Loneliness Makes Us Procrastinate More

Procrastination plagues us all, though some of us report a more chronic experience of pushing off un-fun tasks to the final hour (or never completing them at all). Some studies estimate that around 25 percent of adults and 80 percent of college students habitually procrastinate. While there are many reasons we wait until the last minute to do what we should have done days, weeks, or months ago, one unexpected factor influencing procrastination is loneliness.

Loneliness is the negative perception that one has no or too few friends and loved ones. It's different from isolation, which is the objective fact of being alone. Loneliness is more of a feeling than a fact—one can have many friends but still feel lonely.

Loneliness is known to predict a range of poor physical and mental health outcomes, including greater risks of heart disease and stroke, dementia, anxiety, and depression. Even cancer. Not surprisingly, it can zap our motivation and make even the smallest of tasks—responding to a text or email, say—seem insurmountable.

As Mark Goulston, M.D., explains in Get Out Of Your Own Way, the link between loneliness and procrastination is about more than just the energy loss people with loneliness experience. It can often be related to negative experiences in childhood, wherein we learned to associate challenge with the pain of being alone.