Most journalists don’t avoid interviews because they’re lazy or bad at scheduling. They avoid them because picking up the phone and asking a stranger difficult questions is genuinely uncomfortable, and the human brain is very good at finding ways not to do uncomfortable things.

That’s the trap. And it’s costing stories.

Procrastination researchers have spent decades studying why capable, motivated people delay the exact tasks they care most about. The answer consistently points away from willpower and time management, and toward something more honest: emotion regulation. Understanding that distinction is the first step to actually fixing it.

Why do journalists procrastinate on interviews and research calls?

The short answer: avoiding reporting is rarely about being disorganised. It’s about avoiding the emotional discomfort that comes with cold outreach, potential rejection, awkward silences, and the uncertainty of not knowing what a source might say.

Procrastination researcher Timothy A. Pychyl, writing in his 2013 book Solving the Procrastination Puzzle, argues that “procrastination is an emotion regulation problem, not a time management problem.” His research group at Carleton University found that we procrastinate to regulate negative emotions associated with a task, not because we’ve failed to block out enough hours in the diary.

For journalists, those negative emotions are specific and real. Will the source say no? Will the call be awkward? Will asking the question reveal that the premise of the story doesn’t hold? Delaying interviews feels like protecting the story. In practice, it’s protecting yourself from discomfort.

According to research published in Psychological Bulletin by Piers Steel in 2007, between 20 and 25% of the general population identify as chronic procrastinators. Among university students, where academic pressure mirrors some of the deadline-driven stress journalists experience, Pychyl and Sirois found in their 2016 chapter in Procrastination, Health, and Well-Being that around 50% report procrastinating on assigned work. The behaviour is not rare. And it’s not a character flaw.

What does ‘emotion regulation avoidance’ actually look like in a newsroom?

It looks productive. That’s what makes it so effective as a trap.

Putting off legwork often disguises itself as preparation. The journalist who spends three hours reading background material before making a single call isn’t being thorough. They’re often postponing the moment of social risk. The reporter who rewrites their email to a reluctant source five times before sending it isn’t being precise. They’re managing anxiety.

Delaying interviews feels virtuous in the moment because it involves doing something work-adjacent. Checking clips, updating notes, reorganising contact lists. None of it moves the story forward the way a single difficult phone call would.

Pychyl’s research group describes this as task substitution: replacing an aversive task with a less aversive one that still feels like progress. Procrastinating on research calls doesn’t feel like avoidance because it doesn’t look like avoidance.

The emotional triggers vary by reporter and by story. Fear of rejection from a high-profile source. Social anxiety around cold contact. Uncertainty about whether the story will survive contact with its own reporting. Sometimes it’s simpler: the story has sat long enough that approaching a source now feels embarrassing, so the reporter waits a little longer, which makes it worse.

Tice and Baumeister’s longitudinal study published in Psychological Science in 1997 found that procrastinators report higher levels of stress, anxiety, and lower life satisfaction than non-procrastinators. The short-term emotional relief of avoidance comes at a significant long-term cost. Journalists who recognise this pattern often describe a background hum of guilt around the stories they haven’t reported yet.

How does avoidance actually damage journalism?

This is the part that doesn’t get talked about enough: procrastinating on research calls and avoiding reporting doesn’t just affect deadlines. It shapes the stories that get told.

Sources go cold. Public figures move on or become unavailable. Documents get harder to obtain as time passes. The window for a story closes. Some of the most important investigative work never happens not because reporters lacked the skill or the lead, but because the discomfort of making the first call never got overcome.

There’s also a subtler effect on story quality. Reporters who delay interviews until deadline pressure forces action often end up with fewer sources, shallower quotes, and less time to follow unexpected threads. The reporting that makes a story actually work, the fourth interview that changes the frame, the reluctant source who eventually opens up, requires time. Avoidance eats that time.

The irony is that the tasks journalists most avoid are usually the ones that most determine whether the story matters.

What actually works for breaking the procrastination cycle?

