Have you noticed that when you’re swamped with work and
feeling stressed, you sometimes have a strong urge to do the opposite of
what you need to do—work—and waste time with t.v., social media, or
curling up with a good book? This kind of procrastination can add to
your stress as your time to get things done runs out and your work
remains untouched. But before you berate yourself for being lazy, you
may want to know that there’s a reason you’re tempted to do this, and it
may not be a bad thing.
Research
suggests that when you’re under heavy pressure to get a lot done and
are feeling stressed from this and other pressures, the urge to spend
more time in leisure activities may actually be a smart response. In a
study by researchers from the University of Minnesota and Pennsylvania
State, 2022 subjects kept diaries for eight days and recorded how they
spent their time, including daily stressors and leisure time activities.
(Stressors included arguments and tensions as well as home, school,
and work stressors.) It was found that high daily stress reduced positive affect (or good mood)
and prompted people to allocate more time to leisure activities than
usual, which increased their positive affect and helped buffer them from
the damage of high daily stress frequency.
The study also found that those with
less leisure time in general were more likely to create additional
leisure time as a coping mechanism, while those who had plenty of free
time didn’t need to do this as much.
But does this drive to
manage stress with leisure activities work in one’s favor, or is it just
a form of procrastination and self-sabotage?
Does it help to be in a good mood in
order to get work done, or is it more important to just do the work and
let the good mood follow from that?
It turns out that some
research does support the
positive-affect-makes-us-more-effective-at-life theory. Not only do
leisure activities and other positive-affect-promoting pastimes work to
lift our mood and relieve stress in the process, but we are generally
more resilient toward stress and effective in our lives as a result when
we work on lifting mood to reduce stress. This is because we tend to
build our inner and outer resources when we are feeling happier, so
those resources are more available to us in times of distress.
What
does this mean for you? It means a few things. If you find that when
the going gets tough, you just want to goof off for a few minutes,
that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s your mind trying to help your
body relax so you can be more effective in the tasks at hand.
It may also be healthy for you to
balance your stress levels before getting started with more work. If
you’re temped to indulge in leisure activities when you have excessive
work to do, you’re not unusual, and you’re not unwise. Leisure
activities can help us to maintain balance, and can be important coping
activities; it’s just important to handle them the right way.
It’s
best to find ways to be productive when you have high-demand days, or
you’ll just feel more stressed as you try to get your work done after
hours of procrastination. The key here is to find balance—to find ways
to relax your mind and body and get into a better mood (which is what
you are trying to do with leisure activities), so you can put more
energy and enthusiasm into getting things done.
Sources:
Schiffrin,
Holly H.; Falkenstern, Melissa. The impact of affect on resource
development: Support for the broaden-and-build model. North American Journal of Psychology. 2012, Vol. 14 Issue 3, p569-584.
Quan,
X., Yarnal, C., and Almeida, D. (2014). Does leisure time moderate or
mediate the effect of daily stress on positive affect? Journal of
Leisure Research, 46(1), 106-124.
