From delay to forgetting: how boredom and procrastination disrupt prospective memory

Abstract Appointments, dinner invitations, tasks to finish before a deadline: modern daily life is packed with future intentions that we accomplish with a cognitive ability named prospective memory (PM). Some of these tasks are less engaging than others, and we sometimes find ourselves putting them off until later, until we eventually forget about them. Despite extensive research on cognitive determinants of PM, emotional and self-regulatory factors remain less well understood. The present study investigated whether the association between intention-related emotions—specifically boredom—and PM is accounted for by self-regulatory failures such as procrastination. A sample of 102 adults (aged 19–62 years) completed a 30-day ambulatory assessment, reporting both daily and long-delay intentions and rating boredom and procrastination at trait and item levels. Mediation analyses indicated that boredom and procrastination were each associated with PM lapses, and that intentions perceived as boring were more likely to be postponed, which in turn was associated with more frequent PM failures. For long-delay intentions, boredom was primarily linked to PM through its association with procrastination, whereas for daily tasks, boredom showed both direct and indirect associations with PM performance. Notably, boredom proneness was also related to PM capacity through elevated trait procrastination, underscoring how chronic emotional states are linked with self-regulatory processes and suggesting that boredom can impair goal-achievement and everyday memory performance.