Procrastination: Saboteur of Healthy Habits

She woulda, shoulda, coulda. But ultimately, Karen Phillips didn’t. So the Boston school teacher wonders if she can break free from the kung-fu grip of procrastination and start to turn her life around.

The watershed moment was last New Year’s Eve. Phillips took stock of her stuck-in-second-gear life and decided to make some changes. In one fell swoop, she resolved to lose 20 pounds, climb a 14,000-foot peak, get accepted into an MBA program, and begin dating again after a five-year drought.

So far, so bad. Phillips’ take-no-prisoners attitude is missing in action. After a few half-hearted shows at her fitness center, she quit going by March. By May, her MBA application still hadn’t seen a drop of ink. By June, some 25 would-be suitors had responded to her Internet ad, yet August arrived without her having even read their missives.

Phillips isn’t lazy. Within her structured work setting, she shines. But downtime finds her adrift like a rudderless ship. She can’t focus, can’t execute, can’t get the job done. Now entering middle age, she’s starting to wonder if she’s a lost cause. Looking down the road of life, she sees not a rosy future but a clouded horizon.

“It’s like I’m paralyzed, like I’m always hanging in limbo,” she says. “I have no problems doing the everyday working and cooking. But I can’t make headway with my real priorities—the stuff that would balance out my life, make me smile, and help define who I am.”

Phillips is far from alone, says California psychologist Neil Fiore, PhD. In this age of crazy demands and microsecond attention spans, chronic procrastination goes far beyond unclimbed mountains and abandoned aerobics. Experts estimate that 20% of Americans are chronic procrastinators. Left to run its course, procrastination can imperil health, self-esteem, finances, relationships, ambition, and dreams.

“Procrastination can and has completely destroyed lives,” Fiore says. “I’m talking about people who have not handed in their forms for medical school, not completed their doctoral dissertations, not sent in their [book] manuscripts, have failed to get married, have children, develop satisfying careers, and more.”

Procrastinators make priorities of life’s footnotes but leave potentially transforming life chapters unexplored. Far from innocuous, procrastination discredits reputations, squanders potential, and leaves people with bitter end-of-life realizations of what could have been. Properly seen, procrastination is the ultimate Faustian bargain. It delays discomfort, but also cheats us of life’s richness.

A closer look at this insidious phenomenon is in order.

Delaying Hurts Health

Researchers view chronic procrastination as a significant health issue. When people habitually race against an unforgiving clock, the resulting flood of stress hormones can wreak havoc on immune systems, triggering acid reflux, insomnia, colds, flu, migraine headaches, mood swings, aggression, and situational depression.

Studies show that chronic procrastinators forced to burn the midnight oil go into sleep debt and wake up feeling tired, sluggish, and moody. Stressed out and facing impossible deadlines, we’re at risk of slipping into the bad old habits of junk food, tobacco, and excess alcohol.

Phillips learned this the hard way. Before beginning her exercise regimen on January 1, her cholesterol read 205 and her blood pressure 145/90. When she stopped going to the fitness center in March, her can-do spirit fizzled, touching off a vicious round of comfort eating, weight gain, social isolation, and “winter blues.” The final kicker? She fired up her first cigarette in nearly a decade and now needs two medications to control her hypertension. The take-no-prisoners gal of New Year’s Eve has gone out with a whimper.

Procrastination strikes women in unique ways. Mental health professionals have long noted the tendency among mothers to elevate the needs of others above their own.
Atlanta resident Sheila Feinstein is a case in point. For five years, the mother of three kept putting off her annual mammograph despite her own mother having succumbed to breast cancer when Feinstein was a college sophomore. Two years ago, Feinstein felt two lumps in her right breast but explained them away as recurring cysts. Only when her husband pleaded did she seek an informed medical opinion. The laboratory called back with bad news: early-stage cancer. Successful surgery followed.

Similar story with “Gloria,” a thirtysomething former grad student at Illinois State University. For six long months, she ignored throbbing tooth pain until it became unbearable. During an examination, she sheepishly confessed to her dentist that 15 years had passed since her last checkup. He responded with a diagnosis of three severely abscessed teeth. His $1,100 bill reinforced the old chestnut about a stitch in time saving nine.

Michigan undergrad Katie Miller admits to being “a major, major procrastinator.” During one semester, she turned in an important end-of-term assignment three days late. Her Army-trained professor didn’t hesitate to lower the boom, penalizing her one letter grade per day. Miller received a D for the rarely offered course and will now graduate a year late.

