We all do it – put things off, tell ourselves we’ll start tomorrow, and somehow still miss the deadline. But chronic procrastination isn’t just a bad habit; it’s self-sabotaging behavior that can derail our goals, relationships, and even our health.
Psychologist Dr. Joseph Ferrari, a leading expert on procrastination, breaks down the emotional roots of procrastination, debunks the myth that we “work best under pressure,” and offers science-backed strategies for change.
Plus – meet one of history’s most legendary procrastinators: Leonardo da Vinci. Find out how his epic delays shaped the Mona Lisa, and why some believe he never truly finished it.
Dr. Joseph Ferrari Explains Why We Procrastinate
Phil Stieg: Today we have the pleasure of welcoming Dr. Joseph Ferrari, a distinguished professor of psychology at DePaul University in Chicago. Dr. Ferrari is internationally recognized for his extensive research and books on chronic procrastination, delving into its causes, consequences, and potential remedies. Beyond his academic pursuits. Dr. Ferrari serves as a permanent deacon in the Catholic faith within the diocese of Joliet, Illinois. His multifaceted career offers a unique perspective on human behavior, motivation, and personal development. Today we will speak with him about the surprising science behind procrastination and explore why we do it, even when we know better. Joe, thank you so much for being with us today.
Joseph Ferrari: Thank you for having me and thank you for showing up on time. I appreciate this.
Phil Stieg: Part of being a neurosurgeon. So let’s just really start at the beginning. When I was reading your book, I felt like, oh, my God, I have the disease. I’m a procrastinator. But then I think I quickly realized that I’m just overextended. So can you tell us all what it really means to be someone who procrastinates? But more importantly, who really meets that definition of being a chronic – or maybe I would call it – a “pathologic” procrastinator.
Joseph Ferrari: Everybody – Lots of people think they’re procrastinators. And I like to say everyone procrastinates, but not everyone is a “procrastinator”. What I found over the years is that 20% of men and women. (there’s no significant gender difference) are chronic procrastinators, which mean they delay, they postpone, they wait. At home, at school, at work and relationships. They’re going to RSVP late, they’ll wait till the gage goes on empty before they get more gas, they get the third bill before they pay it.
So over the years, I’ve modified the definition that I’ve used. My first book was out in ‘95 called “Procrastination and Task Avoidance”. And we defined it back then as “to purposely delay the start or completion of a task and feeling uncomfortable about it.” In 2010, I kind of expanded that to say to intentionally delay a target task, that’s irrational, it makes no sense to delay, and it prevents us from reaching our goals and people feel uncomfortable.
So there’s a sense of discomfort, psychological discomfort, if you would, with that. And it’s maladaptive lifestyle.
Phil Stieg: One of the things I was interested in towards the end of the book. However, you also noted that in academics, I thought the number was 70% have the tendency to procrastinate.
Joseph Ferrari: Sure, that’s right. Remember when I said initially everybody procrastinates, but not everyone’s a procrastinator. So the data shows that 70% of college students, and I’ve done some research in this and so have others, are academic procrastinators. So they’ll delay studying, reading, writing a term paper, coming for a mentor. But gee, if there’s a free keg of beer in the dorm, they’re there. If a certain artist they like is giving a free concert for the first 50 people, they’re there. So they’re not procrastinators – they are just procrastinating.
We all may have a task that we put off. But just because you put off a task doesn’t mean you’re a procrastinator. And going back to that definition, it’s not just delaying. If I’m stuck on the tarmac and I can’t fly and my plane is four hours delayed, well, I didn’t procrastinate, you see, I was delayed. Waiting is not the same. Postponing is not the same. It’s sort of a tipping point that puts us into procrastination versus just delaying.
Phil Stieg: I thought one of the key points that I hope you can make and elaborate upon is the fact that procrastination is not about time management. It’s more about self-sabotage. And number one, who wants to self-sabotage willingly? How does that come about?
