Why do we procrastinate?

We procrastinate less because we're lazy than because a task feels bad right now. The psychologists Sirois and Pychyl describe procrastination as short-term mood repair: putting off an unpleasant task makes us feel better immediately, while the bill lands on our future self. The researcher Piers Steel adds a second ingredient, impulsiveness: the pull of what is pleasant now beats the value of a reward that is still far away.

Procrastination isn't just delay. Steel defines it as voluntarily putting off something you intended to do, even though you expect to be worse off for it. That's why unpleasant tasks get delayed most: in one study of university students, people put off tasks they found unpleasant or imposed on them more than tasks they felt unskilled at.

It is extremely common. In a 1984 University of Vermont study, 46 percent of students said they always or nearly always procrastinated on writing papers. Even pigeons seem to do it, choosing a harder task that comes later over an easier one that must be done now. Hungary has a national mascot for it: Pató Pál, a pipe-smoking gentleman from a poem by Sándor Petőfi, whose motto translates as 'Oh, we've got time for that!'

The trick works only for a while. When a deadline is distant, procrastinators actually report less stress and illness than others, but as it approaches, that flips, and overall they end up with more stress and health problems.