Picture this: your to-do list is growing by the minute, but instead of tackling your tasks, you find yourself endlessly scrolling through social media or reorganizing your desk yet again.
Sound familiar?
What if there were strategies out there that could help you become more aware of your procrastination patterns and break unwanted habits?
Procrastination is a universal struggle. It is estimated that 80-95% of learners struggle with it in some form. This behavior sabotages both productivity and peace of mind. When left unmanaged, procrastination takes a toll on well-being, mental health, job performance, and satisfaction. Self-monitoring is a technique that can help you recognize and overcome procrastination habits.
In this article, we’ll explore how to measure the effectiveness of self-monitoring techniques that can help you regain control over your time and tasks.
Why Use Self-Monitoring Strategies to Address Procrastination?
In a previous article, we explored the science of procrastination and strategies that are shown to help prevent it. Procrastination happens when we complete less urgent or enjoyable tasks in order to avoid those we find overwhelming or unenjoyable. This behavior can stem from a variety of places, such as feelings of anxiety (e.g., overwhelm, fear of failure), poor decision-making skills, differences in brain chemistry (e.g., lack of dopamine), or feeling out of control.
The Strength Model of Self-Control helps us better understand how self-monitoring and procrastination are connected. First, we need to know about self-control.
- What is self-control? It’s like a muscle: the more we practice self-control, the stronger it becomes. However, we can overexert our self-control muscles. When this happens, we are more likely to feel fatigued and may push off tasks that require regulating our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to meet our goals.
- When do we need to use self-control? The more stressful something is, the more self-control is needed to complete the task. Engaging in tasks that need a lot of self-control when we’re tired are like lifting a heavy weight with a pulled muscle. By taking things at a steady pace and using effective strategies, we can build skills that help self-control in other parts of our lives.
- How do we develop self-control? We can develop self-control by keeping track of our actions and adjusting them, making it less likely we will use procrastination to deal with stress in the future. When people have more control during stressful times, they are more likely to achieve their goals. This is especially true when we can see ourselves getting closer to something that previously felt out of reach.
First, Check in With Yourself
Before choosing the best strategy for your learner, it’s important to first understand why they procrastinate. Procrastination doesn’t happen because we’re “lazy” or “unmotivated.” Our brains delay tasks because they lack the necessary information to start the task. Procrastination indicates a stronger desire to delay tasks rather than act on them.
As a first step to addressing this problem, ask yourself these three questions:
- What is making it harder to act on these goals? We often recognize that delaying our work is stressful. Procrastination lengthens our to-do list, adding to our workload, making us feel more stress and guilt. There’s always a reason for procrastination, such as feeling bored, anxious, overwhelmed, or like instructions are not clear enough.
- What would make it easier to act on these goals? Implementing strategies to reduce overwhelm and monitoring their effectiveness can help. For example, if you discover that feeling overwhelmed is at the root of your procrastination, you can break tasks down into steps or create to-do lists to make them more manageable. The key is to find strategies that directly address the cause of your procrastination.
- How am I going to evaluate if the strategies I use are working? Decide if qualitative or quantitative methods of monitoring progress will work best for you. Some examples of these tools are further described below.
Collecting information using self-monitoring is key in tracking progress along the way. It’s crucial to regularly assess how well your chosen method is working and what you’ve learned from it. This process enhances self-awareness and helps identify effective approaches to achieving goals. When we see that a method is helping us reach our goals better, it motivates us to keep using it.
If this sounds like your experience, trying some strategies for yourself may be a great place to start!
Steps to Self-Monitoring
Self-monitoring is both a key executive functioning skill and an effective intervention technique. Self-monitoring helps us do more of the things we want to do and less of the things that keep us from reaching our goals. There are various different self-monitoring methods for us to try out. When targeting procrastination, we want to increase our focus and task completion while decreasing distractions and avoidance behaviors.
- Select which behavior you want to increase or decrease. Since you want to stop procrastinating, you will have to be aware of the ways that you engage in procrastination. Think about your goals and the steps you need to take to get there.
- Find your baseline. Choose how you will measure your successes. For example, if you want to reduce the number of times you stop working on the task, you will want to find out how often you do that now, before implementing a strategy. This will give you a starting point, otherwise known as a baseline. After you implement a strategy, you will be able to compare those new frequency counts to see if you’ve made improvements towards your goal.
