What is procrastination?

Where the word comes from

“Procrastinate” comes from the Latin procrastinare: pro, “forward”, and crastinus, “belonging to tomorrow”, from cras, “tomorrow”. Literally, moving something to tomorrow. The English verb dates from the late 16th century.

Dictionaries today add a nuance the Latin did not have: a delay that is blameworthy, not just a postponement.

How researchers define it

In a 2007 review of the research, psychologist Piers Steel defined procrastination as voluntarily delaying an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay (Steel, Psychological Bulletin, 133(1), 65–94). It is a choice, it concerns something you meant to do, and you already know the delay will cost you.

The same review found that people procrastinate more on tasks they find unpleasant, on tasks whose reward is far away, and when they doubt they can do the task well.

Why we do it

A line of research led by Fuschia Sirois and Timothy Pychyl describes procrastination as a way of feeling better right now: the task feels bad, putting it off removes the bad feeling for a moment, and the cost moves to your future self (Sirois and Pychyl, Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2013).

That is why “just be more disciplined” rarely works as advice. The pull is to escape a feeling, not a lack of knowing what to do.

Procrastination is not the same as

• Planning: deciding to do something later, for a good reason, with no expected cost.
• Resting: stopping on purpose, without a task you meant to do in that moment.
• Laziness: not wanting to do the task at all. People who procrastinate usually do want to do it, just not now.

Where we come in

One thing that changes the moment of starting is having it fixed in advance with someone else. Here you book a time, a real person joins the same video call, and you each say what you will work on before you begin. It does not remove the reasons above; it gives the task a start time that is not up to you alone.

How it works here

1. Pick a time. A slot starts every quarter hour, day and night. Sessions last 25 or 50 minutes.
2. We try to match you. If someone picked the same time and length, we put you on a call together.
3. Say what you are working on. At the start each of you says it out loud, in one sentence. Then you work in silence. There is a chat if you need it.
4. Tell each other how it went. That is what the last two minutes are for. Then the session stays in your calendar and you can go.