It’s August, and I’m on a tax extension, and it’s not the first time.
Nor is it the first time my accountant, Griff, who is also my closest friend (we were friends first, he only later became an accountant), has tried to get me to be a bit less of a procrastinator.
One of his best efforts in fact was sort of a fan-favorite here a few years back: He sent me a shrink-wrapped copy of the Holy Bible in the mail, got me on speakerphone, and had me swear an oath to stop filing at the last minute.
Actually, in my defense, I just realized he only asked me to swear not to file in the last minute during 2022. And it worked — not only that but for the next few years as well.
But then, I must admit, my procrastination tendencies returned.
So, when I saw that a Cambridge researcher had just published a new book on procrastination, and that one of the go-to examples of a procrastination trap in the official release was, literally, of all things, “putting off a tax return,” I figured it was worth a closer look.
Dr. Itamar Shatz is a social scientist at Cambridge, and he’s the author of Solving Procrastination: The Science of Why We Put Things Off and How to (Finally!) Stop, out next month.
His core argument is that procrastination is not a character flaw (!!!), and it’s not really a time management problem.
Instead, it’s the ramification of an internal tug-of-war that we’re not really wired to resolve.
As Shatz put it:
“Procrastination is an ancient human problem but the increasing bombardment of digital distractions in our lives may be making it worse.
Long ago, people mostly needed to do things that had fairly clear and immediate consequences, like hunt food (or starve).
People were unlikely to procrastinate on those tasks because the drive to not starve is powerful in a visceral way.
Today, we regularly have to do nebulous things with amorphous future consequences, like email tax forms to our accountant.”
See? Again with the tax returns!
Underpinning that internal battle, Shatz said, are two competing forces:
A hedonic principle: We chase things that feel good, and avoid things that feel bad.
An immediacy principle: We’re focused on whatever is right in front of us, rather than what might matter more down the road.
Combine the two, and you get a brain that will happily trade a good outcome next month for a slightly better mood in the next five minutes.
Shatz cites research showing half of students procrastinate chronically, and one in five employed adults do too.
One large-scale study found a $21,000 drop in average salary for every point decrease on a five-point procrastination scale.
Employers, meanwhile, lose an estimated $20,000 per employee per year, driven by the roughly two hours a day that employees spend procrastinating.
Shatz says he’s categorized procrastinators into nine types. Isabel Keane at The Independent did a nice job laying out the types with Shatz’s guidance:
The Worrier: Some people put off tasks purely out of fear that something will go wrong once they start. Shatz’s advice: “Shine a light on your fears, unpack tasks, reject perfectionism and build your self-efficacy.”
The Pessimist: Related, but distinct: Shatz’s advice here is to build genuine self-efficacy, take honest stock of what’s actually driving the fear, and put a support system in place.
The Perfectionist: Here, we’re talking about people who get stuck chasing an all-or-nothing standard. Contributing factor: social media, where other people’s curated wins make anyone’s real progress look inadequate by comparison.
The Dreamers: Dreamers lose themselves imagining a future version of the work instead of doing the version sitting in front of them today. Shatz says one fix here is simply noticing when that habit starts actively costing you.
The Zigzagger: This is the type that bounces from task to task to task, unable to settle on any one thing long enough to finish it.
The Rebel: Rebels procrastinate as a form of pushback, against a boss, a parent, a deadline set by someone else, anyone they feel is exerting too much control.
The Thrill-Seeker: Some people genuinely like the adrenaline of a looming deadline, and put things off on purpose to get it.
The Hedonist: Hedonists overweight how good something feels right now against how much it matters later.
The Burnout: Finally, some people are just too depleted to accomplish what they need to do. Shatz says the fix starts with rest, self-compassion, and finding ways to make the work itself feel less draining, including asking for help.
Reading through that list, I recognize myself in more than one. Rebel, probably — especially when I was a bit younger.
Hedonist, on a bad week. And clearly, when it comes to taxes specifically, enough of a Zigzagger that even a Bible oath (although a coerced oath, so did it really count?), only bought me temporary compliance.