- Implement your chosen strategy. It’s time to try out a technique that aligns with your needs and goals. Some learners benefit from using a qualitative strategy such as journaling to more deeply reflect on their progress and challenges along the way. Journaling can be used in addition to quantitative techniques (e.g., ratings or frequency counts) to give context to the other data you collect over time. You may also need to use a tool with the strategy, such as a timer.
- Review your progress. You should set regular times to review your progress and make adjustments moving forward. This purposeful routine will help you reflect on what went well and what could go better moving forward. You might find that the strategy is working well or you might find that a different approach would be better if you do not make the progress you expected.
Methods of Evaluating Effectiveness
Self-monitoring data collection can be qualitative or quantitative. Both methods help keep track of the strategies we use and how effective they are. That way, we can use the strategies we know are working and change strategies if they are not resulting in our desired outcomes.
Qualitative Methods of Self-Monitoring
Qualitative methods of collecting data include observing the environment and writing about feelings and actions. The data collected from this approach is unique to each learner’s perspective. This gives them the ability to provide valuable insights on how well the strategies meet their individual needs.
- Journaling can be used to freely reflect on experiences, feelings, and thoughts about completing tasks and procrastination. This tool helps learners clarify their thoughts and feelings about their day and the usefulness of their chosen strategy. Daily journaling can track your progress, note setbacks, and reflect on what works best. As learners track their choices and results over time, they learn what works best for them. This helps them make better decisions and procrastinate less. Journaling can be used to reflect on various strategies and their effectiveness, including meditation and mindfulness.
- Peer Feedback from trusted colleagues, friends, family, and professionals can offer different perspectives on areas of strength and challenge. Some learners benefit from accountability partnerships, where they have social support to complete tasks. Social support can help them feel accountable because the expectation is to review progress with the partner at a later time. You and your partner will set clear short-term goals together, regularly check-in, offer support, and celebrate achievements.
Quantitative Methods of Self-Monitoring
Quantitative methods of collecting data are in numerical form and measurable. Data in this category is often frequency (e.g., I procrastinated 10 times today), duration (e.g., I procrastinated for 45 minutes before I started the task), and intensity (e.g., My stress was at an 8 on a 1-10 scale when I was procrastinating). We can also learn more about time of day (e.g., I procrastinated more often before lunch than afterwards), types of tasks avoided (e.g., I avoided phone calls more than any other task), and the impact on productivity (e.g., I missed two deadlines this week).
- Rating Scales are a way for learners to assess their feelings before and after completing tasks. For example, rating stress from 1 (not stressful) to 10 (very stressful) helps identify how overwhelming a task feels initially and how much it decreases after using a strategy. This method also tracks effectiveness over time. Once you identify the best strategy, you can set goals (e.g., reducing stress from an 8 to a 4 when completing a large project). Rating scales can also be used for strategies such as mindfulness.
- Checklists can help you organize tasks, increase accountability, and identify patterns in procrastination. Checklists can be used to break larger projects down into smaller, more manageable steps which makes it easier to stay on track and see your progress. This often gives learners a sense of accomplishment and motivates them to keep using the strategy. After using checklists as a strategy for some time, you can review those lists to identify which tasks you have needed the most support with. Strategies that incorporate checklists include chunking and creating prioritized lists.
- Frequency Counts are a quick and easy way to track how often your procrastination behavior occurs. By counting your instances of procrastination, you can identify triggers and times of the day when you are most likely to procrastinate. After implementing different strategies, you should be able to see if there’s been a decrease in the frequency of your procrastination. If you notice a decrease in frequency after implementing the strategy, you may find it useful to continue using that same technique.
Overcoming Common Challenges
When using self-monitoring strategies, learners often face obstacles. A few of these obstacles are explained below with guidance on how to overcome them.
- Negative Self-Talk: Individuals struggling with procrastination are more likely to be overly critical of themselves. This can further contribute to feeling overwhelmed or worried about failure. Low self-confidence may make us think we can’t break the cycle of procrastination. Changing behavior like procrastination can be stressful, especially if you’re not sure if techniques you’re using are working. That’s why tracking progress is crucial—you can see how your efforts are paying off.
