It’s just days until the deadline. Maybe it’s hours. Whatever the task may be, procrastination is a reality during the busy holiday season. For many of us, procrastination is a reality all the time.
“We procrastinate because we can't do everything we want to do, and when we weigh different factors and prioritize some tasks, others get pushed back,” said Yuko Munakata, a professor of psychology in the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis.
In a recent paper, Munakata charted some of the factors that contribute to procrastination in both children and adults. She also shared some tips on how we can build the motivation to get started on that last-minute holiday shopping and any other tasks we need done.
How does procrastination affect us?
Procrastination is a failure of self-regulation that everyone experiences. Overcoming procrastination on any task begins with the motivation to get to work. Research literature on procrastination identifies four factors that determine how motivated we will be to get started:
- How valuable completing the task is to us
- How confident we are that we can complete the task
- The delay in time before the task is due
- Our own impulsiveness
Munakata studies executive function in children in her Cognition in Context Lab at the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain. Executive function involves goal maintenance and self-control, both of which are involved in procrastination.
Emotions are central to procrastination, she said, and the way we deal with the anxiety it causes can build habits that make procrastination even worse. Sometimes a task, like holiday shopping or a deadline for school or work, can feel so grueling that it triggers negative emotions like stress and anxiety. Instead of addressing the root cause by starting the task, we might try to fix those feelings.
“We try to repair those bad feelings by cleaning the house or going on social media to watch cat videos,” said Munakata. “Another part of the procrastination loop is if you associate a task with some bad feeling and then take this alternative approach to make yourself feel better. You can learn that kind of habit.”
How to overcome procrastination
Of the four main factors that affect how much we procrastinate, two of them — the length of the deadline and our own impulsiveness — are outside of our control. Munakata suggests instead to focus on the two procrastination factors we can control: how valuable the task is to us and how confident we are that we can complete the task.
By increasing the value of the task, Munakata helped her kids to get over their procrastination with chores. She did this by finding ways to make chores fun, and if not fun then with a fun reward once they’re finished. Now, her kids blast music while unloading the dishwasher and hurry through wiping down the table after dinner to start a family board game.
“They're tapping into increasing the value of the outcome to get over the threshold for initiating that task,” said Munakata.
During the holiday season this year, Munakata used another the strategy to overcome her own procrastination with holiday shopping during the busy end of the academic term: she took steps to increase her confidence in being able to get the task done.
To start, she set aside protected time to go out. She also broke the task down into smaller decisions that she knew would be easier to achieve and identified low-hanging fruit.
In her case, low-hanging fruit was to buy easy but meaningful gifts. When she and her family first arrived in Davis, they needed to buy new housewares. That year, housewares became holiday gifts that were fun because they were not the usual gifts but solved a very real problem. This year, kitchen towels were among the low-hanging fruit but were also meaningful because they remind the family of their first year in Davis.
“It can be really helpful to convince yourself that you can get this done by saying, ‘Here's this protected time, here's low hanging fruit.’ These can get you started,” said Munakata.
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE THESE STORIES
New Study Finds Partner's Happiness Linked to Lower Stress Hormone Levels in Older Couples
New research in psychology has found that that older couples have lower levels of the stress hormone when their partners feel positive emotions. This effect was even stronger for people who reported higher satisfaction in their relationships.
Asthma May Place Children at Risk of Memory Difficulties, New Research Finds
Asthma is associated with memory difficulties in children, and early onset of asthma may exacerbate memory deficits, according to a new study from the College of Letters and Science. The study is the first of its kind to connect asthma to memory deficits in children.