definition of procrastination essay

Bipolar Disorder
Therapy Center
When To See a Therapist
Types of Therapy
Best Online Therapy
Best Couples Therapy
Best Family Therapy
Managing Stress
Sleep and Dreaming
Understanding Emotions
Self-Improvement
Healthy Relationships
Student Resources
Personality Types
Guided Meditations
Verywell Mind Insights
2024 Verywell Mind 25
Mental Health in the Classroom
Editorial Process
Meet Our Review Board
Crisis Support

What Is Procrastination?

Putting off tasks we don't enjoy is common, despite the consequences

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Why Do You Procrastinate?

Types of procrastination.

The Negative Impact
Strategies to Stop

Procrastination is the act of delaying or putting off tasks until the last minute, or past their deadline. Some researchers define procrastination as a "form of self-regulation failure characterized by the irrational delay of tasks despite potentially negative consequences."

According to Joseph Ferrari, a professor of psychology at DePaul University in Chicago and author of "Still Procrastinating: The No Regret Guide to Getting It Done," around 20% of U.S. adults are chronic procrastinators.

No matter how well-organized and committed you are, chances are that you have found yourself frittering away hours on trivial pursuits (watching TV, updating your Facebook status, shopping online) when you should have been spending that time on work or school-related projects.

Whether you're putting off finishing a project for work, avoiding homework assignments, or ignoring household chores, procrastination can have a major impact on your job, your grades, and your life.

In most cases, procrastination is not a sign of a serious problem. It's a common tendency that most people give in to at some point or another.

Remember that time that you thought you had a week left to finish a project that was really due the next day? How about the time you decided not to clean up your apartment because you "didn't feel like doing it right now?"

We often assume that projects won't take as long to finish as they really will, which can lead to a false sense of security when we believe that we still have plenty of time to complete these tasks.

One of the biggest factors contributing to procrastination is the notion that we have to feel inspired or motivated to work on a task at a particular moment.

The reality is that if you wait until you're in the right frame of mind to do certain tasks (especially undesirable ones), you will probably find that the right time simply never comes along and the task never gets completed.

The following are a few other factors that cause procrastination.

Researchers suggest that procrastination can be particularly pronounced among students. A 2007 meta analysis published in the Psychological Bulletin found that a whopping 80% to 95% of college students procrastinated on a regular basis, particularly when it came to completing assignments and coursework.

According to researchers, there are some major cognitive distortions that lead to academic procrastination. Students tend to:

Overestimate how much time they have left to perform tasks
Overestimate how motivated they will be in the future
Underestimate how long certain activities will take to complete
Mistakenly assume that they need to be in the right frame of mind to work on a project

Present Bias

The present bias is a phenomenon observed in human behavior that may result in procrastination. The present bias means that we tend to be motivated more by immediate gratification or rewards than we are by long-term rewards. This is why it feels good in the moment to procrastinate.

For example, the immediate reward of staying in bed and watching TV is more appealing than the long-term reward of publishing a blog post, which would take much longer to accomplish.

Procrastination can also be a result of depression . Feelings of hopelessness , helplessness, and a lack of energy can make it difficult to start (and finish) the simplest task. Depression can also lead to self-doubt . When you can't figure out how to tackle a project or feel insecure about your abilities, you might find it easier to put it off.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Procrastination is also pretty common in people with obsessive-compulsive disorder . One reason is that OCD is often linked with maladaptive perfectionism, which causes fears about making new mistakes, doubts about whether you are doing something correctly, and worry over others' expectations of you.

People with OCD also often have a propensity toward indecision, causing them to procrastinate rather than make a decision.

Many adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) struggle with procrastination. When you're so distracted by outside stimuli, as well as internal thoughts, it can be hard to get started on a task, especially if that task is difficult or not interesting to you.

Is Procrastination a Mental Illness?

Procrastination itself is not a mental illness. But in some cases, it may be symptomatic of an underlying mental health condition such as depression, OCD, or ADHD.

We often come up with a number of excuses or rationalizations to justify our behavior. According to researchers, there are 15 key reasons why people say they procrastinate:

Not knowing what needs to be done
Not knowing how to do something
Not wanting to do something
Not caring if it gets done or not
Not caring when something gets done
Not feeling in the mood to do it
Being in the habit of waiting until the last minute
Believing that you work better under pressure
Thinking that you can finish it at the last minute
Lacking the initiative to get started
Blaming sickness or poor health
Waiting for the right moment
Needing time to think about the task
Delaying one task in favor of working on another

Press Play for Advice On Completing Tasks

Hosted by therapist Amy Morin, LCSW, this episode of The Verywell Mind Podcast shares how to get tasks done with a science-backed trick known as 'temptation bundling.' Click below to listen now.

Follow Now : Apple Podcasts / Spotify / Google Podcasts

Some researchers classify two types of procrastinators: passive and active procrastinators.

Passive procrastinators : Delay the task because they have trouble making decisions and acting on them
Active procrastinators : Delay the task purposefully because working under pressure allows them to "feel challenged and motivated"

Others define the types of procrastinators based on different behavioral styles of procrastination, including:

Perfectionist : Puts off tasks out of the fear of not being able to complete a task perfectly
Dreamer : Puts off tasks because they are not good at paying attention to detail
Defier : Doesn't believe someone should dictate their time schedule
Worrier : Puts off tasks out of fear of change or leaving the comfort of "the known"
Crisis-maker : Puts off tasks because they like working under pressure
Overdoer : Takes on too much and struggles with finding time to start and complete task

Procrastinators vs. Non-Procrastinators

"Non-procrastinators focus on the task that needs to be done. They have a stronger personal identity and are less concerned about what psychologists call 'social esteem'—how others like us—as opposed to self-esteem which is how we feel about ourselves," explained Dr. Ferrari in an interview with the American Psychological Association (APA).

According to psychologist Piers Steel, people who don't procrastinate tend to be high in the personality trait known as conscientiousness , one of the broad dispositions identified by the Big Five theory of personality. People who are high in conscientiousness also tend to be high in other areas including self-discipline, persistence, and personal responsibility.

The Negative Impact of Procrastination

It is only in cases where procrastination becomes chronic and begins to have a serious impact on a person's daily life that it becomes a more serious issue. In such instances, it's not just a matter of having poor time management skills, it's a major part of their lifestyle.

Perhaps they pay their bills late, don't start work on big projects until the night before the deadline, delay gift shopping until the day before a birthday, and even file their income tax returns late.

Unfortunately, this procrastination can have a serious impact on a number of life areas, including a person's mental health and social, professional, and financial well-being:

Higher levels of stress and illness
Increased burden placed on social relationships
Resentment from friends, family, co-workers, and fellow students
Consequences of delinquent bills and income tax returns

How to Overcome Procrastination

You might find yourself wondering, How can I stop procrastinating?

Fortunately, there are a number of different things you can do to fight procrastination and start getting things done on time. Consider these your procrastination exercises:

Make a to-do list : To help keep you on track, consider placing a due date next to each item.
Take baby steps : Break down the items on your list into small, manageable steps so that your tasks don’t seem so overwhelming.
Recognize the warning signs : Pay attention to any thoughts of procrastination and do your best to resist the urge. If you begin to think about procrastinating, force yourself to spend a few minutes working on your task.
Eliminate distraction : Ask yourself what pulls your attention away the most—whether it's Instagram, Facebook updates, or the local news—and turn off those sources of distraction.
Pat yourself on the back : When you finish an item on your to-do list on time, congratulate yourself and reward yourself by indulging in something you find fun.

Prem R, Scheel TE, Weigelt O, Hoffmann K, Korunka C. Procrastination in daily working life: A diary study on within-person processes that link work characteristics to workplace procrastination . Front Psychol . 2018;9:1087. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01087

American Psychological Association. The Psychology of Procrastination: Why People Put Off Important Tasks Until the Last Minute . 2010.

Bisin A, Hyndman K. Present-bias, procrastination and deadlines in a field experiment . Games and Economic Behavior. 2020;119:339-357. doi:10.1016/j.geb.2019.11.010

Steel P. The nature of procrastination: A meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure . Psychol Bull . 2007;133(1):65-94. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.133.1.65

Ferrari, Joseph & Johnson, Judith & McCown, William. (1995). Procrastination and Task Avoidance - Theory, Research and Treatment . doi: 10.1007/978-1-4899-0227-6

Beutel ME, Klein EM, Aufenanger S, et al. Procrastination, distress and life satisfaction across the age range - A German representative community study . PLoS One . 2016;11(2):e0148054. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0148054

Limburg K, Watson HJ, Hagger MS, Egan SJ. The relationship between perfectionism and psychopathology: A meta-analysis . J Clin Psychol. 2017;73(10):1301-1326. doi:10.1002/jclp.22435

Altgassen M, Scheres A, Edel MA. Prospective memory (partially) mediates the link between ADHD symptoms and procrastination . Atten Defic Hyperact Disord . 2019;11(1):59-71. doi:10.1007/s12402-018-0273-x

Tuckman BW, Abry DA, Smith DR. (2008). Learning and Motivation Strategies: Your Guide to Success (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Zohar AH, Shimone LP, Hen M. Active and passive procrastination in terms of temperament and character . PeerJ . 2019;7:e6988. doi:10.7717/peerj.6988

American Psychological Association. The first step to overcoming procrastination: Know thyself .

Svartdal F, Nemtcan E. Past negative consequences of unnecessary delay as a marker of procrastination . Front Psychol. 2022;13. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.787337

Schrager S, Sadowski E. Getting more done: Strategies to increase scholarly productivity . J Grad Med Educ . 2016;8(1):10-13. doi:10.4300/JGME-D-15-00165.1

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

The Writing Center • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Procrastination

The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. —Mary Heaton Vorse

What this handout is about

This handout will help you understand why you procrastinate and offer strategies to combat this common writer’s ailment.

Introduction

Everyone procrastinates. We put things off because we don’t want to do them, or because we have too many other things on our plates. Putting things off—big or small—is part of being human. If you are reading this handout, however, it is likely that your procrastination is troubling you. You suspect that you could be a much better writer if only you didn’t put off writing projects until the last minute. You find that just when you have really gotten going on a paper, it’s time to turn it in; so, you never really have time to revise or proofread carefully. You love the rush of adrenaline you get when you finish a paper ten minutes before it’s due, but you (and your body) are getting tired of pulling all-nighters. You feel okay about procrastinating while in college, but you worry that this habit will follow you into your working life.

You can tell whether or not you need to do something about your procrastination by examining its consequences. Procrastination can have external consequences (you get a zero on the paper because you never turned it in) or internal consequences (you feel anxious much of the time, even when you are doing something that you enjoy). If you put off washing the dishes, but the dishes don’t bother you, who cares? When your procrastination leaves you feeling discouraged and overburdened, however, it is time to take action.

Is there hope?

If you think you are a hopeless procrastinator, take heart! No one is beyond help. The fact that you procrastinate does not mean that you are inherently lazy or inefficient. Your procrastination is not an untamable beast. It is a habit that has some specific origin, and it is a habit that you can overcome. This handout will help you begin to understand why you procrastinate and give you some strategies for turning things around. For most procrastinators, however, there are no quick fixes. You aren’t going to wake up tomorrow and never procrastinate again. But you might wake up tomorrow and do one or two simple things that will help you finish that draft a little earlier or with less stress.

You may not be surprised to learn that procrastinators tend to be self-critical. So, as you consider your procrastination and struggle to develop different work habits, try to be gentle with yourself. Punishing yourself every time you realize you have put something off won’t help you change. Rewarding yourself when you make progress will.

If you don’t care why you procrastinate—you just want to know what to do about it—then you might as well skip the next section of this handout and go right to the section labeled “What to do about it.” If you skip to the strategies, however, you may only end up more frustrated. Taking the time to learn about why you procrastinate may help you avoid the cycle whereby you swear up and down that you will never procrastinate again, only to find that the next time you have a paper due, you are up until 3 a.m. trying to complete the first (and only) draft—without knowing why or how you got there.

Why we do it

In order to stop putting off your writing assignments, it is important to understand why you tend to do so in the first place. Some of the reasons that people procrastinate include the following:

Because we are afraid

Fear of failure: If you are scared that a particular piece of writing isn’t going to turn out well, then you may avoid working on it in order to avoid feeling the fear.
Fear of success: Some procrastinators (the author of this handout included) fear that if they start working at their full capacity, they will turn into workaholics. Since we procrastinate compulsively, we assume that we will also write compulsively; we envision ourselves locked in a library carrel, hunched over the computer, barely eating and sleeping and never seeing friends or going out. The procrastinator who fears success may also assume that if they work too hard, they will become mean and cold to the people around them, thus losing their capacity to be friendly and to have fun. Finally, this type of procrastinator may think that if they stop procrastinating, then they will start writing better, which will increase other people’s expectations, thus ultimately increasing the amount of pressure they experience.
Fear of losing autonomy: Some people delay writing projects as a way of maintaining their independence. When they receive a writing assignment, they procrastinate as a way of saying, “You can’t make me do this. I am my own person.” Procrastinating helps them feel more in control of situations (such as college) in which they believe that other people have authority.
Fear of being alone: Other writers procrastinate because they want to feel constantly connected to other people. For instance, you may procrastinate until you are in such a bind that someone has to come and rescue you. Procrastination therefore ensures that other people will be involved in your life. You may also put off writing because you don’t want to be alone, and writing is oftentimes a solitary activity. In its worst form, procrastination itself can become a companion, constantly reminding you of all that you have to do.
Fear of attachment: Rather than fearing separation, some people procrastinate in order to create a barrier between themselves and others. They may delay in order to create chaos in their lives, believing that the chaos will keep other people away.

Whether these fears appear in our conscious or subconscious minds, they paralyze us and keep us from taking action, until discomfort and anxiety overwhelms us and forces us to either a) get the piece of writing done or b) give up. (The preceding is a summary of Chapters 2-4 of Jane B. Burka and Lenora M. Yuen’s Procrastination: Why You Do It, What to Do About It.)

Because we expect ourselves to be perfect

Procrastination and perfectionism often go hand in hand. Perfectionists tend to procrastinate because they expect so much of themselves, and they are scared about whether or not they can meet those high standards. Perfectionists sometimes think that it is better to give a half-hearted effort and maintain the belief that they could have written a great paper, than to give a full effort and risk writing a mediocre paper. Procrastinating guarantees failure, but it helps perfectionists maintain their belief that they could have excelled if they had tried harder. Another pitfall for perfectionists is that they tend to ignore progress toward a goal. As long as the writing project is incomplete, they feel as though they aren’t getting anywhere, rather than recognizing that each paragraph moves them closer to a finished product.

Because we don’t like our writing

You may procrastinate on writing because you don’t like to re-read what you have written; you hate writing a first draft and then being forced to evaluate it, in all its imperfection. By procrastinating, you ensure that you don’t have time to read over your work, thus avoiding that uncomfortable moment.

Because we’re too busy

Practical concerns: jobs, other classes, etc.

Because it works

Unfortunately, procrastination helps reinforce itself. When we avoid doing something we dread (like writing) by doing something we enjoy (such as watching TV, hanging out with friends, etc.), we escape the dreaded task. Given such a choice, it’s no wonder that many of us choose to procrastinate. When we write a paper at the last minute and still manage to get a good grade, we feel all the more compelled to procrastinate next time around.

What to do about it

Now that you know a little bit about why you may have procrastinated in the past, let’s explore some of the strategies you might use to combat your procrastination tendencies, now and in the future. Experiment with whichever of these strategies appeals to you; if you try something and it doesn’t work, try something else! Be patient; improvement will come with practice.

Take an inventory

Figuring out exactly when and how you procrastinate can help you stop the behavior. It can be difficult to tell when you are procrastinating. Think about the clues that tell you that’s what you’re doing: for example, a nagging voice in your head, a visual image of what you are avoiding or the consequences of not doing it, physical ailments (stomach tightness, headaches, muscle tension), inability to concentrate, inability to enjoy what you are doing.

How do you procrastinate?

Try to ignore the task, hoping against hope that it will go away?
Over- or under-estimate the degree of difficulty that the task involves?
Minimize the impact that your performance now may have on your future?
Substitute something important for something really important? (For example, cleaning instead of writing your paper.)
Let a short break become a long one, or an evening in which you do no work at all? (For example, claiming that you are going to watch TV for ½ hour, then watching it all night.)
Focus on one part of the task, at the expense of the rest? (For example, keep working on the introduction, while putting off writing the body and conclusion).
Spend too much time researching or choosing a topic

Once you better understand how you procrastinate, you will be better able to catch yourself doing it. Too often, we don’t even realize that we are procrastinating—until it’s too late.

Create a productive environment

If you have made the decision to stop delaying on a particular writing project, it is critical that you find a place to work where you have at least half a chance of actually getting some writing done. Your dorm room may not be the place where you are most productive. Ditto the computer lab. If you have a laptop computer, try going someplace where you can’t connect to the Internet (e-mail and the Web are the bane of the procrastinator’s existence—as you probably already know). If you are a procrastinator, then chances are you are already pretty exasperated; don’t risk frustrating yourself even more by trying to write in an environment that doesn’t meet your needs.

CAUTION: The most skilled procrastinators will be tempted to take this suggestion too far, spending an inordinate amount of time “creating a productive environment” (cleaning, filing, etc.) and not nearly enough time actually writing. Don’t fall into that trap! While cleaning and filing are indeed worthy and necessary activities, if you only do this when you have an approaching writing deadline, then you are procrastinating.

While you are thinking about where to write, consider also when you will write. When are you most alert? Is it at 8 a.m., mid-morning, mid-afternoon, early evening, or late at night? Try to schedule writing time when you know you will be at your best. Don’t worry about when you “should” be able to write; just focus on when you are able to write.

Challenge your myths

In order to break the procrastination habit, we need to get past the idea that in order to write, we must have all the information pertaining to the topic, and we must have optimal writing conditions. In reality, writers never have all the information, and conditions are never optimal.

Think of a writing project that you are currently putting off. On one side of a piece of paper, write down all the reasons for your delay. On the other side, argue (as convincingly as possible!) against the delay.

Myth #1: “I can’t function in a messy environment. I can’t possibly write this paper until I have cleaned my apartment.”

Challenge: There are no conditions that are necessary in order for you to write, save two: 1) You must have a writing implement (e.g., a keyboard or a pen) and 2) you must have someplace for writing to go, such as into a computer or onto a piece of paper. If, when faced with a writing project, you start piling up prerequisites for all the things you must do before you can possibly start writing, consider whether you might in fact be making excuses—in other words, procrastinating.

Myth #2: “I know it’s time for me to start writing, but I just haven’t done enough research yet. I’ll spend one more night at the library, and then I’ll start writing my paper.”

