6.7 Reasons for Procrastination: Negative Self-talk

What kinds of things are you saying to yourself after a less-than-ideal performance or outcome or when you experience a lapse when working toward a goal? Negative self-talk can be a common side-effect of cognitive distortions or perfectionism.

Negative self-talk is usually the result of comparing our performance against how we think we should be performing or alongside what others are doing. How we talk to ourselves matters. Ask yourself, would you say these same things to a friend? Sometimes a little mental pep talk is helpful, but consistently questioning our abilities can lead us to put off making progress toward our goals. Negative self-talk tends to translate into self-blame focused on an unattained or yet-to-be-attained goal; our time would be better spent considering ways to achieve that goal. These negative thoughts can then lead to a cycle of procrastination.

Strategies for Combating Negative Self-talk

If negative self-talk can lead to or perpetuate procrastination, what can we do to combat it? Research has shown that self-compassion can play a key role in mitigating stress around procrastination (Sirois, 2013). Self-compassion is comprised of three components: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness (Neff, 2003):

• Practicing self-kindness means resisting being overly self-critical and being kind to ourselves through self-soothing and positive self-talk instead.
• By recognizing common humanity, we see that imperfection is a universal human experience and realize our connections to others instead of feeling isolated.
• Mindfulness means experiencing uncomfortable or painful thoughts by neither exaggerating them nor avoiding them. By taking a more balanced approach to our emotions, we can prevent negative self-talk from perpetuating procrastination. Mindfulness-based stress reduction and mindful self-compassion strategies have been shown to be effective when it comes to fostering self-compassion (Birnie et al., 2010; Lee & Bang, 2010; Neff & Germer, 2012; Rimes & Wingrove, 2011).

You might initially think that self-compassion means forgiving every mistake without question. In fact, self-compassion does not mean a person minimizes the consequences of mistakes or behaviors; rather a self-compassionate individual recognizes their part in these events or lapses, but does not let themselves get stuck or hung up in this negative ruminative thinking, which can lead to future procrastination (Stainton et al., 2000).

Some individuals use procrastination as a means of relieving negative emotions or discomfort. Research shows that negative mood can actually lead to more procrastination as a way to restore positive mood (Tice et al., 2001). This means that finding other means of improving mood—like through humor, physical activity, rest, or talking with a friend—might help combat the cyclical patterns between procrastination and negative mood.