Willpower-based advice (just start, set a timer, break it into smaller steps) fails many people because it misidentifies the problem. If the issue is emotional discomfort, not time management, then time management solutions don’t fix it.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, known as ACT, offers a more honest framework. Russ Harris, in his 2009 book ACT Made Simple, argues that we don’t need to wait for motivation to do something; we can take action and let the motivation follow. This reverses the common assumption that you need to feel ready before you act.

ACT doesn’t ask reporters to eliminate the anxiety around a difficult interview. It asks them to act despite it. Harris describes this capacity in The Reality Slap (2012): psychological flexibility means acting effectively in the present moment, even when there are uncomfortable thoughts and feelings present.

Applied to journalism, this means recognising the discomfort of picking up the phone and making the call anyway, not because the anxiety has gone, but because the story matters more than the avoidance.

Some practical applications that align with ACT principles:

Researchers in the ACT space consistently find that the goal isn’t a positive mindset. It’s a workable relationship with discomfort. For journalists, that reframe is genuinely useful.

How can journalists build habits that counteract research avoidance?

Habit structure matters because willpower is unreliable under deadline pressure. Building systems that reduce the decision cost of starting difficult tasks removes some of the emotional overhead.

Reporters who consistently make progress on difficult stories tend to share a few behaviours. They schedule outreach at the same time each day, which removes the daily negotiation with anxiety about when to start. They track their contact attempts in a visible way, which creates accountability without requiring motivation. They separate research reading from active reporting, treating them as distinct activities rather than letting the former replace the latter.

The Time Is Luck app is built around this kind of structured accountability, helping users log tasks, track patterns in when they avoid certain work, and commit to specific actions rather than vague intentions. For journalists managing multiple stories at different stages, having a system that surfaces what’s being delayed, and for how long, makes the avoidance visible rather than ambient.

Visibility matters because the background guilt of avoiding reporting is usually more draining than the discomfort of making the call would have been. Procrastination doesn’t eliminate the negative emotion. It defers it, and adds guilt on top.

The reporters who file the stories that require real legwork aren’t necessarily less anxious about rejection than their peers. They’ve just stopped treating anxiety as a prerequisite for action.

FAQ

Is procrastinating on interviews a sign that I’m not cut out for journalism?

No. Delaying difficult conversations is a very normal response to social uncertainty and rejection risk. Research from Carleton University’s Procrastination Research Group consistently shows that procrastination reflects emotional discomfort with a task, not incompetence or lack of commitment. The reporters who struggle with this are often the ones who care most about getting it right.

Why does reading background material feel like reporting when it isn’t?

Because it’s task substitution: replacing an aversive task (making contact with sources) with a less aversive one that still feels productive. Background reading is genuinely useful, but it becomes avoidance when it crowds out active reporting. If you’ve read everything available and still haven’t made a call, that’s usually the pattern at work.

Does the anxiety about calling sources go away with experience?

For many journalists, it reduces but doesn’t disappear entirely. What changes with experience is the relationship to that discomfort. ACT research, summarised by Russ Harris in ACT Made Simple (2009), suggests the goal isn’t eliminating uncomfortable feelings but developing the flexibility to act despite them. Experienced reporters often simply have more evidence that the discomfort passes once they’re in the conversation.

How is this different from normal deadline-driven behaviour?

Deadline pressure can override avoidance temporarily, but it doesn’t fix the underlying pattern. Reporters who only make difficult calls when a deadline forces them often end up with shallower reporting because they’ve left no time for follow-up, unexpected leads, or source relationships to develop. Chronic avoidance of legwork has cumulative effects on story quality that deadline sprints don’t address.

What’s the single most effective thing to do when I notice I’m avoiding a research call?

Name what you’re feeling (anxiety, rejection fear, uncertainty) without trying to argue yourself out of it, then commit to one specific action with a time attached: “I will call this source at 10am, not ‘this morning.’” ACT-based research consistently shows that values-connected, specific commitments outperform motivation-based approaches for getting through emotionally aversive tasks.