Challenge: Truth be told, you will never collect all the information you possibly could for your paper. Better to write a tightly-crafted argument with the information you have NOW, AT THIS VERY MOMENT, than to keep doing research and risk throwing your paper together at the last minute.

Myth #3: “I do my best work under pressure.”

Challenge: There are lots of other ways to create pressure for yourself, besides waiting until the night before the paper is due to start writing it. You can set a time limit for yourself—for example, “I will write this paragraph in ½ hour”—or you can pretend that the paper is a timed essay exam. If you do this a week or two before the paper is due, you’ll have a draft in plenty of time to revise and edit it.

Myth #4: “In order to work on my paper, I must have six uninterrupted hours.”

Challenge: You can and should work on a paper in one hour blocks (or shorter). This will help you break the writing task down into smaller pieces, thereby making it seem more manageable. If you know that you can work on one part of the paper for one hour, then it won’t seem so daunting, and you will be less likely to procrastinate.

Some writers find, however, that they do need longer blocks of time in order to really produce anything. Therefore, like all of the strategies outlined here, if this one doesn’t work for you, throw it out and try something else. You might still find, however, that you are more productive when you plan to write “all morning” rather than “all day.”

Myth #5 : “What I write has to be perfect, ” AND/OR “I can’t write anything until I have a perfect thesis statement/intro.”

Challenge: A first draft (or a second, or a third, or even—egad!—the final product) does not have to be perfect. When we write an early draft, we need to turn off our internal critic and just get some words down on the page. The great thing about starting early on a writing project is that it leaves us plenty of time for revision, editing, and proofreading; so, we can set ourselves free to just let our writing flow, without worrying about sentence-level concerns such as grammar, punctuation, and style. You’ll find some other thoughts on editing in our video on proofreading and our handout on revision .

Break it down

The day you get the paper assignment (ideally), or shortly thereafter, break the writing assignment up into the smallest possible chunks. By doing this, the paper never has a chance to take on gargantuan proportions in your mind. You can say to yourself, “Right now, I’m going to write the introduction. That’s all, just the introduction!” And you may be more likely to sit down and do that, than you will to sit down and “write the paper.”

Get a new attitude

We shoot ourselves in the foot, to begin with, by telling ourselves how horrible a particular writing assignment is. Changing our attitude toward the task, when possible, may go a long way toward keeping us from procrastinating. Tell yourself that the task isn’t so bad or difficult, that you either know how to do it, or that you can learn how while you’re doing it. You may find, too, that if you start early on a particular assignment, your attitude never has a chance to get very negative in the first place! Simply starting to write can often help us feel more positive about writing.

Ask for help

Get an anti-procrastination coach. If you are really determined not to procrastinate, then get help from the supportive people in your life. Tell someone about your writing goal and timeline, and ask them to help you determine whether or not your plan is realistic. Once or twice a week, email with a friend, relative, or mentor, in order to report (admit?) on your progress, and declare your promise for the next week (or few days). If, despite your very good intentions, you start procrastinating again, do not think, “All is lost!” Instead, talk to someone about it. They may be able to help you put your slip into perspective and get back on track.
Get a buddy. See if you can find a friend to work alongside you. They don’t have to be writing a paper; in fact, they can be playing Solitaire, for all you care. What matters is that you arrange to meet them at the library (or wherever you have decided to write) at a particular time and stay there for a specific period of time, thus creating accountability.
Get help with your writing. If you are procrastinating because you think you are a weak writer, then ask someone (a Writing Center writing coach, a current or former professor or teaching assistant, a friend) to help you improve.
Form a writing group. A writing group is a great way for undergraduate and more advanced writers alike to create accountability, get feedback, and simply get reminded that you are not alone in the struggle to produce and to improve your writing. See our writing group packet at for more information on how to form and sustain a writing group. Dissertation writers may benefit not only from joining a writing group but also from reading our handout on the dissertation . This handout was written by a former Writing Center staff member who eventually completed her dissertation.

Get unblocked

Sometimes, we procrastinate because we feel stuck on a particular essay or section of an essay. If this happens, you have several options:

Turn off the screen. Type with a dark screen, so you can’t see what you’ve written, decide you don’t like it, and delete it immediately. Sometimes procrastination stems from insecurity about what to say, or whether we have anything to say. The important thing, in that case, is to get started and KEEP GOING. Turning off the screen may help lessen your fear and turn off your internal critic. When you turn it back on (or print out what you’ve written), you may find that you do have something to say, after all.
Write about writing. Take 15 minutes and write a letter to yourself about why you don’t want to write this. This lets you vent your frustrations and anxieties. Then, Take 15 minutes and write about what you could do to get unstuck. You can also try writing about what you’re going to write, making an initial assessment of the assignment. You won’t have the pressure of writing an actual draft, but you will be able to get something down on paper.
Write the easiest part first. You don’t have to start at the beginning. Whatever section you can do, do it! If you think that’s wimpy, and you would rather do the hardest part first so that you can get it out of the way, that’s fine—whatever works for you. If you start writing and you get stuck, write about why you’re stuck.
Talk it out. Try tape-recording yourself speaking the ideas you want to include in the paper, and then transcribe the tape.

Make yourself accountable

Set a writing deadline (other than the paper’s due date) for yourself by making an appointment at the Writing Center or telling your TA (or a former TA) that you’re going to give them a draft on such-and-such a date. If you make your Writing Center appointment for several days before the paper is due, then you may be motivated to have a draft finished. Or set an earlier appointment at the Writing Center to have a conversation about your plans for the draft. Talking out your ideas with someone will help you get them organized for subsequent writing.

Leave your work out

Keeping your work (books, notes, articles, etc.) physically out, in full view, gives you a reminder that you are in the middle of the paper, or that you need to start. Also, if you write in more than one shift, it can be helpful to leave off in the middle of a paragraph and leave your ‘tools’ where they are. When you return to the paper, you’ll be able to “warm up” by finishing that paragraph. Starting a new section cold may be more difficult.

Work on improving your writing when you don’t have a deadline

Investigate your writing process. First of all, you may not think you have a thing called a “writing process.” But you do—everyone does. Describe your writing process in detail.

Ask yourself:

When do I usually start on a paper?
What tools do I need (or think I need) in order to write?
Where do I write?
Do I like quiet or noise when I write?
How long a block of time do I need?
What do I do before I start?
What do I do at the end?
How do I feel at the end (after I have turned it in)?

Then ask yourself:

What do I like about my writing process?
What do I want to change?

Once you can see your writing process, then you can make a decision to change it. But take it easy with this—only work on one part at a time. Otherwise, you’ll get overwhelmed and frustrated—and we all know where that leads, straight down the procrastination road.

Evaluate your writing’s strengths and weaknesses

If you aren’t ready to evaluate your writing process completely (and it’s okay if you aren’t), then you could try just listing your strengths and weaknesses as a writer. For instance, perhaps you are great at creating thesis statements, but you have trouble developing arguments. Or, your papers are very well-organized, but your thesis and argument tend to fall a little flat. Identifying these issues will help you do two things: 1) When you write, you can play to your strength; and 2) You can choose one weakness and do something about it when you DON’T have a deadline.

Now, doing anything when you don’t have a deadline may sound strange to a procrastinator, but bear with me. Let’s say you’ve decided that your writing is too wordy, and you want to work on being more concise. So, some time when you don’t have a paper—but you do have a free hour—you waltz into the Writing Center and tell your tutor, “Hey, I want learn to how to write more clearly.” You confer, and you come away with some simple strategies for eliminating wordiness.

Here is why this may make a difference the next time you write a paper, regardless of whether or not you have procrastinated (again!): You print out your draft. It’s 1 a.m. You go to bed. The next morning, you read over your paper (it’s due at noon). You say to yourself, “Hmmm, I notice I’m being too wordy.” BUT, rather than concluding, “Oh, well, it’s too late, there isn’t anything I can do about that,” (as you may have in the past), you can choose to employ some of what you learned (previously, when you weren’t under the gun) to make your writing more concise. You edit the paper accordingly. You turn it in.

When your instructor hands the papers back the following week, there are far fewer instances of “awkward,” “unclear,” etc. in the margins. Voila! You’ve made a positive change in your writing process!

What does this have to do with procrastination? Well, making one small change in your writing process creates momentum. You begin to feel more positive about your writing. You begin to be less intimidated by writing assignments. And—eventually—you start them earlier, because they just aren’t as big a deal as they used to be.

Evaluating the strengths and weaknesses in your writing gives you a sense of control. Your writing problems are solvable problems. Working on your writing when you don’t have a deadline helps you gain insight and momentum. Soon, writing becomes something that, while you may not look forward to it, you don’t dread quite as much. Thus, you don’t procrastinate quite as much.

This strategy also accounts for the fact that if you perceive procrastination as having been successful for you in the past, you aren’t going to give it up right away

Hone your proofreading and editing skills

If you procrastinate on writing because you don’t like to re-read what you have written, the good news is this: you can learn specific proofreading , revising , and editing strategies. If you finish your paper ahead of time, and you re-read it, and you don’t like it, you have options. Writing a first draft that you don’t like doesn’t mean you’re a terrible writer. Many writers—in fact, I would venture to say most—hate their first drafts. Neither Leo Tolstoy nor Toni Morrison produce(d) brilliant prose the first time around. In fact, Morrison (a big fan of revision) said recently that you don’t have to love your writing just because you wrote it! If you practice some revision and editing strategies, you may feel more comfortable with the idea of re-reading your papers. You’ll know that if you find weaknesses in the draft (and you will), you can do something to improve those areas.

Learn how to tell time

One of the best ways to combat procrastination is to develop a more realistic understanding of time. Procrastinators’ views of time tend to be fairly unrealistic. “This paper is only going to take me about five hours to write,” you think. “Therefore, I don’t need to start on it until the night before.” What you may be forgetting, however, is that our time is often filled with more activities than we realize. On the night in question, for instance, let’s say you go to the gym at 4:45 p.m. You work out (1 hour), take a shower and dress (30 minutes), eat dinner (45 minutes), and go to a sorority meeting (1 hour). By the time you get back to your dorm room to begin work on the paper, it is already 8:00 p.m. But now you need to check your email and return a couple of phone calls. It’s 8:30 p.m. before you finally sit down to write the paper. If the paper does indeed take five hours to write, you will be up until 1:30 in the morning—and that doesn’t include the time that you will inevitably spend watching TV.

And, as it turns out, it takes about five hours to write a first draft of the essay. You have forgotten to allow time for revision, editing, and proofreading. You get the paper done and turn it in the next morning. But you know it isn’t your best work, and you are pretty tired from the late night, and so you make yourself a promise: “Next time, I’ll start early!”

Make an unschedule

The next time you have a writing deadline, try using an unschedule to outline a realistic plan for when you will write. An unschedule is a weekly calendar of all the ways in which your time is already accounted for. When you make an unschedule, you consider not only your timed commitments such as classes and meetings, but also your untimed activities such as meals, exercise, errands, laundry, time with friends and family, and the like. It is not a list of what you should do in a given week; rather it is an outline of the time that you will necessarily spend doing other things besides writing.

Once you have made your unschedule, take a look at the blank spaces. These represent the maximum number of hours that you could potentially spend writing. By starting with these blank spaces as a guide, you will be able to more accurately predict how much time you will be able to write on any given day. You may be able to see, for instance, that you really don’t have five hours to spend writing on the night before the paper is due. By planning accordingly, you will not only get a better night’s sleep, you may also end up with a better paper!

The unschedule might also be a good way to get started on a larger writing project, such as a term paper or an honors thesis. You may think that you have “all semester” to get the writing done, but if you really sit down and map out how much time you have available to write on a daily and weekly basis, you will see that you need to get started sooner, rather than later. In addition, the unschedule may reveal especially busy weeks or months, which will help you budget time for long-term projects.

Perhaps most importantly, the unschedule can help you examine how you spend your time. You may be surprised at how much (or how little) time you spend watching television, and decide to make a change. It’s especially important that you build time for fun activities into your unschedule. Otherwise, you will procrastinate in order to steal time for relaxation.

You can also use the unschedule to record your progress towards your goal. Each time you work on your paper, for example, mark it on the unschedule. One of the most important things you can do to kick the procrastination habit is to reward yourself when you write something, even if (especially if) that writing is only a little piece of the whole. Seeing your success on paper will help reinforce the productive behavior, and you will feel more motivated to write later in the day or week.

Set a time limit

Okay, so maybe one of the reasons you procrastinate on writing projects is that you just plain hate writing! You would rather be at the dentist than sitting in front of your computer with a blank Microsoft Word document staring you in the face. In that case, it may be helpful to set limits on how much time you will spend writing before you do something else. While the notation “Must work on Hemingway essay all weekend” may not inspire you to sit down and write, “Worked on Hemingway essay for ½ hour” just might. Or, if you tell yourself that you will write “all weekend,” for instance, the sheer agony of the thought may keep you from doing any writing at all. If, however, you say that you will write for two hours on Saturday afternoon, you may actually accomplish something. The important thing here is to keep your commitment to yourself. Even if, at the end of the two hours, you think you could keep going, stop. Go outside and enjoy the weather. Your procrastinating self needs to be able to trust your new non-procrastinating self the next time you say you will only write for a certain amount of time. If you go overboard this time, then the next time you say, “I’ll write for two hours and then stop,” the procrastinator within will respond, “Yeah, right! I’m going rollerblading!”

On the other hand, it may work better for you to trick yourself into working on your paper by telling yourself you’re only going to write for two hours, but then continuing to work if you’re feeling inspired. Experiment with both approaches and see which one seems to work best for you.

Be realistic about how long it takes you to write

Procrastinators tend to be heroic about time; they estimate that it will take them two hours to complete a task that would take most people four. Once you have determined that procrastination is hurting your writing, begin taking notice of how long it actually takes you to write. Many students have a “page an hour” rule. Perhaps you can write a page in an hour if you are totally rested, fed, and focused, your roommate isn’t home, and the wind is blowing just right. But what if the phone rings, what if you are tired, and what if you have to go to the bathroom? When you estimate how long it will take you to write something, expect that there will be interruptions along the way.

Parting thoughts

As you explore why you procrastinate and experiment with strategies for working differently, don’t expect overnight transformation. You developed the procrastination habit over a long period of time; you aren’t going to stop magically. But you can change the behavior, bit by bit. If you stop punishing yourself when you procrastinate and start rewarding yourself for your small successes, you will eventually develop new writing habits. And you will get a lot more sleep.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Burka, Jane M., and Lenora M. Yuen. 1983. Procrastination: Why You Do It, What to Do About It Now . Boston: Addison-Wesley Publishing.

Ellis, Albert, and William J. Knaus. 1977. Overcoming Procrastination . New York: Signet.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Make a Gift

The Psychological Origins of Procrastination—and How We Can Stop Putting Things Off

The psychology behind procrastination involves how we perceive of value,

“I love deadlines,” English author Douglas Adams once wrote. “I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”

We’ve all had the experience of wanting to get a project done but putting it off for later. Sometimes we wait because we just don’t care enough about the project, but other times we care a lot – and still end up doing something else. I, for one, end up cleaning my house when I have a lot of papers to grade, even though I know I need to grade them.

So why do we procrastinate? Are we built to operate this way at some times? Or is there something wrong with the way we’re approaching work?

These questions are central to my research on goal pursuit , which could offer some clues from neuroscience about why we procrastinate – and how to overcome this tendency.

To do, or not to do

It all starts with a simple choice between working now on a given project and doing anything else: working on a different project, doing something fun or doing nothing at all.

The decision to work on something is driven by how much we value accomplishing the project in that moment – what psychologists call its subjective value. And procrastination, in psychological terms, is what happens when the value of doing something else outweighs the value of working now.

This way of thinking suggests a simple trick to defeat procrastination: find a way to boost the subjective value of working now, relative to the value of other things. You could increase the value of the project, decrease the value of the distraction, or some combination of the two.

For example, instead of cleaning my house, I might try to focus on why grading is personally important to me. Or I could think about how unpleasant cleaning can actually be – especially when sharing a house with a toddler.

It’s simple advice, but adhering to this strategy can be quite difficult, mainly because there are so many forces that diminish the value of working in the present.

The distant deadline

People are not entirely rational in the way they value things. For example, a dollar bill is worth exactly the same today as it is a week from now, but its subjective value – roughly how good it would feel to own a dollar – depends on other factors besides its face value, such as when we receive it.

The tendency for people to devalue money and other goods based on time is called delay discounting . For example, one study showed that, on average, receiving $100 three months from now is worth the same to people as receiving $83 right now. People would rather lose $17 than wait a few months to get a larger reward.

Other factors also influence subjective value, such as how much money someone has recently gained or lost . The key point is that there is not a perfect match between objective value and subjective value.

Delay discounting is a factor in procrastination because the completion of the project happens in the future. Getting something done is a delayed reward, so its value in the present is reduced: the further away the deadline is, the less attractive it seems to work on the project right now.

Studies have repeatedly shown that the tendency to procrastinate closely follows economic models of delay discounting. Furthermore, people who characterize themselves as procrastinators show an exaggerated effect . They discount the value of getting something done ahead of time even more than other people.

One way to increase the value of completing a task is to make the finish line seem closer . For example, vividly imagining a future reward reduces delay discounting .

No work is ‘effortless’

Not only can completing a project be devalued because it happens in the future, but working on a project can also be unattractive due to the simple fact that work takes effort.

New research supports the idea that mental effort is intrinsically costly ; for this reason, people generally choose to work on an easier task rather than a harder task. Furthermore, there are greater subjective costs for work that feels harder (though these costs can be offset by experience with the task at hand).

This leads to the interesting prediction that people would procrastinate more the harder they expect the work to be. That’s because the more effort a task requires, the more someone stands to gain by putting the same amount of effort into something else (a phenomenon economists call opportunity costs ). Opportunity costs make working on something that seems hard feels like a loss.

Sure enough, a group of studies shows that people procrastinate more on unpleasant tasks. These results suggest that reducing the pain of working on a project, for example by breaking it down into more familiar and manageable pieces, would be an effective way to reduce procrastination.

Your work, your identity

When we write that procrastination is a side effect of the way we value things, it frames task completion as a product of motivation, rather than ability.

In other words, you can be really good at something, whether it’s cooking a gourmet meal or writing a story, but if you don’t possess the motivation, or sense of importance, to complete the task, it’ll likely be put off.

It was for this reason that the writer Robert Hanks, in a recent essay for the London Review of Books, described procrastination as “a failure of appetites.”

The source of this “appetite” can be a bit tricky. But one could argue that, like our (real) appetite for food, it’s something that’s closely intertwined with our daily lives, our culture and our sense of who we are.

