From procrastination to motivation
Procrastination is something many teachers and students experience. No matter how motivated we are, getting started is often the hardest step. While procrastination can feel like an emotional response or even a personal failing, research shows there are clear psychological explanations behind it — and strategies that can help students manage it. For your HL students, this also provides a useful opportunity to link the topic to the HL extension of motivation.
Procrastination
Futurity is a source of research news from universities that I often use for my classes. I recently came across an article titled, “2-Minute Exercise Can Help You Fight Procrastination,” which caught my attention. Procrastination is a frequent challenge my online students face. I can relate to their struggle—there have been times when I've chosen to clean the house instead of tackling tasks that are just before their deadlines!
All tasks are subject to a cost-benefit analysis between task aversion (how unpleasant starting feels) and outcome utility (how good finishing will feel). To get started on something, we need to decrease the former and increase the latter.
A two-step process can help
Garg et al. (2025) conducted a true experiment demonstrating the effectiveness of an intervention designed to reduce procrastination by decreasing task aversion and increasing intrinsic motivation.
The intervention involved two key steps:
Identify and describe negative feelings about the task. This process normalises these emotions, reduces emotional resistance, and makes the task feel more approachable.
Break the task into smaller steps and select rewards along the way. This supports motivation, increases engagement, and enhances the perceived personal value of completing the task.
Participants who took these steps felt more positive about completing their task and saw more value in doing it. Further analysis showed that feeling better and seeing the task as more useful also made them more likely to say they would complete it. This demonstrates the theory of learned industriousness: when effort is paired with reinforcement, effort itself becomes rewarding. Over time, that can transform the act of starting from an anxiety-inducing chore into a feeling of success
Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation
We often view intrinsic and extrinsic motivation as separate, assuming that personal satisfaction in completing a task is unrelated to external rewards. However, in practice, the two are closely connected. Students who receive extrinsic reinforcement, such as positive feedback and high grades, are typically more motivated to engage with future work than those who have a genuine interest in a subject but struggle to achieve the results needed to receive recognition. This demonstrates that intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are not entirely distinct; rather, they overlap and mutually reinforce one another.
What can we do for our students?
The Futurity article suggests that we should first inform students about the research and engage them in a discussion around it. We can then offer them the opportunity to try the Dawdle AI app developed by Garg et al., which translates this research into a practical tool. I downloaded the app and used it to monitor my writing of this blog. As a result, when I got stuck, I chose to turn off the timer and take a short coffee break rather than forcing myself to continue. Despite this, I still completed the blog more quickly than usual and felt more motivated to begin the task.
Feel free to skip the app, but encourage students to be open about their feelings regarding a task. It's important for them to reward themselves at each stage of the process. This way, procrastination shifts from being seen as a permanent personality trait to simply a temporary emotional obstacle. This introduces students to the powerful idea of “yet” in their learning. into As Carol Dweck might say, “We haven’t quite conquered our procrastination yet...but we will, with help.”
References
Garg, A., Shelat, S. & Schooler, J.W. (2025) Now I feel like I’m going to get to it soon: a brief, scalable intervention for state procrastination. BMC Psychology, 13, 1158 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-025-03388-3
Woolley, K., & Fishbach, A. (2018). It’s about time: Earlier rewards increase intrinsic motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 114(6), 877–890. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000116