Ariane de Gennaro

More than 80 percent of college students procrastinate when working on their assignments. But there are tips on dealing with the unproductive habit. 

Procrastination is often synonymous with laziness or a lack of self-control. Psychology and mental health researchers, however, say the explanation of procrastination goes deeper than a lack of motivation. Procrastination is a result of an internal conflict between the rational desire to complete a task and the instinctual aversion to doing unpleasant work, they say.

“Procrastination is a case where two things come into conflict: what you want most and what you want now,” Tamar Gendler ’87, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and philosophy professor, told the News. “The reason those two things can come apart is because we are temporally extended beings. We exist through time and we are responsive to circumstance.”

According to Gendler, human brains have evolved to be complicated in a way that allows no one part of the brain to have full control over our actions. Actions are partially controlled by the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that controls reflective thought, but also by the rest of the brain, which deals with habits, situational opportunities and instinctual responses. 

By Gendler’s definition, “what we want most” is to complete the task, while “what we want now” is to do anything else. 

The desire to complete the task stems from long-term commitments and reflective life plans — specialties of the prefrontal cortex. However, if the task requires undertaking an unpleasant action, the instinctual, short-term and response-driven section of the brain will kick in and create a desire to do anything except for the task at hand. If the latter desire overpowers the former, the result is procrastination.

“People may have intentions to complete something successfully, but become concerned that they can’t do it successfully,” John Dividio, a professor of psychology at Yale, said. “What they tend to do is adopt strategies that create a self-fulfilling prophecy that really divert them from the most effective way to complete the task.”

According to Dovidio, the expectation of failure and the perceived difficulty of a task often drive people to procrastinate. The anxiety caused by delaying an important task can result in “productive procrastination” — manifested in any number of activities that relieve the anxiety of being unproductive, but that ultimately do not contribute to achieving the task in a meaningful way. 

Dovidio provided an example of a student with the task of writing an essay. Rather than begin writing, the student might go to the library and spend hours reading about the topic in order to soothe their productivity-related anxiety and not end up any closer to their end goal of a finished essay.

Paul Hoffman, the director of Yale Mental Health and Counseling, cited studies estimating that 50 to 95 percent of college students reported procrastinating at some point. 

Overcoming procrastination

Dovidio recommended going into any task with the belief that one can succeed. The right mindset is essential to limiting the anxiety that causes productive procrastination instead of true productivity. He also advised students to limit distractions and break large, daunting tasks into smaller, more achievable steps. 

Another strategy, shared by both Dovidio and Hoffman, is creating a structured routine for accomplishing tasks. Having a set environment and time of day to do unpleasant work makes the act of getting started a habitual action, rather than a decision.

Gendler emphasized that choosing to work on a difficult assignment rather than procrastinating is no different than suppressing any other instinct.

“Engaging in activities with regard to which we tend to procrastinate requires inhibition of our typical response to a cue,” Gendler said. “But we’re suppressing instincts all the time. You go to Commons, your friend gets the food that you wish you had gotten. You have an instinct to reach over and grab it off their plate. You probably don’t do it. You’ve over-learned the need to inhibit that.”

The same barriers for not eating food off of another person’s plate have analogs that can be applied towards not procrastinating, she said.

For example, eating someone else’s food goes against social expectations and results in negative consequences. By joining a study group where the social expectation is to do work, one can create the same social incentive not to procrastinate.

Students struggling with procrastination can reach out to a community wellness specialist for support through the Yale College Community Care program.