So how does one increase the subjective value of a project? A powerful way – one that my graduate students and I have written about in detail – is to connect the project to your self-concept. Our hypothesis is that projects seen as important to a person’s self-concept will hold more subjective value for that person.

It’s for this reason that Hanks also wrote that procrastination seems to stem from a failure to “identify sufficiently with your future self” – in other words, the self for whom the goal is most relevant.

Because people are motivated to maintain a positive self-concept , goals connected closely to one’s sense of self or identity take on much more value.

JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. JSTOR Daily readers can access the original research behind our articles for free on JSTOR.

Get Our Newsletter

Get your fix of JSTOR Daily’s best stories in your inbox each Thursday.

Building Classroom Discussions around JSTOR Daily Syllabi

Young woman, a university student, studying online.

Scaffolding a Research Project with JSTOR

An overhead view of a group of five preschoolers sitting at a table playing with colorful blocks and geometric shapes.

Making Implicit Racism

The Diverse Shamanisms of South America

Support JSTOR Daily

Procrastination Psychology: Understanding Effects, Causes, And Solutions

Procrastination Psychology: Understanding Effects, Causes, and Solutions

What is procrastination?

The word procrastination comes from the Latin procrastinare: “deferred until tomorrow” and the Greek akrasia: “acting against one’s better judgment.” The word itself suggests that procrastination is an active process: you choose to do something other than the task at hand, despite knowing that its delay will cause you to suffer in the future.

Procrastination can vary from chronic (perpetual problems finishing tasks) to situational (the delaying of tasks that may seem unattractive or boring). At some point in our lives, nearly everyone has delayed completing a task, with a number of studies showing that “procrastination appears to go hand-in-hand with the human condition.” Numbers are particularly high among students, with 80-95% of this group being estimated to engage in procrastination.

Dr. Joseph Ferrari , professor of psychology at DePaul University and a leading voice in the study of procrastination, says that a true procrastinator “has twelve things to do, maybe does one or two of them, then rewrites the list, shuffles it around, then makes an extra copy of it. That’s procrastinating.”

Procrastinators often seek “ephemeral pleasures” such as watching a TV show or spending time with friends instead of working on an important task. This type of procrastination is easy to identify. However, procrastination may take a more subtle form, disguised as the pursuit of “ephemeral chores.” If you have ever convinced yourself that organizing your spice cabinet or color-coding your agenda is more important than starting a task, you may employ this form of procrastination disguised as productivity.

The harmful effects of procrastination

Contrary to popular belief, procrastination is not caused by poor time management or a fear of failure. Rather, studies show that procrastination is due to self-regulation failure and a poor ability to manage emotions. Procrastinators recognize the harmful effects of putting tasks off, but can’t overcome the emotional urge of a diversion.

When discussing procrastination, Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius reminded himself to “stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you,” suggesting that the Romans had insight into the causes of procrastination that psychologists are studying today. According to Dr. Timothy Pychyl , author of Solving the Procrastination Puzzle , “emotional regulation is the real story around procrastination because, to the extent that I can deal with my emotions, I can stay on task.”

The link between procrastination and struggles with self-regulation can play a role in substance abuse disorders or impulse control, suggesting that missing a deadline or rushing to finish a task can have more severe consequences than a bad grade or poor performance at work. The poor emotional regulation that comes with a tendency to procrastinate can also lead to a higher likelihood of developing mood disorders such as depression, anxiety, and even bipolar disorder.

Choosing short-term rewards over long-term benefits

Several studies have linked procrastination to depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and overall poor mental health. One of the earliest studies to investigate the negative effects of procrastination followed a group of students throughout the course of a semester in 1997. Students who engaged in procrastination experienced less stress at the beginning of the semester, but their bliss was short-lived. By the end of the semester, the procrastinators not only earned lower grades than other students but also reported significantly higher stress levels and cases of illness, suggesting that procrastination had an influence not only on their performance but on their overall well-being.

When it comes to the link between procrastination and mental health conditions, it can be hard to identify which came first. The decreased energy, negative thoughts, and low self-esteem that come with depression can lead us to believe we cannot carry out the task at hand. In turn, putting off important tasks can increase our stress levels, decrease our self-worth and lead to elevated levels of anxiety and a higher likelihood of depression. A 2017 study found that the way participants felt influenced how and when they approached a task. Similarly, in research settings, people who procrastinate have higher levels of stress and lower well-being.

Don’t delay: take care of your mental health today

Due to the complicated underlying causes that lead us to procrastinate, telling a procrastinator to “just do it” can be as counterproductive as telling a person who suffers from depression to “cheer up.”

Training your mind and body to prioritize important tasks may be difficult, but the long-term benefits can not only improve your professional and academic performance but also improve your mental health and overall well-being.

3 tips to help you procrastinate less

Change the narrative.

Due to the reciprocal nature of the link between mental health and procrastination, approaching tasks with a more positive outlook can trick your brain into prioritizing them instead of dreading them. Instead of seeing tasks as something you have to do, reframe them from a more positive point of view.

Instead, try:

“I can’t wait to show off my writing skills in this paper”

“Studying this topic is going to set me up for success in my career”

“This project is a great chance to showcase my analytical skills to my manager”

Practice self-compassion

A 2012 study that looked at the links between procrastination, stress, and self-compassion found that lower levels of self-compassion can lead to higher stress levels and a greater tendency to procrastinate. Lower self-esteem reduces our confidence in completing a task, leading our bodies and minds to opt for the short-lived pleasure of avoidance, instead of the long-term reward of overcoming a task.

Ways to increase self-esteem and practice self-compassion can include the following:

Forgive yourself for your mistakes

Take care of your body and mind with a healthy diet and exercise

Be kind to yourself

Acknowledge your strengths

Recognize your weaknesses not as shortcomings, but as opportunities for improvement

Create a reward system

Our tendency to procrastinate is intrinsically connected with the regulation of our emotions. When we procrastinate, we often choose immediate pleasure over long-term reward. By creating a reward system, you can train your mind to associate accomplishing difficult tasks with positive emotions.

Try rewarding yourself with a refreshing walk after completing half of the day’s tasks (just remember to get back on track) or spend time with friends getting coffee once you complete a hard assignment.

Subject List
Take a Tour
For Authors
Subscriber Services
Publications
African American Studies
African Studies
American Literature
Anthropology
Architecture Planning and Preservation
Art History
Atlantic History
Biblical Studies
British and Irish Literature
Childhood Studies
Chinese Studies
Cinema and Media Studies
Communication
Criminology
Environmental Science
Evolutionary Biology
International Law
International Relations
Islamic Studies
Jewish Studies
Latin American Studies
Latino Studies
Linguistics
Literary and Critical Theory
Medieval Studies
Military History
Political Science
Public Health
Renaissance and Reformation
Social Work
Urban Studies
Victorian Literature
Browse All Subjects

How to Subscribe

Free Trials

In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Procrastination

Introduction, general overviews.

Article-Length Reviews
Conferences
Definition and Clarification
Types of Procrastination
Self-Report
Self-Deception
Perspective of Differential Psychology
Perspective of Motivational and Volitional Psychology
Perspective of Clinical Psychology
Situational Perspective
Perspective of Neurobiology
Demographic Differences
Retirement Saving

Other Subject Areas

Forthcoming articles expand or collapse the "forthcoming articles" section.

Data Visualization
Remote Work
Workforce Training Evaluation
Find more forthcoming articles...
Export Citations
Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Procrastination by Piers Steel , Katrin Klingsieck LAST REVIEWED: 26 July 2017 LAST MODIFIED: 26 July 2017 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199828340-0140

Procrastination is a common form of self-regulatory failure with references to it throughout the historical record. Typically, it is “to voluntarily delay an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay,” or to put off despite expecting to be worse off. By nature, this is a dysfunctional or irrational delay, though some refer to more functional forms of strategic delay as procrastination as well. The topic is studied under numerous disciplines and has been framed as an aspect of behavioral economics, personality, motivation, self-regulation, and neuropsychology. Procrastination has been shown to negatively affect various life domains, including those related to academics, health, finances, and the workplace. Not surprisingly, then, many ideas for overcoming procrastination have been accumulating, some of which have been formulated in well-conceptualized interventions programs and books. Procrastination is reviewed here in four sections. First, its definition and measurement are considered. Second, the review shifts to the different perspectives from which it has been theoretically understood and empirically studied. These perspectives pertain to behavioral economics, to three different psychology perspectives (differential psychology, motivational and volitional psychology, and clinical psychology), to a situational perspective, and to the perspective of neurobiology. Third, we briefly present the demographic differences in procrastination and its impact on different aspects of different life domains. Finally, the different endeavors for treating procrastination are reviewed.

Because procrastination is a common human frailty, books on the topic are numerous, mostly written from time management and self-help perspectives. This section focuses on texts written by academics and popular self-help texts written by counseling psychologists. In general, the books reflect two schools of thought on the topic. Early works, especially those by counseling psychologists, take a view that procrastination is primarily caused by irrational beliefs, such as perfectionism. Examples of this type of work are Burka and Yuen 2008 and Fiore 2007 . Later works, especially those by research psychologists, indicate that procrastination is primarily an impulse-related issue, finding less empirical support for self-esteem or perfectionism as a major contributor. Examples of these works are Ferrari 2010 , Steel 2012 , and Sirois and Pychyl 2016 . In addition, Ferrari, et al. 1995 and Schouwenburg, et al. 2004 summarize the research approaches and intervention programs until 1995 and 2004, respectively. Andreou and White 2010 takes a different approach by analyzing procrastination from a philosophical point of view.

Andreou, C., and M. D. White, eds. 2010. The thief of time: Philosophical essays on procrastination . New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195376685.001.0001

A comprehensive book examining procrastination from three different perspectives: its meaning and sources, its connection to vices and imprudence, and strategies for overcoming it. Though several chapters are from a strictly philosophical perspective, this text compiles writings from key researchers across the entire procrastination field.

Burka, J. B., and L. M. Yuen. 2008. Procrastination: Why you do it, what to do about it . Cambridge, MA: Da Capo.

With a similar background to Fiore 2007 , this is an update of an earlier 1983 edition. Notably, like Fiore, these authors were also counseling psychologists at the University of California at Berkeley. They take an almost identical position: that procrastination is caused by irrational beliefs related to perfectionism and low self-esteem.

Ferrari, J. R. 2010. Still procrastinating: The no-regrets guide to getting it done . Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

This book is written for the theoretically interested reader as well as for the help-seeking procrastinator. It presents the different theoretical concepts linked to procrastination, a review of research results, and advice.

Ferrari, J. R., J. L. Johnson, and W. G. McCown. 1995. Procrastination and task avoidance: Theory, research, and treatment . New York: Plenum.

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4899-0227-6

One of the first academic books on procrastination, this text gives an introduction into different research perspectives on procrastination, the measurement and treatment of procrastination, as well as different phenomena (e.g., perfectionism, depression) associated with procrastination.

Fiore, N. 2007. The now habit: A strategic program for overcoming procrastination and enjoying guilt-free play . New York: Tarcher/Penguin.

This is a revised version of the author’s 1989 book. The author’s positions reflect his career as a counseling psychologist, hypnotherapist, and productivity coach. He views procrastination as a symptom of irrational beliefs associated with low self-esteem, perfectionism, and fear of failure.

Schouwenburg, H. C., C. H. Lay, T. A. Pychyl, and J. R. Ferrari, eds. 2004. Counseling the procrastinator in academic settings . Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

DOI: 10.1037/10808-000

In this book, the editors have collected interventions and ideas for dealing with student procrastinators. The covered interventions range from those focusing on cognitive restructuring techniques to those suggesting different forms of self-management training.

Sirois, F. M., and T. A. Pychyl, eds. 2016. Procrastination, health, and well-being . London: Academic Press.

In this edited collection, the three themes of “failure to regulate behavior, emotion-regulation difficulties, and the temporal aspects of procrastination” are highlighted. Interventions and guidelines for future research are also covered.

Steel, P. 2012. The procrastination equation: How to stop putting things off and start getting things done . Harlow, UK: Pearson Education.

Based on seventy pages of academic citations, the first six chapters review the phenomenology of procrastination, considering its prevalence, individual and societal costs, evolutionary biology, and neurobiology. The last three chapters focus on treatment options organized into expectancy, value, and time-related sources. The book contains a procrastination scale and a diagnostic procrastination scale based on Temporal Motivation Theory .

Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login .

Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here .

About Psychology »
Meet the Editorial Board »
Abnormal Psychology
Academic Assessment
Acculturation and Health
Action Regulation Theory
Action Research
Addictive Behavior
Adolescence
Adoption, Social, Psychological, and Evolutionary Perspect...
Advanced Theory of Mind
Affective Forecasting
Affirmative Action
Ageism at Work
Allport, Gordon
Alzheimer’s Disease
Ambulatory Assessment in Behavioral Science
Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA)
Animal Behavior
Animal Learning
Anxiety Disorders
Art and Aesthetics, Psychology of
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Psychology
Assessment and Clinical Applications of Individual Differe...
Attachment in Social and Emotional Development across the ...
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in Adults
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in Childre...
Attitudinal Ambivalence
Attraction in Close Relationships
Attribution Theory
Authoritarian Personality
Bayesian Statistical Methods in Psychology
Behavior Therapy, Rational Emotive
Behavioral Economics
Behavioral Genetics
Belief Perseverance
Bereavement and Grief
Biological Psychology
Birth Order
Body Image in Men and Women
Bystander Effect
Categorical Data Analysis in Psychology
Childhood and Adolescence, Peer Victimization and Bullying...
Clark, Mamie Phipps
Clinical Neuropsychology
Clinical Psychology
Cognitive Consistency Theories
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Cognitive Neuroscience
Communication, Nonverbal Cues and
Comparative Psychology
Competence to Stand Trial: Restoration Services
Competency to Stand Trial
Computational Psychology
Conflict Management in the Workplace
Conformity, Compliance, and Obedience
Consciousness
Coping Processes
Correspondence Analysis in Psychology
Counseling Psychology
Creativity at Work
Cross-Cultural Psychology
Cultural Psychology
Daily Life, Research Methods for Studying
Data Science Methods for Psychology
Data Sharing in Psychology
Death and Dying
Deceiving and Detecting Deceit
Defensive Processes
Depressive Disorders
Development, Prenatal
Developmental Psychology (Cognitive)
Developmental Psychology (Social)
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM...
Discrimination
Dissociative Disorders
Drugs and Behavior
Eating Disorders
Ecological Psychology
Educational Settings, Assessment of Thinking in
Effect Size
Embodiment and Embodied Cognition
Emerging Adulthood
Emotional Intelligence
Empathy and Altruism
Employee Stress and Well-Being
Environmental Neuroscience and Environmental Psychology
Ethics in Psychological Practice
Event Perception
Evolutionary Psychology
Expansive Posture
Experimental Existential Psychology
Exploratory Data Analysis
Eyewitness Testimony
Eysenck, Hans
Factor Analysis
Festinger, Leon
Five-Factor Model of Personality
Flynn Effect, The
Forensic Psychology
Forgiveness
Friendships, Children's
Fundamental Attribution Error/Correspondence Bias
Gambler's Fallacy
Game Theory and Psychology
Geropsychology, Clinical
Global Mental Health
Habit Formation and Behavior Change
Health Psychology
Health Psychology Research and Practice, Measurement in
Heider, Fritz
Heuristics and Biases
History of Psychology
Human Factors
Humanistic Psychology
Implicit Association Test (IAT)
Industrial and Organizational Psychology
Inferential Statistics in Psychology
Insanity Defense, The
Intelligence
Intelligence, Crystallized and Fluid
Intercultural Psychology
Intergroup Conflict
International Classification of Diseases and Related Healt...
International Psychology
Interviewing in Forensic Settings
Intimate Partner Violence, Psychological Perspectives on
Introversion–Extraversion
Item Response Theory
Law, Psychology and
Lazarus, Richard
Learned Helplessness
Learning Theory
Learning versus Performance
LGBTQ+ Romantic Relationships
Lie Detection in a Forensic Context
Life-Span Development
Locus of Control
Loneliness and Health
Mathematical Psychology
Meaning in Life
Mechanisms and Processes of Peer Contagion
Media Violence, Psychological Perspectives on
Mediation Analysis
Memories, Autobiographical
Memories, Flashbulb
Memories, Repressed and Recovered
Memory, False
Memory, Human
Memory, Implicit versus Explicit
Memory in Educational Settings
Memory, Semantic
Meta-Analysis
Metacognition
Metaphor, Psychological Perspectives on
Microaggressions
Military Psychology
Mindfulness and Education
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
Money, Psychology of
Moral Conviction
Moral Development
Moral Psychology
Moral Reasoning
Nature versus Nurture Debate in Psychology
Neuroscience of Associative Learning
Nonergodicity in Psychology and Neuroscience
Nonparametric Statistical Analysis in Psychology
Observational (Non-Randomized) Studies
Obsessive-Complusive Disorder (OCD)
Occupational Health Psychology
Olfaction, Human
Operant Conditioning
Optimism and Pessimism
Organizational Justice
Parenting Stress
Parenting Styles
Parents' Beliefs about Children
Path Models
Peace Psychology
Perception, Person
Performance Appraisal
Personality and Health
Personality Disorders
Personality Psychology
Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapies: From Car...
Phenomenological Psychology
Placebo Effects in Psychology
Play Behavior
Positive Psychological Capital (PsyCap)
Positive Psychology
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Prejudice and Stereotyping
Pretrial Publicity
Prisoner's Dilemma
Problem Solving and Decision Making
Procrastination
Prosocial Behavior
Prosocial Spending and Well-Being
Protocol Analysis
Psycholinguistics
Psychological Literacy
Psychological Perspectives on Food and Eating
Psychology, Political
Psychoneuroimmunology
Psychophysics, Visual
Psychotherapy
Psychotic Disorders
Publication Bias in Psychology
Reasoning, Counterfactual
Rehabilitation Psychology
Relationships
Reliability–Contemporary Psychometric Conceptions
Religion, Psychology and
Replication Initiatives in Psychology
Research Methods
Risk Taking
Role of the Expert Witness in Forensic Psychology, The
Sample Size Planning for Statistical Power and Accurate Es...
Schizophrenic Disorders
School Psychology
School Psychology, Counseling Services in
Self, Gender and
Self, Psychology of the
Self-Construal
Self-Control
Self-Determination Theory
Self-Esteem
Self-Monitoring
Self-Regulation in Educational Settings
Self-Report Tests, Measures, and Inventories in Clinical P...
Sensation Seeking
Sex and Gender
Sexual Minority Parenting
Sexual Orientation
Signal Detection Theory and its Applications
Simpson's Paradox in Psychology
Single People
Single-Case Experimental Designs
Skinner, B.F.
Sleep and Dreaming
Small Groups
Social Class and Social Status
Social Cognition
Social Neuroscience
Social Support
Social Touch and Massage Therapy Research
Somatoform Disorders
Spatial Attention
Sports Psychology
Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE): Icon and Controversy
Stereotype Threat
Stereotypes
Stress and Coping, Psychology of
Student Success in College
Subjective Wellbeing Homeostasis
Taste, Psychological Perspectives on
Teaching of Psychology
Terror Management Theory
Testing and Assessment
The Concept of Validity in Psychological Assessment
The Neuroscience of Emotion Regulation
The Reasoned Action Approach and the Theories of Reasoned ...
The Weapon Focus Effect in Eyewitness Memory
Theory of Mind
Therapy, Cognitive-Behavioral
Thinking Skills in Educational Settings
Time Perception
Trauma Psychology
Twin Studies
Unconscious Processes
Video Games and Violent Content
Virtues and Character Strengths
Women and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM...
Women, Psychology of
Work Well-Being
Wundt, Wilhelm
Privacy Policy
Cookie Policy
Legal Notice
Accessibility

[66.249.64.20|185.148.24.167]
185.148.24.167

The psychological origins of procrastination – and how we can stop putting things off

Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Oregon

PhD Candidate in Psychology, University of Oregon

Disclosure statement

Elliot Berkman receives funding from NIH.

