BeDo

I was having drinks with a friend the other day, a fellow PhD candidate, and we were swapping procrastination stories. She confessed that it had been weeks since she did any writing. “It’s fine,” I insisted. “You’ve been busy with other important things.”

“And I watch a lot of Netflix,” she added. “Like, a lot.”

I shrugged. “You’re just stressed. It’s ok to take some ‘me time’.”

I’ve certainly used the ‘self-care’ card to let myself off the hook. When writing my thesis was making me stressed, I went to the gym instead. Or if the library was beginning to feel claustrophobic, I went shopping for towels. It’s retail therapy, I told myself. And besides, I did need new towels. Editing my bibliography was getting monotonous, so I spent an hour watching cat videos on YouTube. Self-care, I said. Besides, I said for the millionth time, I work better under pressure.

But when is ‘self-care’ just a convenient excuse to get out of work that needs to get done? And is the ‘benefit’ of taking time off from the to-do list greater than the stress that will come from being unprepared for the looming deadline? 

Not really, according to a study of college students in the United States. The study shows that while procrastinators had lower levels of stress and better wellbeing during the semester—likely owing to having more time to pursue enjoyable activities—ultimately, they reported higher levels of stress and poorer wellbeing than the students who had maintained a consistent level of productivity throughout the semester.  In addition to this, they reported lower grades and quality of work.

Beyond implications for our work, why is procrastination bad for our wellbeing? Studies show that there are significant psychological consequences from putting off tasks, resulting in feelings of anxiety, guilt, and shame for many of us. Putting off tasks (the study showed that participants tended to do quicker and easier tasks early and delayed more difficult, stressful tasks for later) results in simultaneous relief and underlying guilt.

The key to being able to resist temptation to put a task off until later may, according to one study, lie in emotional regulation. Delaying tasks may, for many of us, be the result of stress and an underlying belief that our procrastination will make us feel better. We believe that our future selves will be more emotionally equipped to handle the tasks than our present self is. The problem with this thinking is that it puts all the burden on our future selves, and we don’t address emotions in the present that are causing us to procrastinate in the first place.  

Many of us are probably familiar with the typical advice given to procrastinators—tips like breaking up large tasks into smaller, more manageable ones, or setting multiple deadlines for yourself on a daily basis. If the issue is emotional self-regulation, though, then these tips don’t really get to the root of the problem. Some scholars say that the solution here requires some internal deep-diving to figure out what causes stress and anxiety about the tasks at hand, what’s making them so difficult for us to get to. We also have to find something positive and meaningful about the job. For me, that means trying to fall back in love with my thesis. Why did I start it in the first place? What sparked joy for me in the field? 

Another important strategy for procrastinators, according to a 2010 study, also among university students, is self-forgiveness. The study found that those who forgave themselves after procrastinating on an important task were less likely to do so on future assignments.

Lastly, and this gets to the social side of things (which I love), a 2011 paper in Psychological Science found that couples are more likely to procrastinate if they believe their partner will help them finish a task or let them off the hook for it. In applying this lesson beyond a romantic relationship context, we should hold each other accountable, without shaming each other (or ourselves). This, I think, is a beautiful example of how ‘self-care’ is actually ‘collective care’.

One of the things I’ve found most beneficial for me during the thesis-writing process has been having colleagues call me up and suggest we go to a café and write together for a couple hours. I feel much more motivated and less distracted when there’s someone sitting across from me asking how it’s going. Writing retreats, as well, do wonders for me when it comes down to getting my writing done and dusted, particularly because they’re often so regimented and have accountability mechanisms in place, like hourly check-ins with a writing partner. 

So, if I could go back in time to having cocktails with my colleague who admitted she was watching too much Netflix, instead of shrugging it off and telling her she was just engaging in some ‘self-care’, I think I’d say something different. I’d probably agree that writing really really sucks sometimes, and that it’s ok to not be productive 100% of the time. And then I’d ask her how we can support one another so that we can get to our deadlines in a happy, healthy way.