I learned a new word last week, which is “procrastination”. Procrastination is intentionally delaying a task that needs to be done even though you know that it will come with a cost. Margaret Atwood, who is best known as the acclaimed author of “The Handmaid’s Tale” and has sold many millions of books, described procrastination as it is like going into a very cold lake when you’ve decided you’re going to go swimming in it, and you put your foot in but soon, you take it out. She is also a self-proclaimed world expert on procrastination. Procrastination is not as difficult to overcome as we might think. Fuschia Sirois, who is a psychologist in the UK and studying procrastination, knows that the root of procrastination is actually something far sneakier than laziness. It’s not avoiding work but avoiding feelings, more specifically, negative emotions. Procrastination is about mood regulation. So, if a task made you lack confidence, you feel incompetency, insecurity, fear of failure, and anxiety.

I learned that 80 to 95 percent of students in school tend to procrastinate and half of them do it chronically. But it doesn’t disappear when they graduate. About 15 to 20 percent of adults are chronic procrastinators. At first, I didn’t think that a lot of people are procrastinators. I thought a few people are. But I was surprised to know that. Procrastinators tend to feel pressure to start tasks immediately and finish them ahead of schedule. If you are actively doing something else, it is pretty clear that you are not lazy, but you are just avoiding a task that stirs up negative emotions. And if you are a procrastinator, you have higher levels of stress. It is because you tend to have poor sleep quality and tend not to exercise as much. So, you have got difficulty regulating yourself, which can lead to depression and anxiety. Also, they actually put off asking for help for those mental health issues. Then, they are called meta-procrastinators. It is sure that people feel guilty when they procrastinate. But that guilt does not operate in the same way that it operates for most people. Sometimes, guilt could be a motivating emotion.