Jordan Miller-Ziegler does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

View all partners

“I love deadlines,” English author Douglas Adams once wrote. “I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”

So why do we procrastinate? Are we built to operate this way at some times? Or is there something wrong with the way we’re approaching work?

These questions are central to my research on goal pursuit , which could offer some clues from neuroscience about why we procrastinate – and how to overcome this tendency.

To do, or not to do

It all starts with a simple choice between working now on a given project and doing anything else: working on a different project, doing something fun or doing nothing at all.

It’s simple advice, but adhering to this strategy can be quite difficult, mainly because there are so many forces that diminish the value of working in the present.

The distant deadline

One way to increase the value of completing a task is to make the finish line seem closer. For example, vividly imagining a future reward reduces delay discounting .

No work is ‘effortless’

Not only can completing a project be devalued because it happens in the future, but working on a project can also be unattractive due to the simple fact that work takes effort.

Your work, your identity

When we write that procrastination is a side effect of the way we value things, it frames task completion as a product of motivation, rather than ability.

It was for this reason that the writer Robert Hanks, in an essay for the London Review of Books, described procrastination as “a failure of appetites.”

Because people are motivated to maintain a positive self-concept , goals connected closely to one’s sense of self or identity take on much more value.

Connecting the project to more immediate sources of value, such as life goals or core values, can fill the deficit in subjective value that underlies procrastination.

Procrastination
Long-term goals

Case Management Specialist

Lecturer / Senior Lecturer - Marketing

Assistant Editor - 1 year cadetship

Executive Dean, Faculty of Health

Lecturer/Senior Lecturer, Earth System Science (School of Science)

University of Notre Dame

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

Home ›
Reviews ›

The Thief of Time: Philosophical Essays on Procrastination

Chrisoula Andreou and Mark D. White (eds), The Thief of Time: Philosophical Essays on Procrastination , Oxford University Press, 2010, 300pp., $65.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780195376685.

Reviewed by Nomy Arpaly, Brown University

Procrastination is a type of irrational behavior -- or so it seems to most -- that has been somewhat neglected in the philosophical literature. While weakness of will has been discussed a lot, and it seems intuitively likely that procrastination is related to weakness of will or akrasia , weakness of will is more often connected in the philosopher's mind with excessive consumption of chocolate than with checking one's email or playing solitaire for the sole purpose of avoiding work. At least so it seems from the literature: in the real life of many academics the procrastination of work presents a genuine and ubiquitous challenge. This is though, as pointed out by Ogden Nash in his poem "Sins of Omission," some kinds of procrastination -- the example of playing solitaire comes to mind -- do not even provide you with the pleasure that chocolate does. No one, the poet reminds us, ever says, "Whee! Let's all fail to write just one more letter before we go home, and this round of unwritten letters is on me."

This book addresses the dearth of philosophical treatments of procrastination. It consists of fifteen articles, some by philosophers and some by psychologists, economists, and others. There are three parts to the book: one concerned with analyzing procrastination and finding out its sources, one that explores the connection between procrastination and imprudence and vice, and one which deals with ways in which procrastination can be overcome. Since the book's subtitle is "Philosophical Essays on Procrastination," a warning might be in order: strictly speaking, some of the essays are not philosophical, and some appear to sit on the borderline between moral psychology and just plain psychology or economics. Some articles even dabble in (scientifically savvy) self-help.

The first part of the book consists mostly of borderline articles. It opens with an article by George Ainslie which I would not call philosophical: it is more of a scientific article readable by philosophers. However, starting with this article may still have been a good idea. If we are to philosophize about procrastination it is best that we are introduced, for example, to the concept of hyperbolic discounting of utilities. Notoriously, we often act as if we prefer smaller short term rewards to larger long term rewards, and when we do so it is said that we hyperbolically discount future goods. Ainslie says that procrastination is the most "basic impulse:" all impulsive behavior involves hyperbolic discounting, but it also involves other things, like addictive substances and other sorts of concrete temptation. Procrastination simply is hyperbolic discounting in action, with no need for another motive (such as excessive pleasure or thrill-seeking) to explain our irrationality.

Hyperbolic discounting will be discussed philosophically through the book along with procrastination as the result of intransitive preferences (at any given occasion, you prefer never smoking to always smoking, but you prefer smoking one last time to never smoking, and so pair-wise choices will lead you to what you prefer the least). Some believe that having such preferences is the source of the irrationality of procrastination, but Duncan MacIntosh (in an article that is clearly within the borders of philosophy) argues that it is not and that procrastination and its irrationality need a different sort of explanation, more akin to philosophical theories of weakness of will. Also present in the first part of the book are an inquiry into the sources of both procrastination and premature action ("bad timing") by Jon Elster, who finds several sources and highlights, among other things, perfectionism as a source of procrastination, as well as an economic-style treatment of procrastination by Don Ross, who seeks to remedy some of the "embarrassment" from which economics has suffered lately due to such books as Predictably Irrational .

Sarah Stroud's essay stands out for the absence of equations and diagrams, and also for its unusual thesis. She asks whether procrastination is weakness of will and comes to the surprising conclusion that it is not. Weakness of will, conceived in Aristotelian terms as acting against one's best judgment or akrasia , is something that happens at a moment whereas procrastination is essentially a thing that happens over time. Weakness of will conceived in newer terms made popular by Richard Holton -- as a failure to stick to a resolution -- requires the formation of an intention or decision, whereas procrastination -- this is where Stroud's paper gets most controversial -- consists partially of either not having formed an intention at all or having formed an intention that is too vague and unspecific. If you "always meant" to go to a doctor "at some point" but never did you have never formed an intention at all, or you only formed a very weak intention, an "anemic" one as Stroud says. This seems to fit some cases of procrastination very well, and fit the empirical literature, mentioned later, that suggests that detailed planning reduces procrastination. I suspect, however, that Stroud's conclusion might conflict with intuitions about cases in which one appears to have made a very specific plan and still procrastinated -- last ditch procrastination, as it were.

The second part of the book is made entirely of philosophical pieces. Olav Gjelsvik discusses procrastination's relation to rationality: he considers various definitions of procrastination and shows that it is quite hard to define -- one too easily includes in one's definition instances in which postponing something is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. He maintains that in procrastination you necessarily do things later in time than you should , and attempts to figure out where that "should" comes from. Through a very complex argument he comes up with a conclusion in favor of external reasons. Christine Tappolet, in an article about procrastination and personal identity, provocatively challenges the idea, dear to some theorists of personal identity, that we have a special concern for our future selves. She basically asks a question that a Martian might ask about us: if we have that much special concern for our future selves, how is it that we treat them so badly? The very fact that a person repeatedly procrastinates quitting cigarettes despite her conviction that they are dangerous to her future self is a reason to believe that she does not have a special concern for that future self. Had we repeatedly treated someone else that badly we would not have been able to say that we particularly care about them. I suspect Tappolet assumes too much rationality on our part: irrational as we are, we are perfectly capable of being greatly attached to our future selves and being reckless with them. But exactly how this is possible -- the question that Tappolet's paper brings into focus -- is as hard a question about human nature as they come.

Three authors discuss procrastination in the context of virtue and vice, none suggesting that it is particularly a moral vice (though even so, I remain a bit bothered by Elijah Millgram following Bernard Williams in suggesting that addiction makes you less than virtuous). Jennifer Baker tells us that there is a lot of discussion over the internet as to whether procrastination is a sin. She thinks the question is more difficult than it seems and presents different virtue-ethics inspired views that underscore this complexity. Research, she says, will not by itself answer the question. Sergio Tenenbaum offers an analysis of a vice of procrastination as a failure in implementing extended plans. Very roughly, if I have a plan to write a book, my extended plan of action has to include both times allocated to actual writing and time allocated to such things as having lunch or playing with my cat, and there has to be some flexibility in how the plan is applied. There is an art -- or rather a virtue -- in holding to the Aristotelian mean between, on the one hand, the inflexible person who misses a friend's wedding because he "has to work" and, on the other, the all-too-flexible procrastinator.

Millgram's paper goes beyond the topic of procrastination to the subject of the good life. He introduces us to the idea of "Jam-Yesterday-Jam-Tomorrow" goods. The term alludes to the job the White Queen offers Alice, which carries the perk of jam yesterday and jam tomorrow but never jam today. The goods in questions are goods that happen over time but appear better somehow then the sum of the moments of which they are composed. For example, a happy marriage can be a wonderful thing but it is mostly made up of prosaic moments that are not particularly happy in themselves. The married couple, in every given moment, is likely to be found grocery shopping or cleaning the bathroom or trying to get children out of bed and only see their happiness in their "peripheral vision." Similarly, a philosopher who loves his job is likely to be found grading or writing letters of recommendation or waiting at an airport or hunting desperately for an idea -- not things he particularly likes. The fact that some of the most important human activities have this structure, where tangible good is always in the past or the future, promotes laziness in the pursuit of those activities, for one can have trouble avoiding procrastination of work whose value is in being part of such activities. Of course, a fully virtuous person would not be lazy. Millgram has complicated conclusions to draw here about "fallback virtue" -- virtue, as it were, for the rest of us -- and about instrumental rationality.

The third part of the book is devoted to ways to overcome procrastination. There is no cure yet, but some treatments are proven to be of help to some. It is tempting to relate some of the advice given in this part of the book, advice backed up by empirical research, and I'll mention just a few tips: you must have specific plans as to when, where, and how you will perform a specific task. It is best if you form what is called an "implementation intention" -- a plan that has an if-then structure, such as "if I turn on the computer, I'll first work on my essay for 20 minutes." You must use "scaffolding" for your will, that is, manipulate the environment in such a way as to make your desired behavior more likely: if you want to be hard-working, for example, try to be around hard-working people. If you tend to check your email too much, make it hard for yourself to connect to the internet (advice is given about specific scaffolding techniques). If you have more self-control in some domains than others, says Chrisoula Andreou, you can "leverage" control -- reward or punish yourself into changing your behavior. There is more (I am talking here about papers by Joseph Heath and Joel Anderson, Frank Wieber and Peter Gollwitzer, as well as Andreou). I fully intend to try some of the methods suggested (when I get around to them). It can become hard to find the philosophy in these science-oriented articles, though again I sympathize with the authors' and editors' desire to make philosophical discussion of the topic more empirically informed. In a different vein, Manuel Ustet, and to some extent Heath and Anderson, asks questions about the legitimacy of allowing public policy and law to aim at reducing procrastination.

One advice-laced article -- by Mark White -- appears to be both more philosophical than others and completely at odds with their conclusions. White posits a view of the mind according to which we have a special faculty of willing but does not -- understandably, given available space -- defend it. He tells us that it is bad to use self-manipulation through one's environment because that might weaken our will through lack of use. Is it because we need our will to fall back on when scaffolding is not available, or is it somehow unseemly or less than moral not to develop our wills -- an abdication of our autonomy ? Definitely the former, but sometimes the latter also appears to be implied. What, then, should we do? White's initial advice is that the agent should "try harder." Later, however, he appeals to current studies showing that the will, like a muscle, can be strengthened by training, and advises us to train our wills. It is unclear that autonomous Kantian wills are the sort of things that can weaken from lack of use or grow in the manner of muscles, for are they not things that all rational agents have to the same degree no matter what? White also appears to overlook the fact that training the will like a muscle is a somewhat different thing to do from "trying harder." One does not develop the ability to lift a large rock simply by trying harder to do it but through a process that involves such things as starting with smaller rocks, alternating between exertion and rest, getting enough food of the right sort, and so on. In other words, training the will as if it were a muscle would involve some self-manipulation through the environment.

All in all, this collection is good reading for anyone who would like to do philosophy on the subject of procrastination or who seeks to procrastinate her work by reading interesting things.

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Publications
Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

Advanced Search
Journal List
Front Psychol

What Research Has Been Conducted on Procrastination? Evidence From a Systematical Bibliometric Analysis

Associated data.

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/ Supplementary Material , further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author/s.

Procrastination is generally perceived as a common behavioral tendency, and there are a growing number of literatures to discuss this complex phenomenon. To elucidate the overall perspective and keep abreast of emerging trends in procrastination research, this article presents a bibliometric analysis that investigates the panorama of overviews and intellectual structures of related research on procrastination. Using the Web of Science Database, we collected 1,635 articles published between 1990 and 2020 with a topic search on “procrastination” and created diverse research maps using CiteSpace and VOS viewer. Bibliometric analysis in our research consists of category distribution, keyword co-occurrence networks, main cluster analysis, betweenness centrality analysis, burst detection analysis, and structure variation analysis. We find that most research has focused on students' samples and has discussed the definition, classification, antecedents, consequences and interventions to procrastination, whereas procrastination in diverse contexts and groups remains to be investigated. Regarding the antecedents and consequences, research has mainly been about the relationship between procrastination and personality differences, such as the five-factor model, temperament, character, emotional intelligence, and impulsivity, but functions of external factors such as task characteristics and environmental conditions to procrastination have drawn scant attention. To identify the nature and characteristics of this behavior, randomized controlled trials are usually adopted in designing empirical research. However, the predominant use of self-reported data collection and for a certain point in time rather than longitudinal designs has limited the validation of some conclusions. Notably, there have been novel findings through burst detection analysis and structure variation analysis. Certain research themes have gained extraordinary attention in a short time period, have evolved progressively during the time span from 1990 to 2020, and involve the antecedents of procrastination in a temporal context, theoretical perspectives, research methods, and typical images of procrastinators. And emerging research themes that have been investigated include bedtime procrastination, failure of social media self-control, and clinical interventions. To our knowledge, this is almost the first time to conduct systematically bibliometric analysis on the topic of procrastination and findings can provide an in-depth view of the patterns and trends in procrastination research.

Introduction

Procrastination is commonly conceptualized as an irrational tendency to delay required tasks or assignments despite the negative effects of this postponement on the individuals and organizations (Lay, 1986 ; Steel, 2007 ; Klingsieck, 2013 ). Poets have even written figuratively about procrastination, with such phrases as “ Procrastination is the Thief of Time ,” and “ Procrastination is the Art of Keeping Up with Yesterday ” (Ferrari et al., 1995 ). Literal meanings are retained today in terms of time management. The conceptualizations of procrastination imply inaction, or postponing, delaying, or putting off a decision, in keeping with the Latin origins of the term “pro-,” meaning “forward, forth, or in favor of,” and “-crastinus,” meaning “tomorrow” (Klein, 1971 ). Time delay is just the behavioral reflection, while personality traits, cognitive and motivational process, as well as contextual conditions are in-depth inducements to procrastination. Procrastination can be viewed as purposive and irrational delay so as to miss the deadlines (Akerlof, 1991 ; Schraw et al., 2007 ).

Procrastination is believed to be a self-regulation failure that is associated with a variety of personal and situational determinants (Hen and Goroshit, 2018 ). Specifically, research suggests that task characteristics (e.g., unclear instructions, the timing of rewards and punishment, as well as task aversiveness), personality facets (e.g., the five-factor model, motivation, and cognition), and environmental factors (e.g., temptation, incentives, and accountability) are the main determinants of procrastination (Harris and Sutton, 1983 ; Johnson and Bloom, 1995 ; Green et al., 2000 ; Wypych et al., 2018 ). Procrastination can be an impediment to success, and may influence the individual's mood, and increase the person's anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem (Ferrari, 1991 ; Duru and Balkis, 2017 ). Furthermore, a person with procrastination is prone to poor performance, with lower exam scores, slower job promotions, and poorer health (Sirois, 2004 ; Legood et al., 2018 ; Bolden and Fillauer, 2020 ). Importantly, if policymakers postpone conducting their decision-making until after the proper timing, that procrastination can cause a significant and negative impact on the whole society, such as the cases with the COVID-19 pandemic management in some countries (Miraj, 2020 ).

In practice, procrastination is stable and complex across situations, ranging from students' academic procrastination, to staffs' work procrastination, to individuals' bedtime procrastination, to administrative behavior procrastination when government organizations face multiple tasks in national governance, and even to delayed leadership decision-making in crisis situations in global governance (Nevill, 2009 ; Hubner, 2012 ; Broadbent and Poon, 2015 ; Legood et al., 2018 ). As for science research, procrastination has attracted more and more attention and been studied extensively. Personally, possible explanations for emerging research focuses mainly consist of two aspects. On one hand, procrastination with high prevalence and obvious consequences highlights the importance to explore the complex phenomenon deeply, especially the meteoric rise in availability of information and communications technologies (ICTs) amplifies chronic procrastination, such as problematic social media use, smartphone addictions as well as mobile checking habit intrusion (Ferrari et al., 2007 ; Przepiorka et al., 2021 ; Aalbers et al., 2022 ). On the other hand, more and more basic and milestone research emerges in large numbers, which set the foundation for latecomer' further exploration toward procrastination. In particular, it can't be ignored the efforts of those productive authors in different periods to drive the knowledge development of procrastination.

