{"id":956,"date":"2015-06-04T15:29:08","date_gmt":"2015-06-04T19:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dmcccorp.org\/edu\/?p=956"},"modified":"2015-06-04T15:58:59","modified_gmt":"2015-06-04T19:58:59","slug":"ill-do-it-later-why-people-procrastinate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dmcccorp.org\/edu\/ill-do-it-later-why-people-procrastinate\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI\u2019ll Do It Later\u201d \u2014 Why People Procrastinate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Procrastination can have far-reaching effects on important activities and decisions, such as completing tasks at work, obtaining medical treatment, and saving for retirement. A study of more than 22,000 people suggests that chronic procrastinators tend to have lower salaries and a higher likelihood of unemployment.<\/p>\n

Academic research provides some insights into procrastination that may be helpful if you or someone you know has a tendency to put off important tasks.<\/p>\n

\"WA_15023_Ill_Do_It_Later\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Repairing Your Mood<\/strong>
\nProcrastinators often feel anxiety about a task, so they try to make themselves feel better through \u201cmood repair\u201d \u2014 by doing something more enjoyable, such as surfing the Web, walking the dog, or making another pot of coffee.\u00a0If this sounds familiar, you may be able to modify your behavior by doing some of the following.<\/p>\n

Imagine your future self.<\/strong>\u00a0One study found that people who viewed a digital image of themselves as they might appear in old age would contribute more to their retirement accounts than those who viewed a current image.\u00a0On a more immediate level, try to imagine how good you might feel when you complete a project compared with the less pleasant feelings you might have if you don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Take the plunge.\u00a0<\/strong>Although a big project may seem daunting, getting a start \u2014 any start \u2014 could reduce the anxiety. Depending on the project, this might be a small first step or jumping in and preparing an outline, rough draft, or initial research, knowing you can polish and improve it later.<\/p>\n

Forgive yourself.\u00a0<\/strong>If you have postponed a task, don\u2019t waste time feeling guilty. In most cases, \u201cbetter late than never\u201d really does apply.<\/p>\n

Living in the Present<\/strong>
\nProcrastinators tend to be \u201cpresent biased\u201d rather than \u201ctime consistent\u201d in their decision making, which means they tend to over-value immediate rewards and delay tasks whose rewards may be in the future. They might intend to take action tomorrow, but when tomorrow comes they postpone the task again, because tomorrow is now the present and they don\u2019t want to act in the present.<\/p>\n

This tendency also affects the response to reminders, such as an email that a bill is due or a note that pops up on your calendar. If a reminder is regular and expected, a procrastinator may treat it as another present event to be pushed into the future. On the other hand, unexpected reminders tend to be more effective.\u00a0It may be difficult to set up random reminders for yourself, but most calendar programs allow you to set up two separate reminders, and the second one might catch your attention. For some bills, you might set up automatic payments.<\/p>\n

Whatever you decide to do to control procrastination, here\u2019s one piece of advice:\u00a0Do it now!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Procrastination can have far-reaching effects on important activities and decisions, such as completing tasks at work, obtaining medical treatment, and saving for retirement. A study of more than 22,000 people suggests that chronic procrastinators tend to have lower salaries and a higher likelihood of unemployment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5shu1-fq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmcccorp.org\/edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmcccorp.org\/edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmcccorp.org\/edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmcccorp.org\/edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmcccorp.org\/edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=956"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmcccorp.org\/edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":959,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmcccorp.org\/edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956\/revisions\/959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmcccorp.org\/edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmcccorp.org\/edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmcccorp.org\/edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}