Joseph Ferrari: So two major meta analyzes were done. And both of these found that time management is the least effective intervention. Training chronic procrastinators – the 20% – to manage their time isn’t going to work. Because there’s an expression I like to say, you can’t control the wind, you can only adjust your sails. Life is going to give you winds. That isn’t the issue. The question is how do I handle it? I can’t manage time, I only manage myself. And so it’s ineffective to say time management. But remember procs, I called him procs that 20% are good excuse makers. They’re going to be listening to this and they’re going to engage as I call in the book the “but however”, I could have done that but. Well, that’s interesting. Ferrari says, however for me, because it’s never their fault. The chronic procrastinator always has an excuse. And that’s part of the issue. The question is, do we call them out?
Phil Stieg: What would you say are the root causes of” pathologic procrastination?”
Joseph Ferrari: I say it’s learned. We learn to be this way. And where do we learn? We begin in the household. We begin with our parents. And so you look at what were the roots? What was the dynamics that were going on in the household, and then how has the person learned to adjust? How as a culture, have we allowed people to get away, quote, unquote, get away with procrastinating? Have we not wanted to make them feel bad by saying, this was the deadline and you missed it? Sorry, you’re a neurosurgeon. I hope you’re on time. I don’t want you to show up three days later and say, I couldn’t get there, sorry, and I’m dead. You know, you want the person to meet deadlines in life. So it’s, it’s a gradual growth and it’s also cultural, societal.
So where does it come from? Man, that’s a complicated cult question. Beginning in the home, beginning in the culture, beginning in our Lifestyle, our ability to allow people to miss without consequences deadlines, without rewarding them for meeting the deadlines when they do, when they get them in done earlier. You know, it’s complicated and there’s no one theory that’s part of the problem with this topic. There’s no one theory on what is the actual cause.
Procrastinators don’t like other procrastinators, which is very fascinating because when we ask them to evaluate what they think of people who, in a certain scenario of procrastination, they rate them more negatively than non-procrastinators.
Phil Stieg: But then you also say that procrastinators want to be liked.
Joseph Ferrari: Yes.
Phil Stieg: So where. I mean, that strikes me as kind of irrational.
Joseph Ferrari: Because if I never finish you can never judge my skill. I can always tell you I’m good at it. See, there’s this fear, you know, I don’t want to hand it in yet till it’s perfect. Remember, they.re good excuse makers. Oh, no, it’s not quite perfect yet. So I’m not going to give it to you till. Till it’s done. All right? If I never finish, I can never fail, okay? But I can also never succeed because if I fail, I’ll look bad.
But what if the fear of success, what if I do well? Oh, you might expect more from me the next time. So I’m just going to delay so no responsibilities are placed on me so I don’t have to get that legal brief in on time. You won’t give me a bigger case to work on next time, you know, so person is not held accountable for those kinds of things.
Phil Stieg: In your book you talk about the concept of “reactance” as a source of procrastination. What actually do you mean?
Joseph Ferrari: Psychological reactance – that’s a really interesting concept. Been around since the 60s. Reactance is this concept of people are willing to do something, going to do something, but once you tell them they have to do it, then they say, “oh yeah, I’m not going to do that!” You know, I’m a native New Yorker. If you couldn’t tell from Brooklyn, and we call it the oh yeah effect. “Oh yeah, I would have done that. But because you tell me I have to forget it, I ain’t gonna do it, forget about it!”
So that’s reactance. I think of COVID with the masks. All right. People were reacting against that. So could procrastination be something that is linked to a reactance effect? You tell me I have to do this. This is due by this date – just for that I won‘t. And the answer is, yeah, there is some tendency to do that.
Commons Myths about Procrastination
Phil Stieg: What are some of the common myths regarding procrastination?
Joseph Ferrari: Some people would like to say I work best under pressure. Oh, if I only waited till the last minute. Gets me going. Get me. Well, we brought them into the lab and we found they don’t do better under pressure. They think they do better. They say they do better compared to other people. But their performance on the time pressure, when they had limited is that they tend to do worse. So I call those people the arousal procrastinators. The people that are waiting for that thrill at that last minute.