Procrastination research has experienced tremendous expansion and diversification, but systematic and overview discussion is lacking. Several meta-analyses about procrastination have emerged, but they emphasize more on specific topics (Steel, 2007 ; Sirois et al., 2017 ; Malouff and Schutte, 2019 ). Furthermore, the number of newly published articles is increasing, so it becomes difficult to fully track the relevant domain literature. In order to grasp knowledge development about the fast-moving and complex research field, bibliometric analysis is necessary to construct diagram-based science mapping, so as to provide a comprehensive and intuitive reference for subsequent researchers. Thus, this article emphasizes on the following major research question: what is the intellectual base and structure of procrastination research? How does the emerging direction of procrastination develop? In our research, bibliometric analysis included the annual distribution of literature, distribution of categories, keyword co-occurrence networks, main research clusters, high citation betweenness centrality, and the strongest citation bursts, as well as the recent publications with transformative potential, in order to look back on the early development of procrastination research and look forward to the future transformation of that research. For both scholars and members of the public, this study can comprehensively enhance their understanding of procrastination and can provide overall perspectives for future research.

Data and Methodology

Bibliometric analysis is a quantitative method to investigate intellectual structures of topical field. On the basis of co-citation assumption that if two articles are usually cited together, then there are high associations between those articles, bibliometric analysis can reflect the scientific communicational structures holistically (Garfield, 1979 ; Chen et al., 2012 ). Bibliometric techniques, such as CiteSpace, VOSviewer, HistCite, can generate the science maps based on plenty of literature concerning certain domain. Through the process of charting, mining, analyzing, sorting, and displaying knowledge, science mapping can extract pivotal information from huge complex literature, present knowledge base and intellectual structure of a given field visually, then researchers even general individual can quickly grasp one subject's core structure, development process, frontier field and the whole knowledge framework (Chen, 2017 ; Widziewicz-Rzonca and Tytla, 2020 ). Bibliometric analysis is commonly regarded as a complementary method to traditional structured literature reviews such as narrative analysis and meta-analysis (Fang et al., 2018 ; Jiang et al., 2019 ). Traditional literature analysis tends to labor intensive with subjective preferences, and faces difficulties in analyzing larger body of literature, whereas bibliometric analysis provides a more objective approach for investigating considerable literature's intellectual structure through statistical analysis and interactive visual exploration.

In order to master the characteristics of procrastination research, the study adopted the bibliometric software of CiteSpace and VOSviewer to analyze the literature on procrastination during the time period 1990–2020. The software tool VOSviewer is designed for creating maps of authors, journals, and keyword co-occurrences based on network data (van Eck and Waltman, 2010 ), whereas CiteSpace is applied to conduct co-citation analysis, including centrality betweenness analysis, burst detection, and the emerging trends of research (Chen, 2006 , 2017 ). In our study, we adopted the CiteSpace (5.7.R1) and VOSviewer (1.6.15) software together. Specifically, co-citation analysis mainly depends on CiteSpace software, and co-occurrence analysis is conducted through VOS viewer (Markscheffel and Schroeter, 2021 ).

Though there is one similar bibliometrics analysis toward this topic (Tao et al., 2021 ), related research just focuses on academic procrastination, and mainly conducts co-occurrence analysis using VOSviewer, so as to there is a lack of analysis to core co-citation structures including high betweenness centrality articles, citation burst research and structure variation analysis. To offer insight into the intellectual structure of procrastination research, we further employ CiteSpace — a java application including bibliometric analysis, data mining algorithms and visualization methods developed by Chen — to visualize and elucidate vital trends and pivotal points about knowledge development.

To conduct our bibliometric analysis of procrastination research, we collected bibliographic records from the Web of Science Core Collection as of December 31, 2020. Web of Science is currently the most relevant scientific platform regarding systematic review needs, allowing for a “Topic” query, including searching a topic in the documents' “title”, “abstract”, “author keywords” and “keywords plus” of the documents being reviewed (Yi et al., 2020 ). A topic search strategy is broad enough to be used in science mapping (Olmeda-Gomez et al., 2019 ). Given the aim of the study, records were downloaded if they had the term “procrastination” in the “Topic” field. After restricting the type of publication to “Article” for the years 1900–2020, we had searched 2105 papers about procrastination research.

Figure 1 shows the yearly distribution of 2105 literature during 1900–2020, and it can be classified into three phases. In phase I (1900–1989), the annual number of publications never exceeded 10. In phase II (1990–2010), the annual quantity gradually increased from 11 papers in 1991 to 48 in 2010. The annual number of publications had begun to grow in this period, but remained below 50 papers yearly. In phase III (2011–2020), however, the procrastination research experienced a dramatic growth, with 255 literature in the year 2020. Although procrastination research appeared as early as 1900s, it had a stable total volume until the 1990s, when it developed sustained growth, and that growth became extraordinary during the 2010s. Therefore, this research emphasized centered on 1,635 literature that were published during the time span 1990–2020.

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is fpsyg-13-809044-g0001.jpg

Distribution of publications on the topic of procrastination, 1900-2020.

Panoramic Overview of Procrastination Research

Category distribution.

Procrastination research has been attracting increasing attention from scholars, and it has been successfully integrated into various scientific fields. With the help of CiteSpace software, we present in Figure 2 the timelines of the various disciplines that are involved in procrastination research, and the cumulative numbers of literature that have been published.

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is fpsyg-13-809044-g0002.jpg

Distribution of categories involved in procrastination research.

As Figure 2 shows, the size of node on the horizontal lines represents the quantity of literature published. Node colors denote the range of years of occurrence, and purple outlining is an indication of those articles with prominent betweenness centrality, and red nodes present references with high citation burst (Chen, 2017 ). Besides, the uppermost line shows the timeline of different disciplines, and the numbers on the longitudinal lines describe the distinct categories of procrastination research, of which are arranged vertically in the descending order of cluster's size. Clusters are numbered from 0, i.e Cluster #0 is the largest cluster and Cluster #1 is the second largest one. Specifically, the earlier research about procrastination occurs in the Psychology and Social Science disciplines. Subsequently, research has expanded into Computer Science and Information Systems, Economics, the Neurosciences, the Environmental Sciences, Ethics, Surgery, and general Medicine. As the connections arc in the Figure 2 presents, those categories #0 Psychology and Social Sciences, #1 Computer Science, and #2 Economics interact actively, but the interdisciplinary research about the remaining categories, such as #9 Medicine, #5 Ethics, and #4 Environmental Science, is not active.

Our analysis of the category distribution reveals two aspects of the characteristics about procrastination research. One, related research mostly has its roots in the Psychology and Social Science disciplines, and interdisciplinary research needs to be improved. And Two, the foundational literature dates back to the 1990s, and transformational exploration is currently needed in order to further develop the research on procrastination.

Keyword Co-occurrence Network: Core Contents

Analysis of co-occurring keywords is often used to obtain the content of research fields. Using the VOS viewer, we obtained a total of 5,203 keywords and created a co-occurrence network. As mentioned above, the size of a node represents the number of times that a specific keyword occurs. Several keywords turn up frequently, such as Procrastination, Performance, Academic Procrastination, Motivation, Personality, Self-regulation, Self-control, and Behavior. To create a readable map, the “minimum number of occurrences” is set to 20, and the final network includes 90 high-frequency keywords and five clusters with 2,650 links, as is shown in Figure 3 .

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is fpsyg-13-809044-g0003.jpg

Keywords co-occurrence network for procrastination research.

Among the five clusters depicted in Figure 3 , the blue cluster is mainly related to the definition of procrastination, with keywords such as Procrastination, Delay, Deadlines, Choice, Self-Control, and Implementation Intentions. Procrastination is a complex phenomenon, and previous research has elaborated on the core traits about procrastination from various dimensions. Mainstream views hold that procrastination can be defined as the intentional delay of work because of a self-regulation failure, time-management inefficiency, short-term benefits, a gap between intention and action (Tice and Baumeister, 1997 ; Steel, 2007 ; Pychyl and Flett, 2012 ; Klingsieck, 2013 ), or missing a deadline and causing negative outcomes (Johnson and Bloom, 1995 ; Howell and Watson, 2007 ; Sirois, 2021 ).

The cluster in red in Figure 3 involves procrastination performance in relation to different life-domains, including Academic Achievement, Life Satisfaction, Online Learning, and Technology Uses. Previous research has elaborated on procrastination as being negatively correlated with performance. However, intrinsic motivation, self-regulated learning, and time-management have been shown to relieve the procrastination behavior (Wolters, 2003 ; Howell and Watson, 2007 ; Baker et al., 2019 ).

The green cluster highlights traits associated with procrastination. Related research in that cluster mostly discusses the correlation between the five-factor model (neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, conscientiousness) and procrastination (Schouwenburg and Lay, 1995 ). In addition, personality traits including indecisiveness, indecision, and perfectionism have been elaborated upon (Klingsieck, 2013 ; Tibbett and Ferrari, 2019 ). Furthermore, to measure the trait of procrastination itself, various scales have been developed, such as the General Procrastination Scale, Decisional Procrastination Questionnaire, Procrastination at Work Scale, Irrational Procrastination Scale, Adult Inventory of Procrastination Scale and so on (Lay, 1986 ; Ferrari et al., 1995 ; Steel, 2010 ; Metin et al., 2016 ). The validity and reliability of those scales have also been investigated fully.

The cluster presented in yellow depicts studies that focuses on academic procrastination, and especially those that discuss the antecedents of the prevalent behavior, such as Anxiety, Perfectionism, Self-efficacy, Depression, and Stress (Schraw et al., 2007 ; Goroshit, 2018 ). Owing to their accessibility for use as a research sample, a large body of procrastination research has chosen students in an academic setting as the research objects. Researchers have found that academic procrastination is an impediment to academic performance, especially for very young students. Notably, too, female students may perform lower levels of academic procrastination than males do.

The last cluster, presented in purple, relates to chronic procrastination's involvement in health and addiction, for either adults or adolescents. Discussion about chronic procrastination is growing, and interventions can be effective in relieving this behavior.

From the analysis of co-occurrence keywords, we can infer that procrastination research has been developing steadily. The fundamental discussion has become more adequate and persuasive in regard to the definition, the individual differences, and the antecedents of procrastination, and a discussion of how to relieve the behavior has begun.

Main Research Cluster: Core Theme and Hot Topics

Comparing to keyword co-occurrence network analyses, cluster analysis can help us grasp the primary themes in procrastination research. Clusters are based on the assumption that if two references are often cited together, they may be associated in some way (Chen et al., 2012 ; Pan et al., 2019 ). Eventually, related references shape diverse co-citation networks. Clustering is a procedure to classify co-cited references into groups, with references in the same clusters being tightly connected with each other but loosely associated with other clusters (Chen et al., 2010 ).

Based on the references of the top 50 articles with the most citations every year (if the number was less than 50 in a certain year, then all of the articles were combined), the final network contained 982 references and we were able to develop the final cluster landscape. Two procedures are used to label each cluster: (1) retrieval of keywords from the citing articles using the log likelihood ratio, and (2) retrieval of terms contained in the cited articles with latent semantic indexing (Olmeda-Gomez et al., 2019 ). In our research, we adopted the log-likelihood ratio (LLR) method to label the clusters automatically. Given the related structural and time-based values, articles in the co-citation network are assigned to each cluster. Eventually, the network was divided into 23 co-citation clusters.

In addition, two critical parameters, silhouette and modularity, are used to measure whether clusters are available and whether they are well-constructed. Silhouette indicates the homogeneity of clusters, whereas modularity measures whether the network is reasonably divided into independent clusters. The silhouette value ranges from −1 to 1, and the modularity score ranges from 0 to 1. When values of the two metrics are high, the co-citation network is well-constructed (Chen et al., 2010 ; Widziewicz-Rzonca and Tytla, 2020 ). As is shown in Figure 4 , the mean silhouette score of 0.9223 suggested that the homogeneity of these clusters was acceptable, and the modularity score of 0.7822 indicated that the network was reasonably divided.

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is fpsyg-13-809044-g0004.jpg

Landscape view of co-citation network of procrastination research.

In our research, we summed the largest nine clusters. As is shown in Table 1 , the silhouette value for all clusters was higher than 0.8, suggesting the references in each cluster were highly homogeneous. The labels of these clusters were controlled trial, avoidant procrastination, conscientiousness procrastination, smoking cessation, explaining lack, academic achievement, procrastinatory media use, career indecision, and goal orientation.

Summary of the nine largest clusters in procrastination research.

In Table 1 , the year in the far-right column indicated the average year when the reference was cited. Ranking the clusters by the mean cited year, we can follow the development of research themes. During the 1990s, research themes focused on discussions about the antecedents of procrastination. For example, Lay ( 1988 ) discussed that the self-regulation model cannot explain procrastination fully, and errors in estimations of the time taken to complete a task may be attributed to procrastination. Procrastinators were thought to tend to lack conscientiousness and goal orientation as well as to be motivated by neurotic avoidance (Ferrari et al., 1995 ; Elliot and Harackiewicz, 1996 ). Besides, procrastination was prevalent throughout our lifespan, and empirical research on procrastination conducted through controlled trials had considered various settings or scenarios, such as academic procrastination, smoking cessation, career indecision, and in the most recent years, media use (Klassen et al., 2008 ; Germeijs and Verschueren, 2011 ; Du et al., 2019 ). Because procrastination was negatively associated with performance, life satisfaction, health and well-being, research on procrastination avoidance and intervention, including strengths-based training and cognitive behavioral therapy had attracted the most attention from scholars (van Eerde, 2003 ; Balkis and Duru, 2016 ; Visser et al., 2017 ).

Intellectual Structure of Procrastination Research

Co-citation analysis and clustering analysis form the cornerstone for bibliometric investigation (Olmeda-Gomez et al., 2019 ), especially for the microscopic intellectual structures of the science, such as betweenness centrality, burst detection, and structural variation analysis (Pan et al., 2019 ). Based on the cited references network during the period of 1990–2020, we generated a landscape visualization of intellectual structures about procrastination research. The section consists of three parts: (1) Betweenness Centrality Analysis captures the bridge nodes, which represents the landmark and pivotal literature of a scientific field (Freeman, 1978 ). (2) Burst Detection Analysis is used to detect the emergent and sharp increases of interest in a research field (Kleinberg, 2003 ), which is a useful method for easily tracing the development of research focus and research fronts. (3) Structural Variation Analysis (SVA) is an optional measurement to identify whether newly published articles have the potential to transform the citation network in the latest years. Newly published articles initially have fewer citations and may be overlooked. To overcome the limitation, structural variation analysis often employs zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB) and negative binomial (NB) models to detect these transformative and potential literature (Chen, 2013 ).

Betweenness Centrality Analysis

Literature with high betweenness centrality tends to represent groundbreaking and landmark research. On the basis of our co-citation network on procrastination research for the period 1990–2020, we chose the top 10 articles to explore (see Supplementary Material for details). Related research mainly focuses on three areas.

Definition and Classification of Procrastination

Procrastination is described as the postponement of completion of a task or the failure to meet deadlines, even though the individual would meet adverse outcomes and feel uncomfortable as a result (Johnson and Bloom, 1995 ). Extracting from authoritative procrastination scales, Diaz-Morales et al. ( 2006 ) proposed a four-factor model of procrastination: dilatory behaviors, indecision, lack of punctuality, and lack of planning. Procrastination is commonly considered to be a pattern of self-regulation failure or self-defeating behavior (Tice and Baumeister, 1997 ; Sirois and Pychyl, 2013 ).

The most popular classification is the trinity of procrastination: decisional, arousal, and avoidant procrastination (Ferrari, 1992 ). Using the General Behavioral Procrastination Scale and Adult Inventory of Procrastination Scale, Ferrari et al. ( 2007 ) measured the difference between arousal and avoidant procrastination, and they elaborated that those two patterns of procrastination showed similarity and commonality across cultural values and norms. However, by conducting a meta-analytic review and factor analyses, Steel ( 2010 ) found that evidence for supporting the tripartite model of procrastination may not be sufficient. Research has reached a consensus about the basic definition of procrastination, but how to classify procrastination needs further discussion.

Procrastination Behavior in a Temporal Context

Procrastination is related to time management in its influence on one's behavior. Non-procrastinators or active procrastinators have better time control and purposive use of time (Corkin et al., 2011 ). However, time management is an obstacle to procrastinators. From the temporal disjunction between present and future selves, Sirois and Pychyl ( 2013 ) pointed out that procrastinators tended to give priority to short-term mood repair in the present, even though their future self would pay for the inaction. Similarly, in a longitudinal study Tice and Baumeister ( 1997 ) pointed out that maladjustment about benefits-costs in participants' timeframe shaped their procrastination. When a deadline is far off, procrastination can bring short-term benefits, such as less stress suffering and better health, whereas early benefits are often outweighed by possible long-term costs, including poor performance, low self-esteem, and anxiety. These viewpoints confirm that procrastination is a form of self-regulation failure, and that it involves the regulation of mood and emotion, as well as benefit-cost tradeoffs.

Causes of and Interventions for Procrastination

Procrastination shows significant stability among persons across time and situations. Predictors of procrastination include personality traits, task characteristics, external environments, and demographics (Steel, 2007 ). However, typically, empirical research has mostly focused on the relationship between the five-factor model and procrastination behavior. Johnson and Bloom ( 1995 ) systematically discussed five factors of personality to variance in academic procrastination. Research also had found that facets of conscientiousness and neuroticism were factors that explained most procrastination. In alignment with these findings above, Schouwenburg and Lay ( 1995 ) elaborated that procrastination was largely related to a lack of conscientiousness, which was associated with six facets: competence, order, dutifulness, achievement-striving, self-discipline, and deliberation. Meanwhile, impulsiveness (a facet of neuroticism) has some association with procrastination, owing to genetic influences (Gustavson et al., 2014 ). These discussions have established a basis for research about personality traits and procrastination (Flett et al., 2012 ; Kim et al., 2017 ).

To relieve procrastination, time management (TM) strategies and clinical methods are applied in practice. Glick and Orsillo ( 2015 ) compared the effectiveness of those interventions and found that acceptance-based behavior therapies (ABBTs) were more effective for chronic procrastinators. Regarding academic procrastination, Balkis ( 2013 ) discussed the role of rational beliefs in mediating procrastination, life satisfaction, and performance. However, there is no “Gold Standard” intervention for procrastination. How to manage this complex behavior needs further investigation.

Burst Detection Analysis

A citation burst indicates that one reference has gained extraordinary attention from the scientific community in a short period of time, and thus it can help us to detect and identify emergent research in a specialty (Kleinberg, 2003 ). A citation burst contains two dimensions: the burst strength and the burst status duration. Articles with high strength values can be considered to be especially relevant to the research theme (Widziewicz-Rzonca and Tytla, 2020 ). Burst status duration is labeled by the red segment lines in Figure 5 , which presents active citations' beginning year and ending year during the period 1990-2020. As can be seen in Figure 5 , we ranked the top 20 references (see Supplementary Material for details) with the strongest citation bursts, from the oldest to the most recent.

