{"id":63002,"date":"2020-01-23T16:50:08","date_gmt":"2020-01-23T21:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=63002"},"modified":"2025-09-30T10:33:18","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T14:33:18","slug":"procrastination-problem-tim-pychyl","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/procrastination-problem-tim-pychyl\/","title":{"rendered":"Procrastination Problem? Tim Pychyl Knows Why"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Procrastination Problem? Tim Pychyl Knows Why\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

A long time ago, Tim Pychyl used to procrastinate now and then. He can\u2019t do that anymore. He knows way too much about the subject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On any given day, the professor in Carleton University\u2019s Psychology Department is quoted as an expert in publications and online articles across North America and beyond. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Tim
Tim Pychyl<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s an author, winner of the prestigious 3M National Teaching Fellowship, the outgoing Director of the Centre for Initiatives in Education, and the first-ever recipient of the University Medal for Distinguished Teaching. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But understanding procrastination is his passion. While Pychyl believes everyone procrastinates to some extent, he says that it can really plague some people\u2019s lives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in 1995, when Pychyl completed his PhD at Carleton under the supervision of Brian Little, there were few publications on the subject. In fact, he had no idea that he would end up studying the subject at all. His doctoral dissertation was on how the goals that people pursue in their lives, their personal projects, affect well-being. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But while interviewing participants for his study, he realized a theme ran through each conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cIt was the things people said they were going to do, but weren\u2019t doing, that really helped me understand their well-being,\u201d Pychyl says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cAnd for those people who were procrastinating, their well-being was in the toilet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s when Pychyl wanted to stop studying what people were doing and start studying what people said they were going to do . . . but never actually did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Pychyl, his research is also a way of teaching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI probably wouldn\u2019t do any research if I didn\u2019t have my students,\u201d he laughs. \u201cThe main focus of my career is teaching, but research is a way of teaching in the university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through collaboration with his students and colleagues, Pychyl came up with the mood repair theory of procrastination. The theory looks at emotion regulation as a critical point of how we deal with procrastination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Book
Procrastination, Health, and Well-Being<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

His latest book, Procrastination, Health, and Well-Being, co-edited with Carleton alumna Fuschia Sirois, now at the University of Sheffield, looks deeply at the importance of mindfulness and emotion regulation. In it, he argues that the ability to deal with negative emotions is directly related to our ability to stop procrastinating. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are more downsides to procrastinating beyond the mere delay in getting started. In fact, Sirois found a relation between procrastination, coronary heart disease and hypertension. <\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s not the delay that\u2019s the problem. It\u2019s the self-blame and the emotional disengagement that leads to internal struggles that undermine your health,\u201d Pychyl says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In addition, Sirois and Pychyl explain that there are the indirect effects of fewer wellness behaviours, such as the \u201cI\u2019ll exercise or diet later\u201d adage, as well as more treatment delay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some researchers focus a lot of their attention on cognition and what we think with regard to procrastination. But Pychyl argues that this isn\u2019t necessarily the thing we should be focusing on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all about our feelings,\u201d Pychyl says. \u201cProcrastination is the misregulation of emotion. We think that by putting things off, we\u2019re going to feel better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We all know that desire to reward ourselves. Maybe one more scoop of ice cream will satisfy us. Or if we buy that new outfit, we\u2019ll be a little bit happier. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re eating calories we can\u2019t afford and spending money we can\u2019t afford. Procrastination is wasting time we can\u2019t afford.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And although we can\u2019t afford it, Pychyl admits that in the short term, it is powerfully rewarding. And that\u2019s what makes procrastination so undeniably tempting. The present self benefits, of course, but not the future self.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you eat that whole row of cookies, later on you\u2019re probably going to feel a little bit sick,\u201d Pychyl says. \u201cIt\u2019s also horrible for your insulin levels and your body, not to mention how it undermines any weight goals you may have.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Tim
Tim Pychyl<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Pychyl explains that people procrastinate as a way to cope. The coping mechanism is avoidance. By avoiding negative emotions associated with a task, such as anxiety, boredom, frustration or resentment, you can avoid experiencing them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what makes procrastination so harmful is that the tasks don\u2019t actually go away. Eventually you\u2019re left with the tasks to complete, the negative emotions again, plus the added stress of a time constraint. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cProcrastination is an emotion-regulation problem,\u201d Pychyl says.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s not a time management problem. It\u2019s about really dealing with our feelings.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