One of the myths that I, that I hear by people is technology today makes it easier to procrastinate. I’ll answer that by giving you a quick story. In 2006, a reporter from Connecticut calls me and says, Dr. Ferrari, what do you think about the snooze button on alarm clocks? The first snooze button was available in 1956, and it’s 50 years old, having it. And I thought about, that’s really interesting. That’s right. You press this button and you keep gaining more and more time. So you can see how the snooze button, it was thing. But then I thought about it even more and I began to say, well, 1885 was the automobile. There was a time you’d have to get into your, you know, get your horse and buggy ready and get it all fed and linked up before you went to see your friend three miles down the road. Now you have this thing called the horseless carriage. You could go right away.
So there’s always been technology. The question isn’t, technology doesn’t make us procrastinate. It’s how we use it or don’t use it or misuse it that leads to procrastination. It’s not technology. So that’s one myth. The other myth I talked about, another myth, was that people say I work best under pressure. And we find that’s not true. The data doesn’t support that.
The third myth is people say, oh, Ferrari, you don’t get it. Our lives are busier today. We have so much more to do and demands on our time. Well, what a major insult that is to our ancestors, our agricultural ancestors. Our ancestors had to get up early, make sure the fields were the, the fields were plowed, make sure the water was brought in, fed the animals, can the goods, clean the house. Their life was busier. They got it done.
But again, as human beings, we’re great excuse makers. There’s always a reason why. The problem is, we don’t reward the early bird catching the worm. I believe we punish for being late, but we don’t reward for being early. And that’s the problem. We need to reward for being early.
One of our Earliest and Most Famous Procrastinators
Narrator: No one knows when the first procrastinator said, “I’ll do this tomorrow,” but postponing important tasks has been part of human behavior for thousands of years.
The term “procrastinate” may have been coined as early as the first century B.C.E. by the Roman philosopher Cicero, who called the practice “loathsome.” Yet procrastination isn’t always bad. It produced one of the most famous paintings of all time: the Mona Lisa.
Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci was renowned as a gifted painter, sculptor and inventor. But throughout his career he struggled to meet deadlines, and often neglected his projects, to the frustration of his wealthy patrons. Despite da Vinci’s genius, he gained a reputation for being unreliable and easily distracted.
One project da Vinci failed to deliver on time was the Mona Lisa, which he began in 1503. Da Vinci delayed its delivery, dragging out most of the work over the first few years, then spending over a decade intermittently adding finishing touches. Some art historians say that he never actually completed the portrait.
Da Vinci’s on-again off-again work on the Mona Lisa paid off. It added depth, color and dimension, establishing the painting as an important work of art. But when 16th century painter and art historian Giorgio Vasari wrote about the portrait, he said that the great artist “left it unfinished.”
The background on the painting’s left side appears to have fewer layers than the right side, suggesting that there was more work to be done. Some observers believe that a shape in the background resembling a road is in fact an incomplete foundation for details that da Vinci didn’t get around to adding.
Da Vinci was never paid for the Mona Lisa, and it remained in his studio until he died in 1519.
Vasari, who was da Vinci’s first biographer, wrote that the artist regretted his tendency to procrastinate, and that he died believing “that he had offended God and mankind in not having worked at his art as he should have done.”
But Vasari also regarded da Vinci’s procrastination with sympathy and respect.
He said: “It was because of his profound knowledge of painting that Leonardo started so many things without finishing them … he was convinced that his hands, for all their skill, could never perfectly express the subtle and wonderful ideas of his imagination.”
How to Unlearn Procrastination
Phil Stieg: Earlier you said that procrastination is a learned behavior. Does that meant that it can be un-learned?