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is fpsyg-13-809044-g0005.jpg

Top 20 references with the strongest citation bursts.

To systematically investigate the active areas of procrastination research in different time periods, we divided the study's overall timespan into three time periods. During the period 1990 through 1999, there were six references with high citation bursts, with two of them by Ferrari and a third by Ferrari, Johnson, and McCown. Subsequently, in 2000 through 2009, there were eight reference bursts, and the meta-analysis and theoretical review by Steel ( 2007 ) had the highest citation burst among those 20 references. From the period 2010 through 2020, six references showed high citation bursts.

Period I (1990–1999): Preliminary Understanding of Procrastination's Antecedents

How one defines procrastination is important to interventions. During the early period of procrastination research, scholars paid significant attention to define procrastination and discuss its antecedents. Time delay in completing tasks constitutes the vital dimension that distinguishes procrastination behavior, and that distinction has set the foundation for future exploration of the behavior. Lay ( 1988 ) found that errors in estimations of time led to procrastination, then identified two types of procrastinators: pessimistic procrastinators and optimistic ones, according to whether one is optimistic or pessimistic about judgments of time. In addition, the timeframe or constraint scenario influences one's behavioral choices. Procrastinators tend to weigh short-term benefits over long-term costs (Tice and Baumeister, 1997 ).

However, time delay is just a behavioral representation, and personality traits may be in-depth inducements to procrastination behavior (Ferrari, 1991 ; Ferrari et al., 1995 ). Schouwenburg and Lay ( 1995 ) empirically studied and elaborated upon the relationship between the five-factor model and procrastination facing a sample of students, and their findings showed consistency with research by Ferrari ( 1991 ) which demonstrated that the trait facets of lacking conscientiousness and of neurotic avoidance were associated with procrastination. In addition, Ferrari ( 1992 ) evaluated two popular scales to measure procrastination: the General Procrastination (GP) scale and the Adult Inventory for Procrastination (AIP) scale. Regarding the measurement of procrastination, a variety of scales have been constructed to further enhance the development of procrastination research.

Period II (2000–2009): Investigation of Cognitive and Motivational Facets and Emergence of Various Research Methods

During period II, procrastination research with high citation bursts focused largely on two dimensions: behavioral antecedences and empirical methods. On one hand, discussions about cognitive and motivational antecedents spring up. A series of studies find that cognitive and motivational beliefs, including goal orientation, perceived self-efficacy, self-handicapping, and self-regulated learning strategies, are strongly related to procrastination (Wolters, 2003 ; Howell and Watson, 2007 ; Klassen et al., 2008 ). Specifically, Howell and Watson ( 2007 ) examined the achievement goal framework with two variables, achievement goal orientation and learning strategies usage, in which four types of goal orientation can be derived by the performance vs. mastery dimension and the approach vs. avoidance dimension. Their research found that procrastination was attributed to a mastery-avoidance orientation, whereas it was adversely related to a mastery-approach orientation. Moreover, Chu and Choi ( 2005 ) identified two types of procrastinators, active procrastinators versus passive procrastinators, in terms of the individual's time usage and perception, self-efficacy beliefs, motivational orientation, stress-coping strategies, and final outcomes. This classification of procrastinators has aroused a hot discussion about procrastination research (Zohar et al., 2019 ; Perdomo and Feliciano-Garcia, 2020 ). Cognitive and motivational antecedents are complementary to personality traits, and the antecedents and traits together reveal the complex phenomenon.

In addition, there are various research methods being applied in the research, such as meta-analyses and grounded theory. Having the strongest citation burst in period II, research that was based on a meta-analysis of procrastination by Steel ( 2007 ) elaborated on temporal motivation theory (TMT). Temporal motivational theory provides an innovative foothold for understanding self-regulation failure, using four critical indicators: expectancy, value, sensitivity to delay, and delay itself. Similarly, van Eerde ( 2003 ) conducted a meta-analysis to examine the relationship between procrastination and personality traits, and proposed that procrastination was negatively related to conscientiousness and self-efficacy, but was also actively associated with self-handicapping. Procrastinators commonly set deadlines, but research has found that external deadlines may be more effective than self-imposed ones (Ariely and Wertenbroch, 2002 ). Furthermore, Schraw et al. ( 2007 ) constructed a paradigm model through grounded theory to analyze the phenomenon of academic procrastination, looking at context and situational conditions, antecedents, phenomena, coping strategies, and consequences. These diverse research methods are enhancing our comprehensive and systematical understanding of procrastination.

Period III (2010–2020): Diverse Focuses on Procrastination Research

After nearly two decades of progressive developments, procrastination research has entered a steady track with diverse current bursts, on topics such as type distinction, theoretical perspective, temporal context, and the typical image of procrastinators. Steel ( 2010 ) revisited the trinity of procrastination — arousal procrastinators, avoidant procrastinators, and decisional procrastinators — and using the Pure Procrastination Scale (PPS) and the Irrational Procrastination Scale (IPS), he found that there was no distinct difference among the three types. Regarding research settings, a body of literature has focused on academic procrastination in-depth, and that literature has experienced a significant citation burst (Kim and Seo, 2015 ; Steel and Klingsieck, 2016 ). For example, academic procrastination is associated more highly with performance for secondary school students than for other age groups.

Notably, theoretical discussions and empirical research have been advancing synchronously. Klingsieck ( 2013 ) investigated systematic characteristics of procrastination research and concluded that theoretical perspectives to explain the phenomenon, whereas Steel and Ferrari ( 2013 ) portrayed the “typical procrastinator” using the variables of sex, age, marital status, education, community location, and nationality. Looking beyond the use of time control or time perception to define procrastination, Sirois and Pychyl ( 2013 ) compared the current self and the future self, then proposed that procrastination results from short-term mood repair and emotion regulation with the consequences being borne by the future self. In line with the part of introduction, in the last 10 years, research on procrastination has flourished and knowledge about this complex phenomenon has been emerging and expanding.

Structure Variation Analysis

Structure variation analysis (SVA) can predict the literature that will have potential transformative power in the future. Proposed by Chen ( 2012 ), structure variation analysis includes three primary metrics — the modularity change rate, cluster linkage, and centrality divergence — to monitor and discern the potential of newly published articles in specific domains. The modularity change rate measures the changes in and interconnectivity of the overall structure when newly published articles are introduced into the intellectual network. Cluster linkage focuses on these differences in linkages before and after a new between-cluster link is added by an article, whereas centrality divergence measures the structural variations in the divergence of betweenness centrality that a newly published article causes (Chen, 2012 ; Hou et al., 2020 ). The values of these metrics are higher, and the newly published articles are expected to have more potential to transform the intellectual base (Hou et al., 2020 ). Specifically, cluster linkage is a direct measure of intellectual potential and structural change (Chen, 2012 ). Therefore, we adopted cluster linkage as an indicator by which to recognize and predict the valuable ideas in newly published procrastination research. These top 20 articles with high transformative potential that were published during the period 2016-2020 were listed (see Supplementary Material for details). Research contents primarily consist of four dimensions.

Further Investigations Into Academic Procrastination

Although procrastination research has drawn mostly on samples of students, innovative research contents and methods have been emerging that enhance our understanding of academic procrastination. In the past five years, different language versions of scales have been measured and validated (Garzon Umerenkova and Gil-Flores, 2017a , b ; Svartdal, 2017 ; Guilera et al., 2018 ), and novel research areas and contents have arisen, such as how gender difference influences academic procrastination, what are the effective means of intervention, and what are the associations among academic procrastination, person-environment fit, and academic achievement (Balkis and Duru, 2016 ; Garzon Umerenkova and Gil-Flores, 2017a , b ; Goroshit, 2018 ). Interestingly, research has found that females perform academic procrastination less often and gain better academic achievements than males do (Balkis and Duru, 2017 ; Perdomo and Feliciano-Garcia, 2020 ).

In addition, academic procrastination is viewed as a fluid process. Considering the behavior holistically, three different aspects of task engagement have been discussed: initiation, completion, and pursuit. Vangsness and Young ( 2020 ) proposed the metaphors of “turtles” (steady workers), “task ninjas” (precrastinators), and “time wasters” (procrastinators) to elaborate vividly on task completion strategies when working toward deadlines. Individual differences and task characteristics can influence one's choices of a task-completion strategy. To understand the fluid and multifaceted phenomenon of procrastination, longitudinal research has been appearing. Wessel et al. ( 2019 ) observed behavioral delay longitudinally through tracking an undergraduate assignment over two weeks to reveal how passive and active procrastination each affected assignment completion.

Relationships Between Procrastination and Diverse Personality Traits

In addition to the relationship between procrastination and the five-factor model, other personality traits, such as temperament, character, emotional intelligence, impulsivity, and motivation, have been investigated in connection with procrastination. Because the five-factor model is not effective for distinguishing the earlier developing temperamental tendencies and the later developing character traits, Zohar et al. ( 2019 ) discussed how temperament and character influence procrastination in terms of active and passive procrastinators, and revealed that a dependable temperament profile and well-developed character predicted active procrastination.

Procrastination is commonly defined as a self-regulation failure that includes emotion and behavior. Emotional intelligence (EI) is an indicator with which to monitor one's feelings, thinking, and actions, and hot discussions about its relationship with procrastination have sprung up recently. Sheybani et al. ( 2017 ) elaborated on how the relationship between emotional intelligence and the five-factor model influence decisional procrastination on the basis of a students' sample. As a complement to the research above, Wypych et al. ( 2018 ) explored the roles of impulsivity, motivation, and emotion regulation in procrastination through path analysis. Motivation and impulsivity reflecting a lack of value, along with delay discounting and lack of perseverance, are predicators of procrastination, whereas emotion regulation, especially for suppression of procrastination, has only appeared to be significant in student and other low-age groups. How personality traits influence procrastination remains controversial, and further research is expected.

Procrastination in Different Life-Domains and Settings

Newly published research is paying more attention to procrastination in different sample groups across the entire life span. Not being limited to student samples, discussions about procrastination in groups such as teachers, educated adults, and workers have been emerging. With regard to different life domains, the self-oriented domains including health and leisure time, tend to procrastinate, whereas parenting is low in procrastination among highly educated adults. Although the achievement-oriented life domains of career, education, and finances are found with moderate frequency in conjunction with procrastination, these three domains together with health affect life the most (Hen and Goroshit, 2018 ). Similarly, Tibbett and Ferrari ( 2019 ) investigated the main regret domains facing cross-cultural samples, so as to determine which factors increased the likelihood of identifying oneself as a procrastinator. Their research found that forms of earning potential, such as education, finances, and career, led participants to more easily label themselves as procrastinators. Procrastination can lead to regret, and this research adopted reverse thinking to discuss the antecedents of procrastination.

In addition to academic procrastination, research about the behavior in diverse-context settings has begun to draw scholars' attention. Nauts et al. ( 2019 ) used a qualitative study to investigate why people delay their bedtime, and the study identified three forms of bedtime procrastination: deliberate procrastination, mindless procrastination, and strategic delay. Then, those researchers proposed coached interventions involving time management, priority-setting skills, and reminders according to the characteristics of the bedtime procrastination. Interestingly, novel forms of procrastination have been arising in the attention-shortage situations of the age of the internet, such as social media self-control failure (SMSCF). Du et al. ( 2019 ) found that habitual checking, ubiquity, and notifications were determinants for self-control failures due to social media use, and that finding provided insight into how to better use ICTs in a media-pervasive environment. Moreover, even beyond those life-related-context settings, procrastination in the workplace has been further explored. Hen ( 2018 ) emphasized the factor of professional role ambiguity underlying procrastination. Classification of procrastination context is important for the effectiveness of intervention and provides us with a better understanding of this multifaceted behavior.

Interventions to Procrastination

Overcoming procrastination is a necessary topic for discussion. Procrastination is prevalent and stable across situations, and it is commonly averse to one's performance and general well-being. Various types of interventions are used, such as time management, self-management, and cognitive behavioral therapy. To examine the effectiveness of those interventions, scholars have used longitudinal studies or field experimental designs to investigate these methods of intervention for procrastination. Rozental et al. ( 2017 ) examined the efficacy of internet-based cognitive behavior therapy (ICBT) to relieve procrastination, from the perspective of clinical trials. Through a one-year follow-up in a randomized controlled trial, researchers found that ICBT could be beneficial to relieve severe, chronic procrastination. Taking the temporal context into consideration, Visser et al. ( 2017 ) discussed a strengths-based approach — one element of the cognitive behavioral approach — that showed greater usefulness for students at an early stage of their studies than it did at later ages. Overall, research on the effectiveness of intervention for procrastination is relatively scarce.

Discussion and Conclusion

Discussion on procrastination research.

This article provides a systematic bibliometric analysis of procrastination research over the past 30 years. The study identifies the category distribution, co-occurrence keywords, main research clusters, and intellectual structures, with the help of CiteSpace and VOS viewer. As is shown in Figure 6 , the primary focuses for research themes have been on the definition and classification of procrastination, the relationships between procrastination and personality traits, the influences brought by procrastination, and how to better intervene in this complex phenomenon.

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is fpsyg-13-809044-g0006.jpg

Bibliometric analysis and science map of the literature on procrastination.

Those contents have built the bases for procrastination research, but determining how those bases are constructed is important to the development of future research. Therefore, this article primarily discusses three aspects of intellectual structure of procrastination research: betweenness centrality, burst detection, and structural variation analysis. From the betweenness centrality analysis, three research themes are identifiable and can be generally summarized as: definition and classification of procrastination, procrastination behavior in a temporal context, and causes and interventions for procrastination.

However, procrastination research themes have evolved significantly across the time period from 1990–2020. Through burst detection analysis, we are able to infer that research has paid extraordinary attention to diverse themes at different times. In the initial stage, research is mainly about the antecedents of procrastination from the perspectives of time-management, self-regulation failure, and the five-factor model, which pays more attention to the behavior itself, such as delays in time. Subsequently, further discussions have focused on how cognitive and motivational facets such as goal orientation, perceived self-efficacy, self-handicapping, as well as self-regulated learning strategies influence procrastination. In the most recent 10 years, research has paid significant attention to expanding diverse themes, such as theoretical perspectives, typical images of procrastinators, and procrastination behavior in diverse temporal contexts. Research about procrastination has been gaining more and more attention from scholars and practitioners.

To explore newly published articles and their transformative potential, we conduct structural variation analysis. Beyond traditional research involving academic procrastination, emerging research themes consist of diverse research settings across life-domains, such as bedtime procrastination, social media self-control failure, procrastination in the workplace, and procrastination comparisons between self-oriented and achievement-oriented domains. Furthermore, novel interventions from the perspective of clinical and cognitive orientations to procrastination have been emerging in response to further investigation of procrastination's antecedents, such as internet-based cognitive behavior therapy (ICBT) and the strengths-based approach.

Conclusions and Limitations

In summary, research on procrastination has gained increasing attention during 1990 to 2020. Specifically in Figure 7 , research themes have involved in the definition, classification, antecedents, consequences, interventions, and diverse forms of procrastination across different life-domains and contexts. Furthermore, empirical research has been conducted to understand this complex and multifaceted behavior, including how best to design controlled trial experiments, how to collect and analyze the data, and so on.

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is fpsyg-13-809044-g0007.jpg

Brief conclusions on procrastination research.

From the perspective of knowledge development, related research about procrastination has experienced tremendous expansion in the last 30 years. There are three notable features to describe the evolutionary process.

First, research focuses are moving from broader topics to more specific issues. Prior research mostly explored the definition and antecedents of procrastination, as well as the relationship between personality traits and procrastination. Besides, earlier procrastination research almost drew on students' setting. Based on previous research above, innovative research starts to shed light on procrastination in situation-specific domains, such as work procrastination, bedtime procrastination, as well as the interaction between problematic new media use and procrastination (Hen, 2018 ; Nauts et al., 2019 ; Przepiorka et al., 2021 ). With the evolvement of research aimed at distinct contexts, more details and core contents about procrastination have been elaborated. For example, procrastination in workplace may have association with professional role ambiguity, abusive supervision, workplace ostracism and task characteristics (Hen, 2018 ; He et al., 2021 ; Levin and Lipshits-Braziler, 2021 ). In particular, owing to the use of information and communication technology (ICTs), there currently are ample temptations to distract our attention, and those distractions can exacerbate the severity of procrastination (Du et al., 2019 ; Hong et al., 2021 ). Therefore, how to identify those different forms of procrastination, and then to reduce their adverse outcomes, will be important to discuss.

Second, antecedents and consequences of procrastination are further explored over time. On one hand, how procrastination occurs arises hot discussions from diverse dimensions including time management, personality traits, contextual characteristics, motivational and cognitive factors successively. Interestingly, investigations about neural evidences under procrastination have been emerging, such as the underlying mechanism of hippocampal-striatal and amygdala-insula to procrastination (Zhang et al., 2021 ). Those antecedents can be divided into internal factors and external factors. Internal factors including character traits and cognitive maladjustments have been elucidated fully, but scant discussion has occurred about how external factors, such as task characteristics, peers' situations, and environmental conditions, influence procrastination (Harris and Sutton, 1983 ; He et al., 2021 ). On the other hand, high prevalence of procrastination necessitates the importance to identify the negative consequences including direct and indirect. Prior research paid more attention to direct consequences, such as low performance, poor productivity, stress and illness, but the indirect consequences that can be brought about by procrastination remain to be unclear. For example, “second-hand” procrastination vividly describes the “spillover effect” of procrastination, which is exemplified by another employee often working harder in order to compensate for the lost productivity of a procrastinating coworker (Pychyl and Flett, 2012 ). Although such phenomena are common, adverse outcomes are less well investigated. Combining the contexts and groups involved, targeted discussions about the external antecedents and indirect consequences of procrastination are expected.

Third, empirical research toward procrastination emphasizes more on validity. When it comes to previous research, longitudinal studies are often of small numbers. However, procrastination is dynamic, so when most studies focus on procrastination of students' sample during just one semester or several weeks, can limit the overall viewpoints about procrastination and the effectiveness of conclusions. With the development of research, more and more longitudinal explorations are springing up to discuss long-term effects of procrastination through behavioral observation studies and so on. Besides, how to design the research and collect data evolves gradually. Self-reported was the dominant method to collect data in prior research, and measurements of procrastination usually depended on different scales. However, self-reported data are often distorted by personal processes and may not reflect the actual situation, even to overestimate the level of procrastination (Kim and Seo, 2015 ; Goroshit, 2018 ). Hence, innovative studies start to conduct field experimental designs to get observed information through randomized controlled trials. For the following research, how to combine self-reported data and observed data organically should be investigated and refined.

