Self-regulation
Self-regulation is the capacity to manage your attention, emotions, impulses and actions in the service of longer-term goals. Procrastination researchers, including Steel in his 2007 meta-analysis, describe procrastination as a quintessential self-regulation failure: the goal is set and endorsed, but regulation of mood and impulse in the moment overrides it.
| Field | Psychology |
|---|---|
| Key researchers | Roy Baumeister, Albert Bandura, Charles Carver and Michael Scheier |
| Related concepts | Self-control, executive function, emotion regulation, willpower |
Why it matters for procrastination
Framing procrastination as a self-regulation failure, rather than a time-management failure, changes the toolkit. Time management assumes you will follow the plan; self-regulation research asks what happens in the moment the plan hurts. The best-supported levers work at that moment: implementation intentions that pre-decide the response to a trigger, environment design that removes the competing impulse, emotion-focused strategies like self-compassion that reduce the aversiveness driving escape, and short commitments that keep the regulatory load small. Sirois and Pychyl's mood-repair account makes the point sharply: procrastination is giving in to feel good now, so regulating the feeling is regulating the delay.
Related
Temporal discountingExecutive dysfunction
Frequently asked questions
Is procrastination just poor self-control?
Poor self-control is the strongest single personality correlate of procrastination in Steel's meta-analysis, but it is not the whole story. Task aversiveness, impulsiveness and how far away consequences sit all contribute, which is why environment and deadline design can compensate substantially for an ordinary level of willpower.