Each of us happens to postpone a more or less burdensome commitment, thinking of the momentary pleasure of allowing ourselves a moment of disengagement, like staying “another five minutes” under the covers on cold winter mornings. However, there are subjects who are systematically used to postponing commitments and deadlines by falling into the trap of procrastination.
We define procrastination as behavior that leads to intentionally postpone an action despite foreseeable negative consequences, opting for short-term well-being at the cost of long-term benefits.
Those who tend to procrastinate replace priority and important activities with pleasant activities or less relevant or urgent tasks; the procrastination is therefore that small interval that elapses between the moment when we think we face a task (intention) and the one in which we decide to give it up (action).
What we know from research, and which is often not so clear to procrastinators, is that this behavior is strongly associated with negative emotions such as guilt, shame and fear of failure.
Postponing a commitment, such as writing this article or simply washing the dishes, temporarily brings a sort of relief and becomes a strategy for managing negative emotions related to the difficulty or unpleasantness of the task to be completed, consequently reinforcing a behavior that, if implemented systematically, it can have significant long-term costs.
Those who procrastinate therefore put in place a form of avoidance that prevents them from coming into contact with their fears, their insecurities and their limitations. This way of dealing with one’s internal world becomes a failure of emotional, motivational and behavioral self-regulation, so much so that it has been correlated to a behavioral mode that seems almost opposite to the tendency to postpone such as impulsivity.
Research shows us how these two issues share the lack of a cognitive skill called goal management, defined as the ability to actively maintain, and if necessary recover, one’s short- and long-term goals as a guide to own behaviors.
Another characteristic of those who have a tendency to procrastinate is the perfectionism that brings with it the belief of not being able to tackle a task if you are unable to reach a high standard of execution.
The feeling that accompanies those who procrastinate for perfectionism is that they are never ready or confident enough in their abilities, knowledge or skills, ending up devoting themselves to activities that do not involve questioning their personal worth. These and others may be the underlying characteristics of the procrastination mechanism that cognitive-behavioral therapy can help us deal with with management tools and strategies.
As well described in the book “ Sooner or Later I Do It ” by Monica Ramirez Basco , we can begin to become aware of our self-imposed (dutiful), harsh self-criticism or tendency to feel guilty.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy encourages and facilitates the exploration of automatic thoughts, making them aware and proposing a revision according to the change.
It also favors a change of course in avoidance mechanisms , resizing catastrophic thoughts and planning exposures that “train” our system to stay in contact with emotional experiences deemed unsustainable, thus creating a virtuous circle that breaks the recursive mechanism of avoidance .
By exploring the events, beliefs and emotions that participate in the maintenance of procrastination we can also discover how often this is used in relationships as a weapon of passive resistance to requests that we do not feel able to resist.
Deepening these mechanisms can favor their awareness and the consequent programming of changes, the flexibility of rigid all-nothing mechanisms and the promotion of behavioral actions that strengthen self-confidence and one’s own resources.
