servants over years, linked stress to possible
cardiovascular damage. In the three decades
since, so much research has reinforced the link
between anxiety and cardiovascular calamity
that the author of a 2008 review highlighted
the 40,000 citations on PubMed, the online
research database maintained by the US
National Institutes of Health.
The trigger for stress can be anything
from another driver cutting you off to a dog
lunging at you during a walk. The bullet is
the biochemical chaos that follows, starting
in the amygdala and then moving to the
hypothalamus, the part of your brain in
charge of releasing hormones. That tiny chunk
at the base of your skull then signals your
adrenal glands to send a surge of adrenaline
and cortisol coursing through your system.
The results are as predictable as they are
damaging: racing heart rate, soaring blood
pressure, narrowing veins and juddering heart
rhythms that when repeated again and again
exact a heavy toll on nearly all aspects of your
cardiovascular health. It’s like a malicious
personal trainer who’s out to kill you.
Fanged beasts and right-lane idlers
certainly cause stress, but those provocations
are not nearly as potent as the cyclical self-
torture of a procrastinator. The mechanics
of that behaviour make it uniquely harmful,
Sirois says. “It’s not just about the stress of
last-minute scrambling to get things done,”
she says, though she does acknowledge that
such spikes do happen and can be deeply
damaging. It’s everything from the ratcheting
anxiety of a looming deadline to the panic-
filled moment of truth when a procrastinator
can no longer avoid the unpleasant task. Then
there’s the guilt and shame of consequences,
such as the black mark on a uni transcript or
the crater in your credit record.
In designing her landmark study, Sirois
combined the enormous body of literature on
unrelenting tension and its effects on heart
health with her own observations. “One of
the things I found in the past 10 years was
that procrastinators have consistently higher
stress levels,” she says. “I also knew that this
was partly because they employ ineffective
coping strategies.”
Sirois divided nearly 1000 volunteers
into two groups – those who were physically
healthy and those who reported heart
problems – and then used a questionnaire to
assess their proclivity for procrastination. The
volunteers were presented with 20 statements- such as “In preparing for some deadlines, I
often waste time by doing other things” – and
asked to rank them on a scale of one (not true
of me) to five (very true).
When Sirois analysed the study data, the
link came into devastatingly sharp relief: the
volunteers who tested high for delaying their
way through life were much more likely to
come from the group with heart problems.
It made sense. “Imagine you have a
stressor. Now you beat yourself up and you
stress even more – and the last thing you want
to do is deal with that stress, so you walk away
from it. That means it’s going to continue and
the stress is going to go up and up.” And that’s
when your heart takes a beating.
The dynamic begins the moment the
procrastinator decides to put something off.
From there, a subconscious but corrosive
stress goes to work. The deadline may be
months away, and he may have managed
to bury the reality that it must one day be
faced. But on some level it smoulders away.
As time passes and the deadline looms ever
larger, fissures begin to open in the walls of
denial. Patching the cracks requires more
and more time and energy, compounding
the stress. He may experience panic spikes - and with them, heart-punishing floods of
adrenaline and cortisol. Forcing the inevitable
back into its mental hiding place takes even
greater psychic effort than before and is less
successful. That, says Sirois, “can lead to even
more fluctuations and wear and tear on the
cardiovascular system”. Finally, the dreaded
event arrives, the stress crests and the battle
ends. But the damage is done.
There’s also a more indirect danger.
Sometimes the procrastination is so pervasive
that it not only leads to disease but also
interferes with a timely diagnosis and
treatment. Check-ups are either postponed
or simply never scheduled. Sufferers note
their symptoms – “Was that a chest twinge
again?” – then add them to a mental to-do list
that never includes a deadline. They file away,
and forget, lifesaving diagnostic tests that
everyone should undergo at certain ages, such
as colonoscopies.
At the root of such potentially catastrophic
avoidance, says Sirois, is a simple yet primal
force: fear – of the medical procedure, of what
it will detect and, ultimately, of dying.
“When you’re dealing with an unpleasant
stressor, what do you think procrastinators
are going to do?” Sirois asks. “They’re just
going to step away from it. The problem is that
these coping strategies actually increase stress
because they don’t do anything to deal with
the situation they’re avoiding.”ONE BY ONE, the students arrive at Sirois’s
lab, a warren of offices tucked into a century-
old red-brick hall on the fringe of the Bishop’s
University campus in Quebec. Every person
there is an admitted procrastinator.
They’ve been told that they’re participating
in research that will measure their empathy.Stop Stalling!
Ask yourself
these five
questions
to find out if
your slacker
habits are
putting you in
harm’s way2/ How do you choose a place to
eat at with friends?
A Pick a new venue(+0)
B Narrow it down, then ask
others for opinions(+1)
C I’m happy going wherever(+2)1/ Your ideal bedtime is 10:30.
When do you hit the sack?
A 10:30(+0)
B 11: 0 0(+1)
C After midnight (+2)Regularly delaying your bedtime is
linked to self-regulation problems, a
hallmark of chronic procrastination,
reports the University of Groningen.
It’s not that snoozing is unappealing;
it’s just that procrastinators may
have a hard time quitting activities in
the moment.Indecision is a key trait of chronic
procrastinators. “They don’t want
to f a i l ,” s ays F e r r a r i. “ S o th ey l et
someone else choose, and if it’s a
bad outcome the procrastinator
can blame the other person.”HACK YOUR STRESS
In a study from Virginia Commonwealth University, people who
brought their dogs to work reported feeling 11 per cent less
stressed at day’s end. If your workplace isn’t pet friendly,
meet a close friend for lunch. According to study author Dr
Sandra Barker, congenial banter can be similarly uplifting.102 APRIL 2016