Joseph Ferrari: Yeah. I’m an operant kind of guy. That means I’m based on Skinnerian views of learning and that we learn to be who we are. That means we can unlearn to be this way. There’s no gene for procrastination. There’s nothing genetic this way. If parents are procrastinators, there’s nothing genetic that the kid will carry. What causes people to become procrastinators – let me ask you this question, Phil. Who do you think causes kids to become procrastinators? Mothers or fathers? Who has the greater impact,
Phil Stieg: Boy or girl child?
Joseph Ferrari: Irrelevant.
Phil Stieg: Irrelevant. That’s right. … Mothers.
Joseph Ferrari: Everybody blames mothers. Right? We always blame. It’s Mommy’s fault. No, this time it’s dad. Procrastinators report a more conflict, a shallower relationship, a more strained relationship with their fathers than their mothers. And, and the part two of this story was, well, what if you don’t have a father, right. And you’re raised by your mother, as many single parents may happen? Then we find it’s not so much the father, but the authoritarian parenting style.
Now, that’s the cold, demanding parent who says, “As long as you live under this roof, you do what I say. I don’t want to hear any lip. This is what you do!” That causes a child to grow up, to withdraw, to take their time and … interesting dynamic. And the mother tends to – if she is present when the father is this way – tends to be indecisive. So the kid goes running to mother and says, “Mom, dad wants me to do this”. And what does she say? “Well, honey, I don’t know what to say. He is your dad.” So you have a very interesting family dynamic there.
So you learn it, and that means you can unlearn it. There’s a lot of books out there that take this time management approach and you’re going to put that book down if you finish it, and you’re going to say, that was nice, but it doesn’t fit for me. My book is called “Still Procrastinating” because there’s something more to this. Why are you avoiding the task? Why are you postponing it? What would happen if you fail? You see, psychologists have shown that the most adjusted individual, the happiest individual, is someone who succeeds 85% of the time but fails 15%. Now, we live in a culture that says you’ve got to be perfect, should always succeed, got to be 100%. But no, the most adjusted person is someone who also fails a little bit. So, as I tell people, you will fail in life. That’s not the question. The question is, how did you rise? Your knees are made to go down, but your knees are also made to bring you back up.
Phil Stieg: You referred to earlier the perfectionist trap I wanted to get into that. If you are a procrastinator and you use the perfectionist angle, how do you break out of that? What do you do.
Joseph Ferrari: You’re not going to be perfect. Nobody is perfect.
Phil Stieg: That sounds easier said than done. (Laugh)
Joseph Ferrari: For some of your listeners. They may get comfort in understanding you and I are not going to be perfect. You and I are going to fail in life. And that’s not the issue. The issue is how do we adjust to that? How do we learn from that? You know, how do we move forward? We can’t control the wind, as I said, we can adjust how we sail. And as the Japanese say, if there’s no wind, then row. Just keep moving. All right. Life is not about me. Life is about we. As a community psychologist, I’m interested in understanding what is that sense of community that we form, how is that sense of belonging that occurs.
Phil Stieg: What are your thoughts about the Nike ad? Just do it. How do we drive that home to people? Just take a chance. Just do it.
Joseph Ferrari: Well, again, now you’re looking for some of the cures. And the cures would tell you to go slowly and build success. You know, small wins as we might call it. Don’t bail people out. I want something we don’t sometimes think about. Procrastination is that people will bail us out. We’ll do things for us. It reminds me of the butterfly in the story of the boy with the butterfly you may be familiar with, this little boy is given this cocoon, and then there’s a butterfly, and he sees it trying to get out, and it’s struggling. It’s really not having a good time getting out. So what does the boy do? He breaks it open and the butterfly flies and then the butterfly dies.
No, we have to struggle sometimes in life, all right? You have to sometimes not get hurt, but you have to have fail. You know, you have to sometimes struggle, and because it’s out of that struggle. So I would tell people, go slowly, you’re going to fail, all right? But you have to have more wins than failures. You know, if you succeed out of 10, eight out of 10 times, that’s good. But there’s going to be the two that you fail. So we can’t always bail people out, Let people fail a little bit.