This bibliometric analysis to procrastination is expected to provide overall perspective for future research. However, certain limitations merit mentioning here. Owing to the limited number of pages allowed, it is difficult to clarify the related articles in detail, so discussion tends to be heuristic. Furthermore, the data for this research comes from the Web of Science database, and applying the same strategy to a different database might have yielded different results. In the future, we will conduct a systematic analysis using diverse databases to detect pivotal articles on procrastination research.

Data Availability Statement

Author contributions.

BY proposed the research question and conducted the research design. XZ analyzed the data and wrote primary manuscript. On the base of that work mentioned above, two authors discussed and adjusted the final manuscript together.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary Material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.809044/full#supplementary-material

Aalbers G., vanden Abeele M. M., Hendrickson A. T., de Marez L., Keijsers L. (2022). Caught in the moment: are there person-specific associations between momentary procrastination and passively measured smartphone use? Mobile Media Commun . 10 , 115–135. 10.1177/2050157921993896 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Akerlof G. A.. (1991). Procrastination and obedience . Am. Econ. Rev. 81 , 1–19. [ Google Scholar ]
Ariely D., Wertenbroch K. (2002). Procrastination, deadlines, and performance: self-control by precommitment . Psychol. Sci . 13 , 219–224. 10.1111/1467-9280.00441 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Baker R., Evans B., Li Q., Cung B. (2019). Does inducing students to schedule lecture watching in online classes improve their academic performance? An experimental analysis of a time management intervention . Res. Higher Educ. 60 , 521–552. 10.1007/s11162-018-9521-3 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Balkis M.. (2013). Academic procrastination, academic life satisfaction and academic achievement: the mediation role of rational beliefs about studying . J. Cogn. Behav. Psychother. 13 , 57–74. [ Google Scholar ]
Balkis M., Duru E. (2017). Gender differences in the relationship between academic procrastination, satisfaction with academic life and academic performance . Electr. J. Res. Educ. Psychol. 15 , 105–125. 10.25115/ejrep.41.16042 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Balkis M., Duru E. (2016). The analysis of relationships among person-environment fit, academic satisfaction, procrastination and academic achievement . Univ. J. Educ. 39 , 119–129. [ Google Scholar ]
Bolden J., Fillauer J. P. (2020). “Tomorrow is the busiest day of the week”: executive functions mediate the relation between procrastination and attention problems . J. Am.College Health . 68 , 854–863. 10.1080/07448481.2019.1626399 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Broadbent J., Poon W. L. (2015). Self-regulated learning strategies & academic achievement in online higher education learning environments: a systematic review . Inter Higher Educ. 27 , 1–13. 10.1016/j.iheduc.2015.04.007 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Chen C.. (2006). CiteSpace II: detecting and visualizing emerging trends and transient patterns in scientific literature . J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 57 , 359–377. 10.1002/asi.20317 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Chen C.. (2012). Predictive effects of structural variation on citation counts . J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci. Technol . 63 , 431–449. 10.1002/asi.21694 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Chen C.. (2013). Hindsight, insight, and foresight: a multi-level structural variation approach to the study of a scientific field . Technol. Analy. Strat. Manage . 25 , 619–640. 10.1080/09537325.2013.801949 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Chen C.. (2017). Science mapping: a systematic review of the literature . J. Data Inf. Sci. 2 , 1–40. 10.1515/jdis-2017-0006 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Chen C. M., Hu Z. G., Liu S. B., Tseng H. (2012). Emerging trends in regenerative medicine: a scientometric analysis in CiteSpace . Expert Opin. Biol. Therapy. 12 , 593–608. 10.1517/14712598.2012.674507 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Chen C. M., Ibekwe-SanJuan F., Hou J. (2010). The structure and dynamics of co-citation clusters: a multiple-perspective co-citation analysis . J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci. Technol . 61 , 1386–1409. 10.1002/asi.21309 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Chu A. H. C., Choi J. N. (2005). Rethinking procrastination: positive effects of “active” procrastination behavior on attitudes and performance . J. Soc. Psychol . 145 , 245–264. 10.3200/SOCP.145.3.245-264 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Corkin D. M., Yu S. L., Lindt S. F. (2011). Comparing active delay and procrastination from a self-regulated learning perspective . Learn. Indiv. Differ. 21 , 602–606. 10.1016/j.lindif.2011.07.005 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Diaz-Morales J. F., Ferrari J. R., Diaz K., Argumedo D. (2006). Factorial structure of three procrastination scales with a Spanish adult population . Eur. J. Psychol. Assess. 22 , 132–137. 10.1027/1015-5759.22.2.132 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Du J., Kerkhof P., van Koningsbruggen G. M. (2019). Predictors of social media self-control failure: immediate gratifications, habitual checking, ubiquity, and notifications . Cyber Psychol. Behav. Soc. Network. 22 , 477–485. 10.1089/cyber.2018.0730 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Duru E., Balkis M. (2017). Procrastination, self-esteem, academic performance, and well-being: a moderated mediation model . International J. Educ. Psychol . 6 , 97–119. 10.17583/ijep.2017.2584 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Elliot A. J., Harackiewicz J. M. (1996). Approach and avoidance achievement goals and intrinsic motivation: a mediational analysis . J. Personal. Soc. Psychol . 70 , 461–475. 10.1037/0022-3514.70.3.461 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Fang Y., Yin J., Wu B. (2018). Climate change and tourism: a scientometric analysis using CiteSpace . J. Sustain. Tour . 26 , 108–126. 10.1080/09669582.2017.1329310 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Ferrari J. R.. (1991). Compulsive procrastination: some self-reported characteristics . Psychol. Reports. 68 , 455–458. 10.2466/pr0.1991.68.2.455 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Ferrari J. R.. (1992). Psychometric validation of two Procrastination inventories for adults: arousal and avoidance measures . J. Psychopathol. Behav. Assess. 14 , 97–110. 10.1007/BF00965170 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Ferrari J. R., Diaz-Morales J. F., O'Callaghan J., Diaz K., Argumedo D. (2007). Frequent behavioral delay tendencies by adults - International prevalence rates of chronic procrastination . J. Cross-Cultural Psychol . 38 , 458–464. 10.1177/0022022107302314 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Ferrari J. R., Johnson J. L., McCown W. G. (1995). Procrastination and Task Avoidance: Theory, Research, and Treatment . US: Springer US. 10.1007/978-1-4899-0227-6 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Flett G. L., Stainton M., Hewitt P. L., Sherry S. B., Lay C. (2012). Procrastination automatic thoughts as a personality construct: an analysis of the procrastinatory cognitions inventory . J. Rational-Emot. Cogn. Behav. Therapy. 30 , 223–236. 10.1007/s10942-012-0150-z [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Freeman L.. (1978). Centrality in social networks conceptual clarification . Soc. Netw. 1 , 215–239. 10.1016/0378-8733(78)90021-7 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Garfield E.. (1979). Is citation analysis a legitimate evaluation tool . Scientometrics . 1 , 359–375. 10.1007/BF02019306 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Garzon Umerenkova A., Gil-Flores J. (2017a). Psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the test procrastination assessment scale-students (PASS) . Rev. Iberoamericana De Diagnostico Y Evaluacion-E Avaliacao Psicol. 1 , 149–163. 10.21865/RIDEP43_149 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Garzon Umerenkova A., Gil-Flores J. (2017b). Academic procrastination in non-traditional college students . Electronic J. Res. Educ. Psychol . 15 , 510–531. 10.14204/ejrep.43.16134 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Germeijs V., Verschueren K. (2011). Indecisiveness and big five personality factors: relationship and specificity . Person. Indiv. Differ. 50 , 1023–1028. 10.1016/j.paid.2011.01.017 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Glick D. M., Orsillo S. M. (2015). An investigation of the efficacy of acceptance-based behavioral therapy for academic procrastination . J. Experim. Psychol. General. 144 , 400–409. 10.1037/xge0000050 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Goroshit M.. (2018). Academic procrastination and academic performance: an initial basis for intervention . J. Prevent Intervent. Commun. 46 , 131–142. 10.1080/10852352.2016.1198157 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Green M. C., Visser P. S., Tetlock P. E. (2000). Coping with accountability cross-pressures: low-effort evasive tactics and high-effort quests for complex compromises . Personal. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 26 , 1380–1391. 10.1177/0146167200263006 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Guilera G., Barrios M., Penelo E., Morin C., Steel P., Gomez-Benito J. (2018). Validation of the Spanish version of the irrational procrastination scale (IPS) . PLoS ONE. 13 , 1–11. 10.1371/journal.pone.0190806 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Gustavson D. E., Miyake A., Hewitt J. K., Friedman N. P. (2014). Genetic relations among procrastination, impulsivity, and goal-management ability: implications for the evolutionary origin of procrastination . Psychol. Sci. 25 , 1178–1188. 10.1177/0956797614526260 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Harris N. N., Sutton R. I. (1983). Task procrastination in organizations: a framework for research . Human Relat. 36 , 987–995. 10.1177/001872678303601102 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
He Q., Wu M., Wu W., Fu J. (2021). The effect of abusive supervision on employees' work procrastination behavior . Frontiers in Psychol . 12 , 596704. 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.596704 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Hen M.. (2018). Causes for procrastination in a unique educational workplace . J. Prevent. Inter. Commun. 46 , 215–227. 10.1080/10852352.2018.1470144 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Hen M., Goroshit M. (2018). General and life-domain procrastination in highly educated adults in Israel . Front. Psychol . 9 , 1173. 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01173 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Hong W., Liu R. D., Ding Y., Jiang S. Y., Yang X. T., Sheng X. T. (2021). Academic procrastination precedes problematic mobile phone use in Chinese adolescents: a longitudinal mediation model of distraction cognitions . Addic. Behav. 121 , 106993. 10.1016/j.addbeh.2021.106993 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Hou J. H., Yang X. C., Chen C. M. (2020). Measuring researchers' potential scholarly impact with structural variations: four types of researchers in information science (1979-2018) . PLoS ONE. 15 , e0234347. 10.1371/journal.pone.0234347 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Howell A. J., Watson D. C. (2007). Procrastination: associations with achievement goal orientation and learning strategies . Personal. Indiv. Differ. 43 , 167–178. 10.1016/j.paid.2006.11.017 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Hubner K.. (2012). German crisis management and leadership-from ignorance to procrastination to action . Asia Eur. J. 9 , 159–177. 10.1007/s10308-012-0313-7 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Jiang Y., Ritchie B. W., Benckendorff P. (2019). Bibliometric visualization: an application in tourism crisis and disaster management research . Curr. Issues Tour . 22 , 1925–1957. 10.1080/13683500.2017.1408574 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Johnson J. L., Bloom A. M. (1995). An analysis of the contribution of the five factors of personality to variance in academic procrastination . Personal. Indiv. Differ. 18 , 127–133. 10.1016/0191-8869(94)00109-6 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Kim K. R., Seo E. H. (2015). The relationship between procrastination and academic performance: a meta-analysis . Personal. Indiv. Differ. 82 , 26–33. 10.1016/j.paid.2015.02.038 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Kim S., Fernandez S., Terrier L. (2017). Procrastination, personality traits, and academic performance: when active and passive procrastination tell a different story . Personal. Indiv. Differ. 108 , 154–157. 10.1016/j.paid.2016.12.021 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Klassen R. M., Krawchuk L. L., Rajani S. (2008). Academic procrastination of undergraduates: low self-efficacy to self-regulate predicts higher levels of procrastination . Contemp. Educ.Psychol . 33 , 915–931. 10.1016/j.cedpsych.2007.07.001 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Klein E.. (1971). A comprehensive etymological dictionary of the Hebrew language for readers of English . Tyndale House Publishers. [ Google Scholar ]
Kleinberg J.. (2003). Bursty and hierarchical structure in streams . Data Mining Knowl. Disc. 7 , 373–397. 10.1023/A:1024940629314 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Klingsieck K. B.. (2013). Procrastination: when good things don't come to those who wait . Eur. Psychol . 18 , 24–34. 10.1027/1016-9040/a000138 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Lay C.. (1986). At last, my research article on procrastination . J. Res. Personal . 20 , 474–495. 10.1016/0092-6566(86)90127-3 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Lay C.. (1988). The relation of procrastination and optimism to judgments of time to complete an essay and anticipation of setbacks . J. Soc. Behav. Personal. 3 , 201–214. [ Google Scholar ]
Legood A., Lee A., Schwarz G., Newman A. (2018). From self-defeating to other defeating: examining the effects of leader procrastination on follower work outcomes . J. Occup. Organiz. Psychol . 91 , 430–439. 10.1111/joop.12205 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Levin N., Lipshits-Braziler Y. (2021). Facets of adaptability in career decision-making . Int. J. Educ. Vocat. Guidance . 6 , 1–12. 10.1007/s10775-021-09489-w [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Malouff J. M., Schutte N. S. (2019). The efficacy of interventions aimed at reducing procrastination: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials . J. Counsel. Develop. 97 , 117–127. 10.1002/jcad.12243 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Markscheffel B., Schroeter F. (2021). Comparison of two science mapping tools based on software technical evaluation and bibliometric case studies . Collnet J. Scientometr. Inf. Manage . 15 , 365–396. 10.1080/09737766.2021.1960220 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Metin U. B., Tanis T. W., Peeters M. C. W. (2016). Measuring procrastination at work and its associated workplace aspects . Personal. Indiv. Differ . 101 , 254–263. 10.1016/j.paid.2016.06.006 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Miraj S. A.. (2020). Coronavirus disease 2019: the public health challenge and our preparedness . Biosci. Biotechnol. Res. Commun. 13 , 361–364. 10.21786/bbrc/13.2/1 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Nauts S., Kamphorst B. A., Stut W., De Ridder D. T. D., Anderson J. H. (2019). The explanations people give for going to bed late: a qualitative study of the varieties of bedtime procrastination . Behav. Sleep Med. 17 , 753–762. 10.1080/15402002.2018.1491850 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Nevill C. J.. (2009). Managing cumulative impacts: groundwater reform in the Murray-Darling basin, Australia . Water Res. Manage. 23 , 2605–2631. 10.1007/s11269-009-9399-0 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Olmeda-Gomez C., Roma-Mateo C., Ovalle-Perandones M. A. (2019). Overview of trends in global epigenetic research (2009-2017) . Scientometrics. 119 , 1545–1574. 10.1007/s11192-019-03095-y [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Pan W. W., Jian L. R., Liu T. (2019). Grey system theory trends from 1991 to 2018: a bibliometric analysis and visualization . Scientometrics. 121 , 1407–1434. 10.1007/s11192-019-03256-z [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Perdomo A. S., Feliciano-Garcia L. (2020). The influence of active procrastination: a profile on educational sciences students' academic achievement . Bordon-Rev. De Pedagogia. 72 , 157–170. 10.13042/Bordon.2020.73642 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Przepiorka A., Blachnio A., Cudo A. (2021). Procrastination and problematic new media use: the mediating role of future anxiety . Current Psychol . 5 , 1–10. 10.1007/s12144-021-01773-w [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Pychyl T. A., Flett G. L. (2012). Procrastination and self-regulatory failure: an introduction to the special issue . J. Rational-Emotive Cogn. Behav. Therapy. 30 , 203–212. 10.1007/s10942-012-0149-5 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Rozental A., Forsell E., Svensson A., Andersson G., Carlbring P. (2017). Overcoming procrastination: one-year follow-up and predictors of change in a randomized controlled trial of Internet-based cognitive behavior therapy . Cogn. Behav.Therapy. 46 , 177–195. 10.1080/16506073.2016.1236287 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Schouwenburg H. C., Lay C. H. (1995). Trait procrastination and the Big-five factors of personality . Personal. Indiv. Differ. 18 , 481–490. 10.1016/0191-8869(94)00176-S [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Schraw G., Wadkins T., Olafson L. (2007). Doing the things we do: a grounded theory of academic procrastination . J. Educ.Psychol . 99 , 12–25. 10.1037/0022-0663.99.1.12 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Sheybani F., Gharraee B., Bakhshizadeh M., Tamanaeefar S. (2017). Decisional procrastination: prevalence among students and relationship with emotional intelligence and big five-factor model of personality . Int. J. Life Sci. Pharma Res. 7 , 26–32. [ Google Scholar ]
Sirois F., Pychyl T. (2013). Procrastination and the priority of short-term mood regulation: consequences for future self . Soc. Personal. Psychol. Compass. 7 , 115–127. 10.1111/spc3.12011 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Sirois F. M.. (2004). Procrastination and intentions to perform health behaviors: the role of self-efficacy and the consideration of future consequences . Personal. Indiv. Differ. 37 , 115–128. 10.1016/j.paid.2003.08.005 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Sirois F. M.. (2021). Trait procrastination undermines outcome and efficacy expectancies for achieving health-related possible selves . Curr. Psychol . 40 , 3840–3847. 10.1007/s12144-019-00338-2 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Sirois F. M., Molnar D. S., Hirsch J. K. (2017). A meta-analytic and conceptual update on the associations between procrastination and multidimensional perfectionism . Eur. J. Personal. 31 , 137–159. 10.1002/per.2098 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Steel P.. (2007). The nature of procrastination: a meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure . Psychol.Bull. 133 , 65–94. 10.1037/0033-2909.133.1.65 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Steel P.. (2010). Arousal, avoidant and decisional procrastinators: do they exist? Personal. Indiv. Differ. 48 , 926–934. 10.1016/j.paid.2010.02.025 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Steel P., Ferrari J. (2013). Sex, education and procrastination: an epidemiological study of procrastinators' characteristics from a global sample . Eur. J. Personal. 27 , 51–58. 10.1002/per.1851 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Steel P., Klingsieck K. B. (2016). Academic procrastination: psychological antecedents revisited . Austral. Psychol . 51 , 36–46. 10.1111/ap.12173 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Svartdal F.. (2017). Measuring procrastination: psychometric properties of the Norwegian versions of the irrational procrastination scale (IPS) and the pure procrastination scale (PPS) . Scand. J. Educ. Res . 61 , 18–30. 10.1080/00313831.2015.1066439 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Tao X., Hanif H., Ahmed H. H., Ebrahim N. A. (2021). Bibliometric analysis and visualization of academic procrastination . Front. Psychol . 12 , 722332. 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.722332 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Tibbett T., Ferrari J. (2019). Return to the origin: what creates a procrastination identity? Curr. Issues Personal. Psychol . 7 , 1–7. 10.5114/cipp.2018.75648 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Tice D. M., Baumeister R. F. (1997). Longitudinal study of procrastination, performance, stress, and health: the costs and benefits of dawdling . Psychol. Sci. 8 , 454–458. 10.1111/j.1467-9280.1997.tb00460.x [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
van Eck N. J., Waltman L. (2010). Software survey: VOS viewer, a computer program for bibliometric mapping . Scientometrics. 84 , 523–538. 10.1007/s11192-009-0146-3 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
van Eerde W.. (2003). A meta-analytically derived nomological network of procrastination . Personal. Indiv. Differ. 35 , 1401–1418. 10.1016/S0191-8869(02)00358-6 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Vangsness L., Young M. E. (2020). Turtle, task ninja, or time waster? Who cares? traditional task-completion strategies are overrated . Psychol. Sci. 31 , 306–315. 10.1177/0956797619901267 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Visser L., Schoonenboom J., Korthagen F. A. J. (2017). A field experimental design of a strengths-based training to overcome academic procrastination: short- and long-term effect . Front. Psychol . 8 , 1949. 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01949 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Wessel J., Bradley G. L., Hood M. (2019). Comparing effects of active and passive procrastination: a field study of behavioral delay . Personal. Indiv. Differ. 139 , 152–157. 10.1016/j.paid.2018.11.020 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Widziewicz-Rzonca K., Tytla M. (2020). First systematic review on PM-bound water: exploring the existing knowledge domain using the CiteSpace software . Scientometrics. 124 , 1945–2008. 10.1007/s11192-020-03547-w [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Wolters C. A.. (2003). Understanding procrastination from a self-regulated learning perspective . J. Educ.Psychol . 95 , 179–187. 10.1037/0022-0663.95.1.179 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Wypych M., Matuszewski J., Dragan W. Ł. (2018). Roles of impulsivity, motivation, and emotion regulation in procrastination – path analysis and comparison between students and non-students . Front. Psychol . 9 , 891. 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00891 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Yi Y. T., Luo J. S., Wubbenhorst M. (2020). Research on political instability, uncertainty and risk during 1953-2019: a scientometric review . Scientometrics. 123 , 1051–1076. 10.1007/s11192-020-03416-6 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Zhang S. M., Verguts T., Zhang C. Y., Feng P., Chen Q., Feng T. Y. (2021). Outcome value and task aversiveness impact task procrastination through separate neural pathways . Cerebral Cortex . 31 , 3846–3855. 10.1093/cercor/bhab053 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Zohar A. H., Shimone L. P., Hen M. (2019). Active and passive procrastination in terms of temperament and character . Peerj. 7 , e6988. 10.7717/peerj.6988 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]

Procrastination Concept and Reasons Term Paper

Procrastination overview, possible reasons.

