Why we procrastinate at work, and what to do about it | Matthew Bennett, Founder at Willow Ethos

In my coaching work I regularly encounter clients who achieve extraordinary things in their working lives. They often have 60,70, even 80-hour weeks during busy phases, juggling multiple projects and handling the trickiest of situations.

And yet they also tell me that their greatest problems are based around procrastination! How can this be, that someone so busy and productive can still be a procrastinator?

In this article I set out to understand more about procrastination in the workplace; what it is, how it works, and most importantly, what can be done to overcome it.

Procrastination is often dismissed as a personal failing or a simple time-management lapse. Yet decades of behavioural science show it is a far more nuanced phenomenon: procrastination at work reflects a self-regulation breakdown shaped by emotions, motivation, personality, and organisational context (Steel, 2007; Sirois & Pychyl, 2016). If we want to understand the cultural drivers in a workplace, then understanding procrastination is an important part of that process.

What Exactly Is Workplace Procrastination?

The best definition I could find is from Piers Steel’s landmark meta-analysis, which defines procrastination as “the voluntary, unnecessary delay of an intended action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay” (Steel, 2007). Applied to work, it involves postponing meaningful job tasks in favour of low-value or distracting activities. I instantly recall the endless ‘to-do’ lists I would make, crossing off the ‘quick-wins’, adding more, and never really getting to items 1–5 which were the larger, more time-consuming tasks that required greater brain power.

In our internet-driven, phone-in-hand-constantly world, research distinguishes between:

· Offline procrastination (“soldiering”): engaging in busywork, excessive preparation, or shifting to easier tasks (Metin, Peeters & van Eerde, 2016).

· Online procrastination (“cyberloafing”): browsing, social media use, and non-work internet activity during work time (Peeters et al., 2020).

Work-sampling studies estimate that employees may lose between 1.5–3 hours per day to such behaviours (Nguyen, Steel & Ferrari, 2013).

So could solving the problem of procrastination help those top executives to reduce their 60–80 hour working weeks?

How Procrastination Manifests

Observable patterns include:

· Delayed starts and missed deadlines,

· Over-investing in planning or low-value admin,

· Repeated drift to urgent but unimportant tasks (van Eerde, 2016).

Internally, employees often experience:

· Task aversion,

· Anxiety and guilt,

· Rumination,

all of which have been well-documented in experimental and qualitative studies (Sirois & Pychyl, 2016; Pychyl & Sirois, 2016).

The key point: people rarely procrastinate because they don’t care. They procrastinate because getting started feels emotionally uncomfortable and avoidance provides short-term relief.

Why We Procrastinate: The Psychology Behind It

1. Temporal Motivation Theory (TMT)

Steel’s (2007) Temporal Motivation Theory explains procrastination through the formula:

Motivation = (Expectancy × Value) / (Delay × Impulsiveness)

If you’re not a mathematician (and I am not), think of it like this — you need the largest number on top divided by the smallest number on the bottom to give the biggest number, so for maximum motivation, you want the Expectancy x value to be very large, and Delay x impulsiveness to be very small. So, tasks are more susceptible to delay when:

· Expectancy is low (unclear standards or difficulty),

· Value is low (boring or meaningless work),

· Delay is long (distant deadlines),

· Impulsiveness is high (immediate distractions are more rewarding).

This explains why uncomfortable strategic or evaluative tasks often get pushed aside until the pressure becomes acute.

2. Emotion Regulation Failure

Recent theory shifts the focus from poor planning to poor emotional regulation. Procrastination functions as a short-term mood repair strategy in response to anxiety, boredom or self-doubt (Sirois & Pychyl, 2016; Sirois, Melia-Gordon & Pychyl, 2013). Avoidance reduces discomfort temporarily, reinforcing the behaviour neurologically.

3. Personality Factors

Meta-analytic evidence links procrastination with:

· Low conscientiousness,

· High neuroticism,

· High impulsivity,

· Certain forms of perfectionism (Steel, 2007; Stoeber & Otto, 2006).

Fear of failure, especially in evaluative work, is a strong predictor of work-related procrastination (Flett, Stainton et al., 2012). This fear often leads to a feeling of ‘not knowing where to start’ and ultimately a sense of overwhelm.

