Why Do We Procrastinate?

We rethink procrastination by separating passive, perfectionism-fueled avoidance from active, strategic delay that can sharpen focus and creativity. We share stories from the classroom, the writing process, and tax season to show when waiting helps and when it hurts.

• passive procrastination defined and tied to perfectionism
• active procrastination as background processing and triage
• how deadlines improve prioritization and short-term performance
• signals that distinguish helpful delay from harmful avoidance
• practical guardrails for strategic delay that reduce stress
• small-start tactics to break avoidance and build momentum
• when to seek help for anxiety and missed deadlines

Chapters

• 0:00 Procrastination On Campus
• 0:42 Defining Passive Procrastination
• 1:45 Perfectionism’s Hidden Trap
• 2:06 Active Procrastination Explained
• 3:09 The Book Example And Background Processing
• 5:02 Deadlines, Priorities, And Performance
• 7:23 Taxes, Stress, And Short-Term Pressure
• 9:18 When Procrastination Is Fine vs Harmful
• 10:41 Final Guidance And Encouragement

Transcript

Mary: 0:00

Hi, and welcome to a mini episode of No Shrinking Violets. One of the biggest problems that my college students would come to me with was procrastination. They would beat themselves up about not getting things done on a certain timeline. And so what I saw through the years, there seemed to be two different types of procrastination. And interestingly, since then, I have read that this is kind of a theory, the idea of active procrastination and passive procrastination. So I'm going to talk about passive first. That's the one that is truly a problem. And these are students that or people that get paralyzed by the thought of doing something. It's so uncomfortable that they just put anything else in the place of doing it. And often these were, again, in the case of college, these were the students that often ran into trouble to the point that they would not turn in term papers, they wouldn't study, they ended up really floundering. That is a different issue, which I may talk about at another point. I think that is probably more tied to perfectionism, honestly, which is funny because I think if you are a parent of a child like this, or this was you, maybe you had a parent that would be on you, really on you, when these things would happen, because of course we don't want to see someone get failing grades, especially when we know they have the ability. So it seems funny to think perfectionism would lead to procrastination, but that is in cases where someone is so worried that the outcome is not going to be perfect that they just don't do anything. But what I would like to talk about a little more in depth is active procrastination. And I realize I am one of these people because there will be days where I will see things. I need to do this. You know, I have right now I have a favorite pair of jeans that has a hole, and they've been in my closet for, I'm gonna tell you, months. And I just don't get around to mending them. I need to find some kind of patch to sew onto them. I just haven't done it because it's not urgent and I have other things, but it still hangs out there. I still have this sort of script in my head that why aren't you getting to that? Why is it just laying there? But that's because it's not that important. When I have other things, bigger things, it might be, um, for instance, you probably know by now, if you listen to this podcast, that I'm gonna have a book coming out in a couple months. That book was in my head for a very long time. Could I have started it at any point? 100%. When I finally got enough time, because I left a job, full-time job, to work for myself, I had a little bit more time to be able to do that. But what was happening during that time was I was collecting information. So I would be in a situation with a client, and it would kind of spring into my mind, oh, this is sort of like this certain plant that is happy growing in this situation, but struggles in this situation. And I would often use analogies like that in my work. And they kind of went into a sort of file drawer in my brain, and then they were able to come out in my book. Again, it was not urgent. But when we have active procrastination and a more urgent situation, that's when I think I've had my students especially really beat themselves up. These are really high-achieving students. They're students that typically don't start the paper till the 11th hour, or they don't start studying till much too close to the exam versus what research says you should do, but they do fine. They may not always get the A, but they would get a B, or they would easily be passing the class. And these are the students that would really talk to me about I'm just a terrible student, I'm a procrastinator. And I would say, Well, you what kind of grades do you have? Well, I have A's, but I could be doing better. Or I do fine on the exam, but I really have a lot of anxiety before because I put it off. Okay, so there is the choice then. You have the choice to plan ahead and work more gradually, or you are the kind of person that needs to have that higher level of concern to goad you into taking action. And that's more of a kind of a strategic procrastination. So, like I talked about with my book, that one of the things, um, one of the aspects of uh strategic or active procrastination is more um background processing, so enhanced creativity. Your my mind was sort of working on this. I had a lot of information that was brewing. Um and I think sometimes when we're thinking about something like writing a book, I probably made a better decision because had I tried to do that while I was working full-time, it would have taken up my weekends, my evenings. I probably would have resented it. And the other thing that comes into play when we're dealing with things like a deadline, so different than my book, although now I do have a deadline. So sometimes that prioritization, it improves. What are you going to prioritize? So let's go back again to the idea of a student. So many of my students would have five classes at a time. So they wouldn't really be able to mentally make the space or find the concerted energy to study or get a paper done until it was the 11th hour because they had so many other things that were happening. It takes a master of time management to manage the work of a full course load in college. So that was actually helping to prioritize that procrastination because by the time they got to the night before the exam, they had to study, or by the time it was a day before the paper was due, they had to write it. And sometimes that creates more peak performance. And I know it does for me. And I think too, sometimes that reducing stress when you're three months before a project, you think about it and it's stressful. So it's like, well, I'd rather watch Stranger Things on Netflix, or I would rather, you know, go play basketball with my friends, or go shopping, or go to lunches, whatever it is. We fill our time with other things, and that helps us sometimes manage stress of an upcoming project or think about getting your taxes done. I absolutely hate thinking about taxes until right before the deadline. So now I don't have to worry about it. My husband makes sure that we get our taxes done, but I still have to get my spreadsheet done with my costs and expenses and income. So that is an uncomfortable thing for me. But because there's a deadline, or if I think, you know, in the past, if I was gonna get a refund on my taxes, well, heck yeah, that would motivate me to do it sooner. So, point being in all of this, procrastination itself is not bad. It's important to think about when do you procrastinate and what is the outcome? So if you procrastinate on things and the outcome is not good, for instance, maybe you just don't do your taxes because you don't want to think about it and you worry so much you're not gonna do it right, you just don't do them. Well, the outcome of that, the consequence is much worse than dealing with that initial anxiety and you know, finding a way to get them done. If you're someone who procrastinates and does your taxes the day before, and you have that stress of getting the postmark on the, you know, by the date that the taxes are due, that's a short-term stress. You get it done. That's quite different than someone who doesn't do it at all. So if you just tend to put things off until you kind of feel like it, or until you really have to do it, like we had um 20 people here for a gathering over the holidays, and there were little um cleaning projects I could have done beforehand. It wasn't that important, but did I get them done before that party? I did. So sometimes procrastination is okay if it ends up being an outcome that is fine, if you need that pressure to perform better, if you're allowing yourself to mull things over and kind of strategize in your subconscious mind before you, you know, take on the project or start the project. So think about when do you procrastinate? And if you end up getting the thing done, you just happen to put it off till maybe the 11th hour and it's a little bit uncomfortable. Maybe ease up on yourself a little bit. Because I think we have a narrative that you should always plan, you should always get things done well ahead of time. And somebody that's successful never does anything at the last minute. And that's not true. I mean, honestly, right now I record most of these mini sessions on Sunday evening. So, and they go live at 4 a.m. on Monday, Eastern time. So some procrastination is fine. Think about when you do it, if you do it. And if it's a problem, if you're missing deadlines and you're getting penalties on your taxes, or you're a student and you're failing courses because you're not studying or getting papers done, that's when you want to get somebody to help you. Start to manage the anxiety, manage that tendency to be a perfectionist and find a different solution. Those are my musings for today. Until next time, go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant violet that you are.