- Staying Consistent: It’s important to stay consistent when using self-monitoring techniques. Procrastination is similar to a bad habit. It can develop after a pattern of avoidance and reward has been established. Avoiding stressors can feel like a huge relief in the moment. But in the absence of skills to address those feelings, our brain keeps procrastinating because it works. It takes time to develop new patterns and change procrastination behavior. Finding a strategy that helps manage tasks can reduce the guilt and stress of procrastinating.
- Avoiding Perfectionism: Perfectionism often leads to procrastination. Perfectionism is when we set expectations that are too high for ourselves or others. These high standards stress us out, making it hard to start or finish tasks. Perfectionism can also be time-consuming; causing us to alter our work until it appears “perfect”. This wastes valuable time and lessens productivity. Perfectionism can even impact our ability to realistically self-monitor, as we may expect change more quickly from ourselves than is possible. Getting feedback from someone you trust can help set fair, achievable goals.
Additional Resources and Tools
Self-monitoring is a useful technique that learners can use independently or with additional support. When exploring your reasons for procrastination, taking our free Executive Functioning Assessment can help you learn more about your executive functioning skills. With this assessment, you can learn more about skills like task initiation, self-regulation, and attentional control that could be contributing to procrastination behavior. Specific strategies to combat procrastination can be found here.
Our Real-Life Executive Functioning Workbook can be used to learn crucial skills to combat procrastination and can double as a tool to measure and record progress with various different skills. Skill assessments such as the one below on task initiation can be used as a quantitative measure of progress. This helps us see which areas we struggle in which can be an area to intervene.
For some learners, procrastination can be a debilitating problem. Research has found that individuals who struggle with procrastination are also more likely to avoid seeking help. This further contributes to greater distress, negatively impacting overall well-being. If procrastination has been promoted from a behavior to a lifestyle, it may be time to seek out professional support from a counselor or coach. A licensed professional will be able to meet you where you are and find a place to begin targeting procrastination behaviors. They may be able to bring awareness to challenges and support you in implementing different self-monitoring techniques.
TL;DR – (Too Long, Didn’t Read)
Procrastination is an incredibly common phenomenon that affects most of us at some point in our lives. Some learners struggle more with procrastination, resulting in difficulties achieving personal goals in school, work, and daily living. Learners often experience procrastination as a result of anxious thinking (e.g. fear of failure, perfectionism, overwhelm), poor decision-making skills, and unmet reward-seeking needs.
Self-monitoring is a technique and a method of data collection. Once you have chosen your specific strategy aligned with what causes your procrastination, you should regularly check-in on how you are progressing on your goals. Self-monitoring can be implemented by:
- Selecting the behavior you want to see more or less of
- Finding your baseline
- Implementing your chosen strategy
- Reviewing your progress over time
You can self-monitor by using qualitative (e.g., narrative reflections such as journaling) or quantitative (e.g., numerical, measurable) strategies.
- Journaling
- Peer Feedback
- Rating Scales
- Checklists
- Frequency Counts
Whichever method you choose, keep in mind that it’s important to address negative self-talk, stay consistent, and recognize perfectionism. These barriers can make it more challenging to address procrastination and stay on track with a self-monitoring plan. Some resources for self-monitoring include using a skills assessment, the executive functioning workbook, or seeking professional support.
Further Reading
- Baumeister, Vohs, & Tice (2010): The Strength Model of Self-Control
- How to ADHD (2016): Why We Procrastinate and How to Fix it
- Kim & Seo (2015): The Relationship Between Procrastination and Academic Performance: A Meta-analysis
- McLean Hospital (2024): Why You Put Things Off Until the Last Minute
- Shatz (2024): Why People Procrastinate: The Psychology and Causes of Procrastination
- Life Skills Advocate: Executive Functioning 101: All About Self-Monitoring
- Life Skills Advocate: Executive Functioning Workbook
- Life Skills Advocate: How To Stop Feeling Guilty About Procrastination
- Life Skills Advocate: Real-Life Executive Function Coaching
- Life Skills Advocate: The Science Of Procrastination: Understanding The Root Causes