“ HOLD ON A MINUTE ! ”

Research published last week could one day provide a cure for one of the greatest dangers ever faced by Entertainment and The Arts  ……………Procrastination

“The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.” Michelangelo 1475-1564

But what if it's a chilly December morning, and you’ve sunk one too many jugs of Chianti the previous night?  And can someone stop that bloody Gregorian chanting, per favore!  ...Now where did I leave that chisel?

Two hours and five espressos later and the slab of stone remains unscathed. But it’s almost lunchtime, and this is Italy, so…

Most of us in The Business of Pleasure know that feeling.  Daily we face the blank canvas, the fingerprint-free piano keyboard, or the tech-world’s most terrifying sight ‘The White Screen of Death (WSOD).

So it was with a gush of wonderment that I read in Nature:

‘...Now, scientists have identified the neural circuit behind this resistance, and a way to ease it.  In a study published today in Current Biology, researchers describe a pathway in the brain that seems to act as a ‘motivation break,’ dampening the drive to begin a task. When the team selectively suppressed this circuit in macaque monkeys, goal-directed behaviour rebounded.’

Obviously it could be years, or even decades (!) before the benefits of this intervention will be available to us in The Business of Pleasure, so I immediately visited Angels costumiers online** and ordered my macaque monkey suit.

I didn’t know that macaques are around two-feet tall (sorry David Attenborough, I must have nodded off during that episode) but the security guards at the laboratory soon spotted the difference. There I was, patiently queuing up for my jab, leafing through a back issue of Homins And Gibbons, when I was suddenly plucked bodily from my chair, tail and all, and bundled out onto the street.

Plan B

So nothing daunted, I put my macaque suit up for sale (on Monk-eBay) and dived head-first into a fascinating paper that may one day have a bigger impact on The Business of Pleasure than the cloning of L.V. Beethoven, the banning of W. Shakespeare, and crossing I. Thalberg’s DNA with that of K. Feige:

‘The association between procrastination and negative emotions in healthy individuals: a systematic review and meta-analysis.’  **

Pursuing their subject through 88 studies encompassing 63,323 participants across 17 countries, the review’s authors point to Neuroticism as Procrastination’s biggest ‘predictor’ among the Big Five ‘OCEAN’ personality traits (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism) adding:

Highly neurotic individuals are more likely to experience negative emotions such as anxiety, depression, and stress and have difficulty regulating them effectively. Based on this, we hypothesize that negative emotions are important in procrastination behaviour.’

While also pointing out a potentially useful tool for looking at the association between Procrastination and negative emotions:

‘…Self-Difference Theory (SDT) provides a valuable framework for understanding this relationship. According to the theory, procrastination can be viewed as a manifestation of an individual’s failure to live up to his or her ideal self or should-be self, a disparity that triggers negative emotions and further exacerbates procrastination behaviour. A meta-analysis suggests an association between self-discrepancy and psychopathology, which further supports the potential of SDT as a transdiagnostic framework. From an action cybernetics perspective, the experience of positive emotions reduces behavioural inhibition and facilitates the implementation of goal intentions; thus, individuals high in positive affect are less likely to fall into procrastination. On the other hand, when individuals are confronted with negative emotions and lack effective emotion regulation strategies, they may choose procrastination as a coping mechanism to temporarily escape these negative emotions.’

Plan C

A recent experiment, sponsored by the Netherlands’ Caring Universities Forum, focussed on a global community even more prone to procrastination than The Business of Pleasure …University Students. In a ‘two-armed randomized controlled trial,’ 403 students were randomly assigned to a specially created ‘GetStarted’ online programme or a ‘waitlist’ control:

'The five main modules were centred on the psychological mechanisms that commonly underlie procrastination, drawing on principles from cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). These include (1) psychoeducation on the process of procrastination, (2) journaling to understand the individual psychological mechanisms underlying procrastination, (3) unravelling cognitive distortions that lead to procrastination, (4) cognitive restructuring, and (5) relapse prevention. These modules were considered foundational and relevant for all students struggling with procrastination…

Over 50% of the students participating in the programme saw ‘clinically relevant improvement,’ which may make you want to sign-up for one of the many ‘beat procrastination’ courses available online. 

Alternatively, if you feel that you may be one of the ‘under 50%’ who didn’t derive significant benefit from the Dutch program, for only £37.50 O.N.O. (plus £5 P&P) you can acquire your own, pre-owned, and only-slightly-damaged macaque suit.

DT

15^th January 2025

(while avoiding finishing my world-best-selling detective novel)

*It was so much more fun when you could pop into their Shaftesbury Avenue office in your lunch hour and ask “Can you do me 3oo Roman Legionaries, 200 Celts and 50 Slave Girls …in Belgium for next Tuesday please.”

**Yuyang Nie, Wenlei Wang, Fangbing Zhou, Tianci Wang, Simin Li, Cong Liu, Jinchao Gao,  Frontiers in Psychiatry, 23 October 2025

***'Effectiveness of a guided internet-based intervention in reducing procrastination among university students – a randomized controlled trial' Arpana Amarnath, Sevin Ozmen, Chris van Klaveren, Annemieke van Straten, Julia Pei, Leonore di Wit, Rasmus E Raabe.  National Library of Medicine, 2025 The Caring Universities Project is funded by the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Leiden University, Maastricht University, Utrecht University, Erasmus University Rotterdam, University of Amsterdam, Inholland University of Applied Sciences, Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, and Avans University of Applied Sciences.