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Procrastination is an emotional problem - Fast Company
If you stop treating procrastination like a time-management issue, it becomes easier to manage.
I told myself I’d start writing at 10 a.m. and crank out a few sections of this article before lunch. It’s now 1:40 p.m.–and I’m finally getting started. What happened?
In the commonly held view of procrastination, I failed to appropriately manage my time. Or maybe I was just lazy, unmotivated, distracted, or all of the above. But new research on the psychology of procrastination suggests something different. Maybe the problem lies not with my willpower, but with my emotions.
“Procrastination is not a time-management problem, it’s an emotion-management problem,” says Tim Pychyl, an associate professor of psychology at Carleton University and blogger at Psychology Today, who spoke to me about the mounting evidence connecting procrastination to mood.
If you stop treating procrastination like a time-management issue, it becomes easier to manage.
I told myself I’d start writing at 10 a.m. and crank out a few sections of this article before lunch. It’s now 1:40 p.m.–and I’m finally getting started. What happened?
In the commonly held view of procrastination, I failed to appropriately manage my time. Or maybe I was just lazy, unmotivated, distracted, or all of the above. But new research on the psychology of procrastination suggests something different. Maybe the problem lies not with my willpower, but with my emotions.
“Procrastination is not a time-management problem, it’s an emotion-management problem,” says Tim Pychyl, an associate professor of psychology at Carleton University and blogger at Psychology Today, who spoke to me about the mounting evidence connecting procrastination to mood.