Pychyl et al. (2000): Five Days of Emotion
Pychyl and colleagues used experience sampling, paging students eight times a day for five days before a deadline, to capture what procrastination actually feels like as it happens. Students were more likely to be procrastinating when the task at hand was rated unpleasant and stressful, and while the avoided activity felt more enjoyable in the moment, guilt was a common companion emotion. The study is early direct evidence that procrastination works as short-term mood repair: trading how you feel now against what you need to do.
| Citation | Pychyl, T. A., Lee, J. M., Thibodeau, R., & Blunt, A. (2000). Five days of emotion: An experience sampling study of undergraduate student procrastination. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 15(5), 239–254. |
|---|---|
| Study type | Experience sampling study (signal-contingent pager reports, 8 times daily for 5 days) |
| Key finding | Procrastination co-occurred with tasks rated as unpleasant, stressful and difficult; avoided-task activities felt more pleasant but carried guilt |
| Sample | 45 undergraduate students in the week before an academic deadline |
What the study found
Instead of asking students to remember their procrastination afterwards, the researchers paged them at random moments and asked what they were doing and how they felt right then. When students were putting off academic work, the postponed task was rated as significantly more unpleasant, stressful and difficult than whatever they were doing instead. The substitute activities felt better in the moment, but reports of guilt were common, so the emotional trade was relief now plus a slow drip of bad feeling about the avoidance itself.
Why it matters
This is one of the earliest studies to catch procrastination in the act rather than in retrospect, and its picture matches the mood-repair account later formalised by Sirois and Pychyl: we delay tasks to escape how they make us feel, not because we misjudge time. If the trigger is task aversiveness, the fix is reducing that aversiveness, shrinking the first step, making the start concrete, rather than trying to summon willpower against a feeling.
Caveats
The sample was 45 undergraduates at one university during a single deadline week, so it is small and not representative of working adults. The data are still self-report, just collected closer to the moment, and the design is observational: it shows that avoidance and unpleasant feelings travel together, not which causes which. Treat it as a vivid early data point that later, larger work has built on.
Peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, part of a 2000 special issue on procrastination. Indexed in Semantic Scholar; no DOI is available for this journal.
Pychyl, T. A., Lee, J. M., Thibodeau, R., & Blunt, A. (2000). Five days of emotion: An experience sampling study of undergraduate student procrastination. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 15(5), 239–254.
Related
Sirois & Pychyl on mood repairImplementation Intentions (making starts concrete)
Frequently asked questions
Why does procrastinating feel good then bad?
This study captured exactly that pattern: the substitute activity feels more pleasant than the avoided task, but guilt arrives alongside the relief. The short-term mood gain is real, which is why avoidance is so sticky, and the guilt then makes the task feel even worse next time.