Shatz makes a point of noting that even wildly successful people procrastinate. But he also warns: High-functioning procrastinators tend to develop a false sense of security. That can set them up for failure when circumstances change.
I’ll try to get around to remembering that.
But in the meantime, to my good friend Griff, the CPA, who often reads this newsletter: I’ll get the tax docs soon. I promise.
Oh, and I’ll give you a call this morning, too. Lots to catch up on.
Afternoon, at the latest.
Other things worth knowing …
CNN: The U.S. military has burned through nearly 80% of its THAAD missile interceptors and roughly half its Patriot interceptors since the Iran war began, with senior commanders warning the Pentagon’s stockpile is “dangerously low.” The depletion was a key reason Trump called off a major planned strike last week. Analysts say rebuilding THAAD inventories to pre-war levels could take three years or more.
CBS News: The White House released declassified information saying the FBI opened a 2017 investigation into whether President Trump was acting as an asset for Russia when he fired FBI Director James Comey — a theory an administration official said was not backed up by evidence. Trump has vowed to launch probes of his own into what he has called unethical intelligence agency investigations into his campaigns and presidency.
AP: A Greek-flagged cargo ship carrying grain from the U.S. to Egypt was seized by Iranian forces in the Strait of Hormuz, the second commercial vessel detained in a week, as Iran maintained its position that it has the legal right to inspect and hold ships transiting the waterway.
The Guardian: The Trump administration has refunded about $100 billion from the tariffs it collected before the Supreme Court ruled them illegal — roughly 60% of the total from Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs, according to customs officials reporting to the U.S. Court of International Trade.
Politico: Michigan’s Senate primary — won by Abdul El-Sayed, a Bernie Sanders-backed physician and former Wayne County health director — is now widely seen as one of the most closely watched general-election contests of the midterms. El-Sayed will face Republican Mike Rogers in November in a state Trump won in 2024; Democrats worry the progressive nominee could make the seat harder to hold.
NYT: They Were Voted Out. They Refuse to Leave. Now What? Avenal, a city in the rural Central Valley of California, has become an unlikely example of election denialism months after a recall election.
AP: Scientists have captured images of the sun’s surface in the finest detail yet, revealing strange feathery patterns rippling across its scorching outer shell. Researchers using the National Science Foundation’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii originally took the images to test the telescope’s limits — and realized they’d produced something extraordinary.
AFP: We went to Montreal for the 2024 solar eclipse, so I liked this description of what it will be like in northern Spain next week among a few other places: The world is plunged into darkness. The temperature drops. Birds and other animals, bewildered by unforeseen night, start behaving strangely. Stars and planets appear in the sky next to the blotted-out Sun. It is this awe-inspiring experience that will draw people from all over the world to northern Spain next week in the hope of witnessing a total solar eclipse.
Thanks for reading. I wrote about some of this at Inc.com. See you in the comments.
I started an apathy club but no one cared to join, so I thought I’d start a procrastinators club but I never got around to it.
so, swearing on the Bible, brought up 1 memory: When I handed my husband at the time, now my ex, a Bible, which belonged to one of my sons, & asked him to swear he was not having an affair, he looked at the Bible, turned it around, looked at the inside cover, then loosely placed his hand on it & swore he was not having an affair. Ha! I wish 'liar, liar, pants on fire' was a reality; it would be funny to watch. But, in his mind, he was not swearing on "his mother's Bible", so in his twisted mind, it was ok.
The list given for procrastinating was good.
When I was a Weight Watcher leader, for a bit over 15 yrs, & quit when I moved out of state, after divorcing that guy whose pants caught on fire after 37 yrs of marriage --- anyway, during those yrs, when a member would find 'excuses' (procrastinate) about something s/he wanted/needed to do, I handed the member a little round wooden disk that I printed the letters "TUIT" on. Sometimes they'd get it right away; sometimes would take a minute or so to figure out what they had...