Posted May 27, 2014
THE BASICS
If we want to overcome procrastination, is it more important to focus on the means of goal pursuit (i.e., how we will do a task) or to focus on the outcome of the task (i.e., the possible reward)? A paper just published in the European Psychologist provides an answer to this question. Our focus depends on a number of things and interacts with task aversiveness, our fear of failure and our sense of self-efficacy. In a word, it’s dynamic.
Kathrin Krause and Alexandra Freund (Department of Psychology, University of Zurich) published their paper entitled How to Beat Procrastination: The Role of Goal Focus in a recent volume of the European Psychologist. I had the pleasure of meeting Kathrin in Amsterdam in the summer of 2011 at our biennial conference on procrastination research where she and Professor Freund presented a poster on a similar topic, “Delayed or Done: About Goal Focus as a Self-regulatory Mechanism to Reduce Procrastination.” Kathrin is an outstanding young scholar and a fellow of the International Max Planck Research School on the Life Course (LIFE). Given that her doctoral studies involve motivational aspects of learning as well as self-regulation, this new paper has a focus on academic procrastination.
In fact, “focus” is a key word in this theoretical piece. As the authors write,
“. . . we investigate whether it is more beneficial for overcoming procrastination to focus on the means of goal pursuit (e.g., review lecture notes, discuss questions with fellow students), or to focus on the outcome (e.g., think about the importance and consequences of passing the final exam) in order to initiate and maintain goal-relevant action” (pp. 132-133).
This is an important question, where should we put our focus to overcome procrastination?
I particularly like how the authors think about procrastination over time. We certainly experience procrastination that way. For example, we know that at times we might procrastinate on getting started on a task while at other times we get started without a problem, planning what we need to do, but we stall out when it comes to action. Theoretically, there are a number of psychologists who identify stages of action. Kathrin and Alexandra draw on the work of Heckhausen for a temporal model of action, whereas in my own research, my students and I have drawn on the work of Brian Little and Peter Gollwitzer. In the end, there are more similarities than differences between these models, as each sets our goal pursuit as unfolding over time with different actions and motivations associated with each stage.
Of course, procrastination can and does occur at different stages of our goal pursuit, and we need to make sense of needless delay as it may change across these stages. We may, for example, delay early in a task because it lacks meaning for us, or as these authors note, because we may have a fear of failure that immobilizes us. Later in the stages of action where in fact we should be acting, we may interrupt or stop our goal pursuit because we have coping doubts. That is, we have self doubt about our ability to cope with the tasks at hand. Alternative activities that are less difficult or evoke less doubt look a lot better at this point, and as I have written extensively in the past, we “give in to feel good” – we procrastinate.
At the same time, the most common emotion associated with procrastination is guilt, and the authors note that this guilt may actually help many of us as it motivates us to get back on task. We can terminate the guilt by getting back on task. As the authors write, “Wanting to stop this feeling might be the reason why students start to reengage in goal pursuit” (p. 134).
In any case, the focus of this paper and what I want to share today is this notion of a goal. It’s close to my own scholarly interests as my doctoral work was supervised by Brian Little with a focus on personal project pursuit. In fact, it was noticing the effects on well-being of goal-pursuit breakdown that led to my specific focus on procrastination as my area of research.
THE BASICSKathrin and I agree that the cognitive representation of goals – how we think about goals – is an important aspect of understanding procrastination. What Kathrin and Alexandra address specifically here is how we think about goals. Is our focus on the how or the why, the means or the ends, the process or the outcome? They argue it matters. I agree, but how this plays out is complex and changes over time and by the nature of the goals involved.
I like the metaphor they use here, “We can imagine the person’s goal focus as beaming a flashlight on either the means or the end of goal pursuit” (p. 134). Where do you shine your goal flashlight? What are the effects?
Brian Little’s research and theorizing offers a similar perspective. In the years I spent under his supervision, he taught me that we can think of both the manageability and the meaning of a project or goal. We have to manage things well, and they have to be meaningful. One without the other doesn’t work very well. The trick to successful project pursuit is a balancing act. Drawing on the flashlight metaphor, sometimes we’re better off focusing the light on how to manage our projects; sometimes we have to focus the light on why we’re doing this project at all – the “why” of goal pursuit.
