{"id":10610,"date":"2026-07-22T20:07:35","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T20:07:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/?p=10610"},"modified":"2026-07-22T20:07:37","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T20:07:37","slug":"scientists-discover-one-step-you-cant-skip-if-you-want-to-stop-procrastinating-forgiveness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/?p=10610","title":{"rendered":"Scientists discover one step you can\u2019t skip if you want to stop procrastinating: forgiveness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Beating yourself up just doesn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We\u2019ve all been guilty of&nbsp;procrastinating&nbsp;before, but some people tend to do it far more than others. Research indicates that about&nbsp;20% of adults&nbsp;can be considered \u201cchronic procrastinators,\u201d and it\u2019s an extremely tough mental loop to break.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Not only does procrastinating lead to worse outcomes at school, work, or in creative projects, it can also be highly damaging to a person\u2019s psyche. Regular procrastination fuels intense feelings of shame, guilt, and even major&nbsp;depression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Luckily, there are all kinds of tricks,&nbsp;hacks, and mental games people can use to help defeat procrastination. However, many of them are Band-Aids at best and don\u2019t address the fear, anxiety, stress, and overwhelm that are often at the root of so-called laziness and task avoidance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A \u201ccure\u201d for procrastination?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One recent\u00a0study\u00a0wanted to test a potential \u201ccure\u201d for procrastination: self-forgiveness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A team of researchers from Carleton University set out to determine whether there was a link between \u201cforgiving the self for a specific instance of procrastination and procrastination on that same task in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In other words, does mentally beating yourself up after feeling lazy help you do better next time, or is it more effective to give yourself grace?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The method was simple. Researchers recruited 119 first-year university students enrolled in an introductory psychology course, knowing, of course, that students are exceptional candidates for studying procrastination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.upworthy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/02\/study_procrastination.png?w=1024\" alt=\"procrastination, laziness, psychology, studying, productivity, life hacks, productivity hacks, scientific study, brain hacks, stop procrastinating\" class=\"wp-image-245915\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Students were polled after an exam in the class on a variety of self-reported factors, including whether they procrastinated studying and how they felt about their overall performance. They were polled again after a second exam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the end, the results revealed that students who reported high levels of self-forgiveness for procrastinating on their studying for the first exam were less likely to repeat the same mistake on the second exam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u201cNegative affect\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The team determined that a big reason self-forgiveness was important is that it reduced something called \u201cnegative affect,\u201d a psychology term that refers to a bundle of unpleasurable feelings like anxiety, anger, sadness, and guilt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What mattered in whether a person would stop procrastinating in the future was that they rid themselves of those negative feelings. Forgiving themselves for procrastinating the first time helped immensely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We\u2019ve learned a lot about procrastination in recent years. What was once considered laziness is now better understood as a diabolical cocktail of overwhelm, anxiety, fear, and even&nbsp;childhood trauma. That\u2019s why so much advice about procrastination is outdated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Marla Cummins, a productivity coach,&nbsp;writes&nbsp;that using force or authoritarian self-talk like \u201cI have to get this done\u201d used to be commonplace but simply doesn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A&nbsp;research review from 2023&nbsp;found that self-compassion is far more effective than self-criticism at motivating positive change, further reinforcing the findings from the Carleton University study. Methods that ease those negative feelings and break the cycle of negative self-talk are key to stopping procrastination, or at least doing it less often, in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As a human, you are almost&nbsp;guaranteed&nbsp;to procrastinate on something important in your life sometime in the near future. The key to not letting it become a chronic problem may be to forgive yourself for the slip-up and refuse to carry those negative feelings of shame and guilt into your next opportunity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Beating yourself up just doesn\u2019t work. We\u2019ve all been guilty of&nbsp;procrastinating&nbsp;before, but some people tend to do it far more than others. Research indicates that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/753188238_2088876645393249_7139339796644244360_n.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10610"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10612,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10610\/revisions\/10612"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}