He has some advice for the next time you tell yourself that you don\u2019t feel like doing something. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a matter about feeling like it, no one said you have to wait until you feel like it,\u201d Pychyl says. \u201cYou hear people say: \u2018I don\u2019t want to do it\u2019, but here is the whole point . . . what does wanting have to do with it?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pychyl says that you can\u2019t simply supress or deny your emotions, instead you have to deal with them. His research has shown that in order to get the task done, you have to be mindful of the task at hand and be non-judgemental of your own feelings toward it. According to Pychyl, the best way to achieve this is with mindfulness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pychyl summarized research by Adrienne Taren, a researcher studying mindfulness at the University of Pittsburgh, who found that eight weeks of mindfulness meditation reduces amygdala volume, a part of your limbic system that many may know as the “fight or flight\u2019\u2019 response. Procrastination makes its home here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But by being mindful, we can actually shrink the size of it, thus making the \u201camygdala hijack\u201d of procrastination less likely. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once you\u2019ve nailed mindfulness, Pychyl\u2019s go-to strategy to nix procrastinating is simple. Just get started.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cI say: what\u2019s the next action I need to do, if I was to get started? And now what I\u2019ve done is I\u2019ve taken my attention off my emotions and put it on the next action.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

He suggests that this approach is similar to mindfulness meditation where you\u2019re focusing on your breathing. When we\u2019re able to gently and deliberately bring our attention back to the breath in meditation, we\u2019re developing the skill to do the same with the tasks we face. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s how he moves from focusing on emotions to focusing on action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One major hindrance to this is social media, something that wasn\u2019t an issue when Pychyl started out. Pychyl says social media is so tempting because it addresses one of our basic needs. There are three major needs that must be met as humans. The first being the need for intimacy or social needs, the second, a need for competence and, third, the need for autonomy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe thing with social media is that it feeds our social needs, we always feel connected to people. So, our competence needs, which might be school work, they\u2019re real, but so are our social needs,\u201d Pychyl says. \u201cAnd social media feeds that, therefore it trumps our competence needs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bottomlessness of the Internet can send even the most motivated person down a YouTube spiral. A lot of us have experienced an attempt to answer a few e-mails before finding ourselves five episodes into a Netflix binge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pychyl argues that multi-tasking with technology is incredibly challenging, so the best way to get a task done is to just put it down to reduce temptation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the study of social media\u2019s effect on procrastination is relatively new, Pychyl says that the study of procrastination itself has always fascinated his students, thanks to their shared experience of it.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cStudent\u2019s always bring something to the table,\u201d Pychyl says. \u201cAnd then together we do something bigger than they could do on their own or I could do on my own.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Pychyl sees the future of procrastination research heading toward unpacking the neurophysiology behind it, particularly as it helps us understand emotion regulation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He attended the 11th Biennial Procrastination Research Conference at the University of Sheffield on July 25-26 to present the most recent studies conducted by the Procrastination Research Group<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not surprisingly, he packed early. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo last-minute rush for this researcher.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—
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A long time ago, Tim Pychyl used to procrastinate now and then. He can\u2019t do that anymore. He knows way too much about the subject. On any given day, the professor in Carleton University\u2019s Psychology Department is quoted as an expert in publications and online articles across North America and beyond. He\u2019s an author, winner […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":63003,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[13],"cu_story_tag":[1920],"class_list":["post-63002","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_story_type-research-discovery","cu_story_tag-faculty-of-arts-and-social-sciences"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/63002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/63002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98043,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/63002\/revisions\/98043"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=63002"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=63002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}