4. Work Design and Organisational Conditions

Our work at Willow Ethos focuses primarily on improving the culture of organisations. We have worked with many organisations who understand that the right culture for them leads to the best outcomes, and that culture is a complex mix of people and place. This is no different for a behavioural trait such as procrastination. Situational factors are significant predictors, including:

· Ambiguous tasks and unclear priorities (Metin et al., 2016; Peeters et al., 2020),

· Low autonomy or poor role alignment (van Eerde, 2016),

· High digital distraction availability (König & Caner de la Guardia, 2014),

· Leadership delay — even leaders’ own procrastination cascades downwards into teams (Hensel et al., 2021).

In short, procrastination is often not an individual flaw but a contextual signal, and as such, it is something that leaders can do something about, not by seeing the individual as ‘the problem’, but by looking at the organisation as a whole.

What Can Be Done?

Evidence-Based Approaches

1. Change the task: make action easier

Spend some time looking at the tasks that employees are given where procrastination might occur, or if you identify an individual who is aware of their procrastination, take them through these simple steps, because empirical findings show that modifying task structure can reduce procrastination (Steel, 2007).

· Break large tasks into micro-steps,

· Clarify what “good enough” looks like to reduce perfectionism,

· Bring rewards or feedback earlier through progress checkpoints.

2. Use Implementation Intentions (“If-Then” Plans)

Gollwitzer’s research on implementation intentions shows that employees can significantly reduce procrastination by automating task initiation (Gollwitzer, 1999; Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006); linking action to inaction.

Examples:

· “If it’s 10am, then I begin the client report.”

· “If I feel the urge to check my phone, then I write for two more minutes.”

3. Build Emotional Skills, Not Just Discipline

Because procrastination is heavily emotion-driven, interventions focusing on self-compassion, affect labelling, and brief grounding techniques reduce avoidance (Sirois & Tosti, 2012; Sirois, Yang & van Eerde, 2019). It might be worth investing in these aspects of well-being to support employees and the company!

Reframing tasks as drafts, experiments, or iterations reduces threat and increases action. Showing that you are open to the idea of failure in this way is a great start, bringing us on to…

4. Tackle Perfectionism and Fear of Failure

The research shows that all-or-nothing beliefs perpetuate procrastination. Cognitive restructuring, lowering evaluative pressure, and focusing on process goals are all supported by empirical work (Stoeber & Rennert, 2008). So next time you task an employee with a project and you know they are prone to procrastination, consider breaking it down, and add ways you can lower pressure, perhaps by asking to see drafts along the way with open discussion for changes.

5. Adjust the Work Environment

Organisational levers are powerful but often overlooked. This is mostly because they are the hardest to shift. Focussing on an individual is the easiest route; seeing them as the issue. But step back for the bigger picture and consider what can be done at the organisational level.

· Clear priorities reduce decisional delay (Metin et al., 2016).

· Regular feedback speeds the motivation cycle (Peeters et al., 2020).

· “Deep work” norms and reduced digital noise lower impulsiveness triggers (König, 2014).

· Leader decisiveness prevents procrastination contagion (Hensel et al., 2021).

Procrastination is partly a system outcome, and systems can be redesigned.

Working With a Client on Procrastination

In the coaching world, we can have a large part to play in helping clients to better understand their procrastination. A practical coaching sequence informed by the research might look like this:

1. Map when, where, and why avoidance occurs (task type, emotions, conditions).

2. Identify whether the driver is mainly emotional, cognitive, or contextual.

3. Choose one behavioural or emotional intervention and test it for a week.

4. Reflect on identity-level patterns (e.g., perfectionism, values misalignment).

Procrastination isn’t usually the core problem; it’s a signal of deeper dynamics. Once it is understood, it can be overcome.

The Bottom Line

Workplace procrastination is not a moral weakness. I mentioned at the start of this piece that I have encountered this in my clients (which is true), but I neglected to say that I too suffer from it. In the course of putting this article together I have played 4 games of chess on my phone, checked my messages and emails countless times, had lunch, and daydreamed a lot. And yet I consider myself to be a very productive, hardworking individual who achieves a lot.