Phil Stieg: So you ascribe to the expression, if it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger?
Joseph Ferrari: Perhaps … As a community psychologist, we’re interested in the topic of prevention and procrastination. Even though we think of it as individual differences, people is kind of related to prevention if you think about it. Because what we’re asking people to do is prevent problems before they escalate. Don’t procrastinate and let the problem escalate. And don’t keep bailing people out.
Phil Stieg: For the individual that knows they’re suffering from chronic procrastination, what can they do?
Joseph Ferrari: Sure. First you got to identify, am I part of the 80% who put off a task or is this chronic? If it’s the 80%, then we can talk about some of these time management, some of these techniques, these baby steps. But if you’re part of the 20%, which again is the person who delays in home, at school and relationships, there’s always a reason why. You know, they’re never going to get you the birthday card on time. You know they’re going to wait to and miss events. They’re never going to go to the doctor’s appointment until the. The pain is really bad. If you’re part of the 20%, you need CBT. You need cognitive behavior therapy. You need a good professional who will change the way you think – cognitive and the way you act – behavioral. All right? You don’t have to go to some Freudian who tells you, oh, that’s what daddy did and mommy did. That’s nice. But insight alone doesn’t always cure, so to speak. You need to learn new skills. You need to learn new ways to think. And how to respond.
So if you’re that 20% and I get messages from them and they give me the long story, it’s a sad story about their life. All the misses that they had, and they could have had this and they missed that. You need a good CBT person. Where would I find one? I’m a fan of clinical psychologists, PhDs, and I would say go to a mental health center in your area, but make sure they understand that this is not a time management issue.
If you’re part of the 80%, where it’s a task that you put off, well, then you got to ask yourself;. Why am I doing this? Is it the task is unpleasant, aversive? Is it that I fear success, fear of failure? You know, is there ways to can I commit to the change? No one’s going to change. And I know this from my years of NIH grants on addiction. You can’t get people to change, to recover if they don’t commit to it. The person has to truly bottom out. And sometimes that means you let them fail. All right? And then you commit to change and then identify which kind. And then go very slowly again, being very behavioral in this. Give observable, specific, small steps. What can I see as the change? And how do I specifically move forward this way? And what are the small steps.
You’ve heard the expression, “Don’t miss the forest for the trees”. Well, the procrastinator sees the forest, and that’s their problem. They go, oh, my God, I’ve got all this to cut down. Holy Moses. All right. And you just got to remind them to cut down one tree at a time. If you can’t do a tree, give me three branches. You can’t do three branches. Then give me some leaves. Just do it. Not just do it, just do it. Now. Don’t be afraid to seek a professional. Clinicians will tell you, half the battle is getting the person to come in and say, okay, I need help.
I have a quote here I just looked up by President Jimmy Carter who once said, “Go out on a limb. You take the risk because that’s where the fruit is at.” We’ve got to go out and take risks in life. People are afraid to do that.
Phil Stieg: I was thinking about your quote from Norman Vincent Peale. The really happy people are those who have broken the chains of procrastination. Those who find satisfaction in doing the job at hand. They’re full of eagerness, zest, productivity. You can be too. Right?
Joseph Ferrari: Yeah. Again, you know, leave a legacy. Make the world better because you were here. You did something. You’re doing that with your podcast, Phil. Even if just one person is better off from having heard something you said at some point, you’ve made a difference. You’ve left a legacy. And isn’t that great? Isn’t that what we’re all called to do?
Phil Stieg: We need to motivate more people to want to do that. Dr. Joseph Ferrari, it’s been an intriguing time talking with you about procrastination. Thank you for helping define what it is and showing us that that it is possible to learn to “ break the chains of procrastination” and “just do it”.
Joseph Ferrari: Thank you so much for having me here. Again, final word for your listeners. Just do it now. Don’t worry about failure.
