The dawn of a new year marks a fresh start and motivates many people to break bad habits. Some are easier to shake than others, however, and the tendency to procrastinate is among the stickiest.
Whether it’s finishing a piece of work, sending an email or going for a run, some tasks can feel insurmountable. The easiest way to avoid these tasks is to put them off until later or to never complete them at all. But why do people procrastinate, and is there anything we can do to reduce this tendency?
“At its heart, procrastination is about avoidance,” Fuschia Sirois, a professor of psychology at the University of Durham in the U.K., told Live Science. Rather than the task itself, however, it’s often the emotions attached to an activity that cause people to recoil, she said.
Tackling the first lines of a college essay may bring up feelings of self-doubt, for example. When you’re faced with a broad question or topic to write about, the lack of clear instructions can trigger a fear of not getting it right or of what might happen if you get it wrong, Sirois said.
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