of time invested. Still not sold on the idea? Let’s talk about flow: the blissful state when you are fully immersed in an activity. Quite simply, you are more likely to enter this state when you’re completely focused on the task at hand.

4. Getting More Things Done
Believe it or not, when you don’t start the most important tasks straight away, you may complete more varied tasks. Rather than doing nothing at all, procrastinators often choose to complete lower-priority and unnecessary tasks before tackling major ones. Personally, it has been a long process to persuade me to edit this blog. I had some food, took a shower, checked emails, called my friends, and even finished up my readings and coursework! Although these initial tasks seemed less important, they gave me a sense of accomplishment and alleviated my stress from the critical task. If I go directly into editing, I probably won’t have the time to do other things today. John Perry termed this type of procrastination as ‘structured’ and suggested that by working through a priority list bottom-up, we sometimes complete broader tasks. A criticism of this theory is that it assumes people will eventually work on important tasks, but it is possible to procrastinate and never start.

Some Takeaways

Moderate procrastination may help us because it leaves time for the brain to be creative and make informed decisions. It also boots our performance under stress and allows more diverse tasks. However, these benefits become less significant when it comes to chronic procrastination. Chronic procrastinators postpone tasks continuously, which diminishes self-esteem and may further lead to psychological disorders. A constant state of stress will exhaust you and ultimately prevent you from reaping the benefits of procrastination.

Photo by Tara Winstead from Pexels. 

Overcoming the Dark Side of Procrastination

Hopefully, this blog gives you a novel understanding of procrastination. Again, I am not aiming to encourage procrastination. The overwhelming stress from excessive procrastination may literally make you crazy. However, with a more comprehensive understanding, we can better deal with the dark side of procrastination. For instance, by splitting big deadlines into smaller ones and being free to procrastinate before every deadline, we could get certain arousal levels while not overwhelmed by the huge task. Also, don’t feel too bad at times when you really can’t do anything. Knowing the incubation period, you should accept those downtimes and believe your brain’s efforts in the background.

This is not the end but a time to reflect. The exact causes and effects of procrastination are still unknown; what lies beyond our understanding? The answers, like procrastination itself, may be revealed in due course. Until then, keep questioning and exploring; procrastination is at least far more than a mere obstacle.

Photo by Keegan Houser from Pexels. 

• This post was originally written as part of PB101: Foundations of Psychological Science, which is a core course on the BSc Psychological and Behavioural Science. It has been published with the permission of the author.
• The opinions in this post are of the author, not of the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science or LSE.
• Cover image by geralt from Pixabay.

References

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• Chen, B.-B., & Qu, W. (2017). Life history strategies and procrastination: The role of environmental unpredictability. Personality and Individual Differences, 117, 23–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.05.036
• Corbett, M. (2015). From law to folklore: work stress and the Yerkes-Dodson Law. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 30(6), 741–752. https://doi.org/10.1108/jmp-03-2013-0085
• Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1975). Beyond boredom and anxiety. Jossey-Bass Publishers.
• Demeter, D. V., & Davis, S. E. (2013). Procrastination as a Tool: Exploring Unconventional Components of Academic Success. Creative Education, 04(07), 144–149. https://doi.org/10.4236/ce.2013.47a2018
• Diamond, D. M. (2007). Yerkes-Dodson law [Online Image]. In Neural Plasticity. https://doi.org/10.1155/2007/60803
• Ferrari, J. R. (2013). Procrastination and task avoidance: theory, research, and treatment. Springer-Verlag New York.
• Ferrari, J. R., Keane, S. M., Wolfe, R. N., & Beck, B. L. (n.d.). THE ANTECEDENTS AND CONSEQUENCES OF ACADEMIC EXCUSE-MAKING: Examining Individual Differences in Procrastination.
• Fishburn, P. C., & Rubinstein, A. (1982). Time Preference. International Economic Review, 23(3), 677. https://doi.org/10.2307/2526382
• Kathleen. (2022, December 5). Tomorrow – a mystical land where 99% of all human productivity, motivation and achievement is stored. Kathleen J. Shields. https://www.kathleenjshields.com/inspiration/tomorrow-a-mystical-land-where-99-of-all-human-productivity-motivation-and-achievement-is-stored/
• Patrick Sanaghan Ed.D. (2021). How to Be a “Better” Procrastinator. AuthorHouse.
• Perry, J. (2009). On Procrastination. Writing on the Edge, 19(2), 17–22. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43157297
• Schraw, G., Wadkins, T., & Olafson, L. (2007). Doing the things we do: A grounded theory of academic procrastination. Journal of Educational Psychology, 99(1), 12–25. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.99.1.12
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• Soderberg, C. K., Callahan, S. P., Kochersberger, A. O., Amit, E., & Ledgerwood, A. (2015). The effects of psychological distance on abstraction: Two meta-analyses. Psychological Bulletin, 141(3), 525–548. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000005
• Steel, P. (2007). The nature of procrastination: A meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure. Psychological Bulletin, 133(1), 65–94. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.133.1.65