The Problem with "Procrastination"
By: Svea Wenzler
I write this a mere day before the deadline. It is difficult not to feel guilty about it. Keeping perspective is even harder when we get down on ourselves, when the pressure mounts, so I thought I would take this opportunity to write about “Procrastination”.
It is a fairly common client concern that shows up in therapy - the question "why is it taking me so long to decide”. Often this concern is presented with a sigh of frustration, sadness, a touch of shame. If we take too long to decide, we are somehow automatically procrastinating? That just doesn’t seem fair, it doesn’t tell the whole story.
Still, there is an emphasis on making decisions, taking action. After all, we live in a society that values quick decision making as something of a positive personality trait. Our culture seems to demand certainty and quick decisions, even as the world around us becomes more uncertain and conditions can change quickly. We have moralized this behavior of decision making to the point that we feel individually as possibly failing ourselves and our loved ones if we cannot make quick decisions. We can be led to think that this means something bad about ourselves, or that we have a faulty thinking style.
We ask ourselves does this mean I don't know what I want? Why am I the only one so bad at making decisions? Were my teachers/ parents right when they said I always procrastinate and that's going to be a problem for the rest of my life?
Clinically, these thoughts and questions can show up as the following feelings or behaviors:
Anxiety
Shame
Depression
Significant questioning of one’s own judgement
Codependency
Isolation
Feeling stuck or helpless
Resentment in relationships
I would like to expand upon the idea of what it takes to make decisions. When clients come to therapy, we are talking about big life decisions. Choices that demand and require careful consideration and time spent in thought. We have conversations about possible outcomes, possible losses, possible necessary requirements, identity questions that might arise and identify client values around their decisions. When we take a long time, this does not mean we are “procrastinating”, instead we can reframe it as careful deliberation.
One reason we may spend a lot of time deliberating a decision is that conflicting values might be coming up for us. Perhaps you are being offered a promotion and some of the work you are expected to do might conflict with things you believe, and you might still want to move up in your career and make more money. You might be trying to figure out which value is more important to use in this decision. A lot of the time we are dealing with the anticipated impact of regret. Regret as feared and can sometimes lead us to making a fear-based decision. Fear-based decisions don't often involve our values or integrity, they can also let us know that we might not feel that we have the power to make a decision that reflects our values. It is normal to feel anxiety as a result of conflicting values coming up, and common to “procrastinate” as a result of feeling anxious.
Sometimes we leave things to the last minute, because it forces our hand. We can’t think about it that way, we just have to act. This can even function as a mechanism to allow for minimizing the experience of anxiety or dread. It also shortens the experience of anxiety, or of decision making, since we leave ourselves little time for it.
If we believe that there is a moral or personal failing involved in our behavior, then we will likely feel shame and as a result, isolate. Staying away from things and people that require decision making also serves to keep us disconnected. What we really need is to feel safely connected. That could mean discussing our query with a trusted person, referring to spiritual or meaningful writings that can help guide you, going to online forums to see what other people say and hopefully gain a sense of a shared experience. We will all have to make impossibly difficult decisions throughout our lives, and we need support for those times.
Another reason we often struggle making decisions in a quick manner, is that we are worried about judgment and what others or society expects of us. Will our decision align with the expectations of others? Will our decision be understood? Will our intentions be understood? There is a lot to think about. It helps to have a calm, curious conversation instead of beating ourselves up with the pressure of immediacy. We are afraid of feeling judged, and want to protect ourselves from a feeling of shame. So we wait, we consider the challenges, the possible outcomes and judgments that we are willing to live with- this is not an easy feat. We need time for this.
If “Procrastination” has become a problem to the point of questioning our own judgement, it can become very likely that we defer to someone or anyone else’s idea of what we should do. We become dependent on someone else’s guidance or approval, and unfortunately that brings us further and further away from knowing and trusting ourselves again. We can feel stuck and helpless. In therapy, we work on getting to a sense of self that can trust their judgement to make decisions, to have a stable sense of identity and self-esteem.
In therapy we often refer to the "stages of change" model to examine motivation and readiness for change in clients. This model considers the change does not happen immediately or overnight, even if behavior can sometimes indicate that it does. This is a great explanation for what can look like “ procrastination” and is really a part of the process. Take for example, a person who decides to take up running as a form of exercise or enjoyment. This person has probably thought about maybe taking up running, one day, for years. Then, as time goes on perhaps, they become more familiar with the equipment it would require taking up running or maybe they start looking at apps that would help them, or local running groups. Again, this may take months. Then, a person might finally decide on the pair of running shoes they are ready to commit to and go and buy those running shoes. Those running shoes may sit in the front hallway or in the box, or in the back of the closet again, for weeks or months, before one day - the person decides to take the shoes out of the box, put them on, and go out for their first walk or run. The decision to go for that walk or run did not simply happen that day, or when the person exhibited the behavior for example putting on the shoes and walking out the door. This person has thought about the change in behavior, taking up running in this instance, for a very long time. These phases are called; pre-contemplation to contemplation, determination/preparation, action. This model affirms all the work it takes to create the conditions we need to make behavioral change, and all the ways in which “procrastination” really dismisses and invisibilizes a lot of work.
We would do well to normalize that it takes careful deliberation and consideration to make hard decisions. It often takes invisible labor to create conditions that make behavioral change possible. If we give ourselves the permission not to rush to certainty, but to sit in the unknown together, we can learn about what it takes to make hard decisions, to make behavior changes from each other. We might find solidarity, advice, support. In my work, I help clients identify what values are most important to them and how they are showing up in their decision making process. We discuss a lot of what I have written about above, the social construction and moralization of “ procrastination”. This allows us to reframe the narrative, to place the client back into a position of dignity and agency, rather than moral or personal failing
About the author
Svea Wentzler, MA is a therapist based in Pennsylvania. She works with adult individuals struggling with the effects of anxiety, worry, depression, shame, trauma, addiction, injustice, heteronormativity, masculinity, productivity, sexism, racism and questions of intersecting identities. She specifically studied LGBTQ affirmative therapy to combat the many ways the heteropatriarchy can make queer people feel like the problem. If you’d like to schedule with or learn more about Svea click here.
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