In these and countless other cases, chronic procrastination isn’t so much about failure to prioritize as it is ritualized self-sabotage and self-neglect that borders on self-abuse. Chronic procrastination is corrosive, damaging credibility, self-respect, and goal attainment. People can work hard to succeed, to look good, to sound informed, and be really put together—and then shoot themselves in the foot by missing a deadline or forgetting a key appointment.

It also engenders resentment in others. The young father who delays on designing a PowerPoint marketing presentation in favor of marathon video gaming must play catch-up over a hectic weekend, thus depriving his family of needed quality time together.

Procrastination also accounts for untold numbers of women failing to get out of toxic or unfulfilling relationships. A woman may viscerally know when it’s time to bail but can find dozens of distractions that postpone the inevitable. In the meantime weeks, months, and years tick by—and with them, the best years of her life.

No One Is Immune

Massachusetts psychologist William Knaus, EdD, says procrastination is found even among super achievers. A top-flight attorney may log “30 hours of delaying tactics to avoid what might amount to five minutes worth of effort—just to avoid the discomfort,” he says. Knaus has authored several books on procrastination and is a seasoned psychotherapist.

Faced with an important task or decision, he says, procrastinators will surf the Internet, tweak their iPods, channel surf, run errands, organize cupboards, take cat naps—anything but the real priority. Research documents how “cyberslackers” can chew up 20 to 30 hours a week mindlessly surfing the Net yet have nothing to show for their indulgence.

“Procrastination,” he says, “can be a coexisting condition with a fear of failure, perfectionistic tendencies, and low frustration tolerance.” It is also associated with depression and anxiety.

Procrastinators sometimes pay dearly for their stall tactics, Knaus says. Procrastination can preempt efforts at losing weight, becoming more self-confident, getting better jobs, finding love, establishing good credit, and reconciling with an estranged parent, child, or friend. The halls of academia resonate with stories of grad students whose procrastination has derailed years of arduous work and financial investment.

It’s no wonder then that Knaus says procrastination is the linchpin of self-improvement. The procrastinator may think she has an unlimited inventory of days to fritter away, but windows of opportunity have a way of slamming shut without warning. When we tolerate clinical depression, dead-end careers, or soul-draining relationships, we get that much closer to buying into defeatism.

Experts suggest that procrastinators can begin turning things around by first considering the opportunity cost of their delaying tactics. A twentysomething career woman may think nothing of watching 30 hours of reality television or Tivo’d soap operas each week. By doing so, however, she will deprive herself of exercise and good nutrition that will make her feel better, think better, and look better.

Researchers debate the psychodynamic underpinnings of procrastination, but Knaus sees “discomfort avoidance” as the fundamental driver. Procrastinators delay, he says, because they make mountains out of molehills—and molehills out of life’s routine challenges. In the absence of obvious deadlines and visible consequences, it’s easy to slide into the delay game.

Some people procrastinate because they’re addicted to the endorphin rush of crisis management; others because the task at hand triggers fears of failure (or of success), is threatening to fragile egos, or simply because the activity is flat out boring. “People get much more gratification,” Fiore says, “by surfing the Web, watching television, or eating than by facing fears and doubts, or facing something that’s boring or challenging and just doing it.”

People can stop their procrastinating ways, Knaus says, by staring down the discomfort and moving forward. “Have you ever accomplished anything in life,” he says, “that didn’t involve some degree of uncertainty, discomfort, and effort? It’s almost a no-brainer. If you follow through on what you fear, you’re going to make progress.”

Fiore says taking ownership of the task helps break the procrastination logjam. “Once you choose to do something, remarkably the resistance stops,” he says. “You break the inner conflict and ambivalence, freeing your energy to move forward.”

Fiore believes chronic procrastinators psych themselves out by allowing lower brain functions—the “fight-or-flight” response or needing the approval of the pack—to override our highly evolved prefrontal cortex. When fear triumphs over reason, it’s a victory for our tree-dwelling, fear-ridden ancestors.

Fiore counsels a “fear inoculation shot” that breaks intimidating tasks into manageable bits. The key is to set realistic goals and adopt a do-it-now attitude. As success begets success, new good habits replace old bad ones.

Having realistic expectations helps. Fiore greets his tasks with this mind-set: “I’m going to do it humanly; I’m going to do it adequately in the time available, and for the priority or level it deserves.”

Calling positive affirmations bogus, Fiore says fun is the most motivating reward for hard work. “My mantra is, ‘This is awful. This is stupid. This is one of the dumbest projects in the world. If I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it calmly, without ambivalence, and get it done, so I can go out and play tennis.’”

Just make sure you don’t miss that tennis match.

— Matthew Robb