The term procrastination is relatively new to psychology, despite the fact that the psychological essence of the phenomenon indicated by this term is familiar to everyone. Procrastination is a tendency to postpone the execution of necessary things until later. Thus, it is a behavioral pattern in which the activity leading for a person in a given period of time is deliberately delayed. A person remains active, but his activity is aimed at extraneous, insignificant, sometimes just meaningless activities. Therefore, it is critical to understand the underlying reasons behind procrastination.

A separate direction is dedicated to the study of the postponement of the implementation of educational tasks – academic procrastination. It is believed that the educational process is characterized by the conditions in which procrastination most often occurs, leading to negative consequences. Procrastination is one of the most significant factors causing learning difficulties (Brust et al., 2020).

Most students in secondary and higher educational institutions consider themselves procrastinators. Most of them say that they need professional help in overcoming procrastination. In this regard, many foreign colleges and universities provide students with the opportunity to attend special classes to combat procrastination and acquire adequate planning skills for educational activities, as well as prioritizing and allocating their time.

However, it is important to note that the development of theoretical knowledge about procrastination does not occur in-depth but in breadth. New concepts developed in this direction, in most cases, only complement the previous ones but do not refute them. On the one hand, this indicates the obvious versatility of the phenomenon under study. On the other hand, this also shows the need for research to analyze all the accumulated theoretical experience, and at the same time, take a look at procrastination as a phenomenon as a whole, on its essence.

Procrastination is a complex, multi-component phenomenon, and among them is the fact of postponement and the availability of deadlines. Procrastination is always followed by negative consequences, and procrastination, in turn, is always associated with negative emotions and experiences, such as anxiety and guilt. As a rule, in modern psychology, procrastination is understood as a negative phenomenon.

It is also possible to consider the inability to manage the situation as a consequence of procrastination, and it can be synonymous with passivity, pessimism, and maladaptation (Brust et al., 2020). However, in some studies, procrastination is defined as a partially positive phenomenon. In this case, the postponement of the task is justified by the reduction of negative manifestations preceding or accompanying its implementation.

Each person at least once in his life refused to carry out any actions and put them off, especially when it was necessary to do something under duress or under the pressure of circumstances or when there were doubts about the necessity and usefulness of the plan. However, with procrastination, a person lingers even when he is sure of the necessity and importance of action. He has no doubt that this is necessary, useful, necessary, and his plan should have been done yesterday.

He deliberately postpones the intended business, despite the fact that this will entail certain problems and complications. At the same time, he can perform small and insignificant tasks, to which he attaches greater importance than to the truly important. Procrastination can cause stress, guilt, decreased productivity, and discontent from others due to default (Munjal & Mishra, 2019). The combination of these feelings and excessive use of forces can provoke further procrastination.

Chronic procrastination can be caused by a hidden psychological or physiological ailment. Some people can work productively only when a strict time frame is set; the peak of their productivity falls on the last hours and minutes before the deadline. The main signs of procrastination are the lack of productivity and meaning in the actions taken, together with the constant postponement of the really important and useful.

To a certain extent, this is not a big deal since no man can work like a machine. Small breaks for rest and a change of activity affect overall productivity favorably. Therefore, another sign of procrastination is the negative consequences, such as a violation of the deadlines, failure of the planned projects, general dissatisfaction with their professional activities, possible personal and psychological problems.

Procrastination is, in a way, an expression of an emotional reaction to planned or necessary things. Depending on the nature of these emotions, procrastination is divided into two fundamental types. This is relaxed procrastination when a person spends time on other, more pleasant activities and entertainments, and a tense form associated with general overload, loss of a sense of time, dissatisfaction with one’s own achievements, unclear life goals, indecision, and self-doubt.

From the foregoing, one can single out the general featural causes of procrastination, such as irrationality, awareness, negative emotional experiences, and internal discomfort. Consequently, procrastination is a deliberate delay of affairs leading to negative consequences and accompanied by internal discomfort and negative emotional experiences. Procrastination is a heterogeneous phenomenon; its content varies depending on many factors; that is, it can be classified on various grounds.

It is also possible to identify five main forms of procrastination, which will reveal the linking causes behind this phenomenon. These types of procrastination include academic, that is, postponing preparation for verification work, homework, and procrastination in decision-making, including minor ones (Rebetez et al., 2018).

It is also worth highlighting the compulsive, which most often manifests itself as chronic procrastination in any situation, and neurotic, that is, procrastination in making vital decisions. In addition, there is household procrastination, or daily, that is, the inability to cope with routine, regular activities. Thus, in the general characteristic, only two types of procrastination can be stored in it, such as deferring the execution of tasks and deferring decision-making.

It is also possible to categorize reasons behind procrastination according to the manifestations of this phenomenon depends on the personal characteristics of people and on their behavior strategies. There are indecisive people who are prone to putting off responsibility due to the pressure of the load, and such people are often peculiar and inherent in terms of genetic background (Gustavson et al., 2017).

There are also avoiding procrastinators, whose behavior is due to the desire not to perform subjectively unpleasant tasks, as well as to avoid evaluations from others. Thrill-seekers can be distinguished, and these are the aforementioned active procrastinators. They deliberately put off making important decisions because they like the feeling of the emotional upsurge that arises when doing things at the last moment. The aforementioned topic of individual-personality characteristics of procrastinators has been raised in many studies but still remains extremely relevant.

The fact is that a single model of the relationship of personality factors with the phenomenon of procrastination does not exist in psychology. Within this area, particular interest should be shown in the key reasons that are based on personality substructures and components directly related to procrastination. The studies show that there can be an evolutionary reason for procrastination (Chen & Chang, 2016).

These reasons may include cognitive characteristics, that is, the locus of control and perception of time, and characteristics of the emotional sphere such as anxiety, fear of failure, and guilt. In addition, it is important to include behavioral features such as lack of self-regulation skills, learning skills, the rigidity of behavioral patterns, disorganization, and biological factors, in other words, low concentration of attention and neuroticism. In addition, in the scientific works of recent years, the theme of the relationship of procrastination with self-control and perfectionism has often been raised.

It is possible to state that a low level of self-control or, conversely, a high level of perfectionism can become the determinants of putting off activities for later. The main disadvantage from which procrastinators suffer is excessive impulsivity (Rebetez et al., 2018). The larger the time gap between the present moment and the future event, the higher the likelihood that a person will choose pleasure “here and now” and not work for the future. In other words, this means that a person will postpone important activities with a delayed result to meet urgent but not so significant needs.

While discussing the practical importance of studying the phenomenon of procrastination, it is important to clarify that stable procrastination is observed in most people around the world. It should be borne in mind that in recent years the level of understanding of procrastination has grown and has a tendency to increase further. At the same time, the very existence of the postponement phenomenon contradicts the conditions of modern society, which makes special demands on the productivity, independence, and responsibility of the individual.

Thus, procrastination is a conscious tendency to postpone the implementation of leading activities, accompanied by internal discomfort and leading to negative consequences; that is, this is a complex, complex psychological concept. In psychology, further studies of this problem are necessary, which would allow developing theoretical knowledge about the nature of procrastination, the psychological phenomena associated with it, and its structure.

In conclusion, procrastination is a complex phenomenon, which, based on the basic theories that explain it, includes: a behavioral component, a cognitive component, an emotional component, as well as a subconscious component. Modern society makes high demands on the responsibility, independence, and productivity of the individual. The study of procrastination is very significant and relevant, especially when the problems and difficulties that arise simply cannot be associated with human laziness and disinterest in performing the necessary activities.

Thus, the phenomenon of procrastination is a complex psychological concept that should not be fully identified with protective mechanisms or impaired motivational processes. This issue requires further study and deeper research, which will clarify the available data on the nature of procrastination, its components, and possible correlations with other psychological characteristics of the person.

Brust, O. A., Häder, M., & Häder, S. (2020). Procrastination and participation in telephone surveys. Bulletin of Sociological Methodology, 145 (1), 80-99. Web.

Chen, B.-B., & Chang, L. (2016). Procrastination as a fast life history strategy . Evolutionary Psychology, 14 (1), 1-5. Web.

Gustavson, D. E., du Pont, A., Hatoum, A. S., Rhee, S. H., Kremen, W. S., Hewitt, J. K., & Friedman, N. P. (2017). Genetic and environmental associations between procrastination and internalizing/externalizing psychopathology . Clinical Psychological Science, 5 (5), 798-815. Web.

Munjal, S., & Mishra, R. (2019). Associative impact of personality orientation and levels of stress on procrastination in middle-level managers . Indian Journal of Public Administration, 65 (1), 53-70. Web.

Rebetez, M. M. L., Rochat, L., Barsics, C., & Van der Linden, M. (2018). Procrastination as a self-regulation failure: The role of impulsivity and intrusive thoughts . Psychological Reports, 121 (1), 26-41. Web.

Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2021, June 21). Procrastination Concept and Reasons. https://ivypanda.com/essays/procrastination-term-definition/

"Procrastination Concept and Reasons." IvyPanda , 21 June 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/procrastination-term-definition/.

IvyPanda . (2021) 'Procrastination Concept and Reasons'. 21 June.

IvyPanda . 2021. "Procrastination Concept and Reasons." June 21, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/procrastination-term-definition/.

1. IvyPanda . "Procrastination Concept and Reasons." June 21, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/procrastination-term-definition/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Procrastination Concept and Reasons." June 21, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/procrastination-term-definition/.

Procrastination in the Fields of Education and Psychology
Students Procrastination Problem
A Critical Analysis of Hamlet's Constant Procrastination in Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Neuroscience Psychology of Goals & Behavior Change
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Veteran Community
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Professional Counseling
Doctor - Patient Communication
Family Therapy Journal: The Case of Lincolns

Understanding procrastination: A case of a study skills course

Open access
Published: 22 March 2021
Volume 24 , pages 589–606, ( 2021 )

Cite this article

You have full access to this open access article

T. Hailikari ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1355-2985 1 ,
N. Katajavuori ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5093-2402 1 &
H. Asikainen ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3858-211X 1

91k Accesses

22 Citations

26 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

Procrastination is consistently viewed as problematic to academic success and students’ general well-being. There are prevailing questions regarding the underlying and maintaining mechanisms of procrastination which are yet to be learnt. The aim of the present study was to combine different ways to explain procrastination and explore how students’ time and effort management skills, psychological flexibility and academic self-efficacy are connected to procrastination as they have been commonly addressed separately in previous studies. The data were collected from 135 students who participated in a voluntary time management and well-being course in autumn 2019. The results showed that students’ ability to organize their time and effort has the strongest association with procrastination out of the variables included in the study. Psychological flexibility also has a strong individual role in explaining procrastination along with time and effort management skills. Surprisingly, academic self-efficacy did not have a direct association with procrastination. Interestingly, our findings further suggest that time and effort management and psychological flexibility are closely related and appear to go hand in hand and, thus, both need to be considered when the aim is to reduce procrastination. The implications of the findings are further discussed.

Examining the relations of time management and procrastination within a model of self-regulated learning

Why are you waiting procrastination on academic tasks among undergraduate and graduate students, predictors of procrastination in first-year university students: role of achievement goals and learning strategies.

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

1 Introduction

Academic procrastination is very common among university students: almost all occasionally procrastinate in one or another domain of their studies, and approximately every second student regularly procrastinates (Rothblum et al., 1986 ; Steel, 2007 ). Considerable attention has been given to procrastination in university setting (Klassen et al., 2008 ). The student population is especially prone to procrastination, with an estimated prevalence of 50–95% (Steel, 2007 ). Procrastination may be defined as ‘the voluntary delay of an intended and necessary and/or [personally] important activity, despite expecting potential negative consequences that outweigh the positive consequences of the delay’ (Klingsieck, 2013 , 26). Typical for procrastination is that it is irrational and not imposed by external matters and it is often accompanied by subjective discomfort and negative consequences (Klingsieck, 2013 ). Procrastination is often associated with several negative factors, such as lower academic performance (Steel et al., 2001 ), increased stress (Sirois et al., 2003 ) and poorer mental health (Stead et al., 2010 ). Therefore, it is necessary to understand the causes and the factors that maintain procrastination in order to be able to reduce it. The challenge is that research in the area of procrastination often lacks a coherent, theoretical explanation of the behaviour (Glick et al., 2014 ) which has made it difficult to understand the phenomenon and to follow the research (e.g., Klingsieck, 2013 ; Schraw et al., 2007 ; Steel, 2007 ). Therefore, there are prevailing questions regarding the underlying and maintaining mechanisms of procrastination which are yet to be learnt (Katz et al., 2014 ; Visser et al., 2018 ).

The core characteristic of procrastination is the intention-action gap suggesting that the procrastinators often have good intentions, but the challenge lies in the implementation of these intentions (Dewitte and Lens, 2000 ). Thus, procrastination has traditionally been understood as a self-regulation or time management problem (Wolters et al., 2017 ). There is a strong body of evidence suggesting that lower levels of self-regulating behaviours are related to higher levels of procrastination, and thus self-regulation is one of the keys to understanding procrastination (Ferrari, 2001 ). However, Visser et al. ( 2018 ) suggest that procrastination is complex behaviour that involves both cognitive and emotional elements as well as evaluations of one’s own competence. Recent research suggests that instead of being purely a self-regulation or time management problem, procrastination is also strongly influenced by psychological factors, such as the low confidence in one’s own abilities to perform (Steel, 2007 ) and inability to cope with negative emotions that arise in challenging situations referring to the centrality of psychological flexibility in understanding procrastination (Dionne, 2016 ; Gagnon et al., 2016 ). In this article, we aim to bring together these central constructs that have usually been addressed separately in previous studies in order to understand the phenomenon of procrastination and its underlying mechanisms better.

1.1 Factors explaining academic procrastination

There are several theoretical perspectives that have been used when exploring procrastination: the differential psychology perspective; the motivational and volitional psychology perspective; the clinical psychology perspective; and the situational perspective (Klingsieck, 2013 ). In the context of higher education, the motivational-volitional psychology and situational perspectives may be regarded as the most relevant because they provide tangible tools and theories for educational developers to try to influence students’ procrastination tendencies whereas the other perspectives focus more on aspects that are not so easily influenced, such as personality traits, depression or personality disorders. The motivational-volitional perspective is focused on the relationship between different motivational and volitional variables such as motivation, self-regulation, time management and learning strategies which are central in successful studying in higher education (Lindblom-Ylänne et al., 2015 ; Klingsieck, 2013 ). The situational perspective, on the other hand, focuses on procrastination evoked by situational features, such as the perceived difficulty of the task (Klingsieck, 2013 ). This situational perspective can be further extended to include the person’s reactions to the challenges posed by the situation.

From the motivational-volitional perspective, academic procrastination has been found to be related to lower levels of self-regulation and academic self-efficacy and is associated with higher levels of stress and anxiety (e.g., Ferrari et al., 2005 ; Howell et al., 2006 ; Schraw et al., 2007 ; Wolters, 2003 ). Klassen et al. ( 2008 ) state that among all the variables that have been investigated in relation to academic procrastination, self-regulation, self-efficacy, and self-esteem have received the most attention (see e.g., Cassady and Johnson, 2002 ; Chun Chu and Choi, 2005 ; Ferrari, 2001 ; Howell et al., 2006 ; Steel, 2007 ; Wolters, 2003 ). Procrastination has traditionally been considered to be a form of self-regulation failure, as a weakness of will and low ability to organise own studying (e.g., Ferrari, 2001 ; Senecal et al., 1995 ; Steel, 2007 ) and, thus, one common theory is that procrastination results from a person’s inability to manage time (Burka and Yuen, 1982 ; Glick and Orsillo, 2015 ).

1.2 Time and effort management skills behind procrastination

Research focusing on exploring university students’ study progress has consistently shown that time and effort management skills are among the most crucial factors (e.g., Ariely and Wertenbroch, 2002 ; Entwistle, 2009 ; Haarala-Muhonen et al., 2011 ; Häfner et al., 2015 ; Pintrich, 2004 ). In the higher education context, time and effort management skills refer to students’ ability to set goals for themselves and to study according to their goals, to manage their time usage and to prioritise the tasks to be conducted (Entwistle et al., 2001 ). It has further been suggested that time and effort management skills provide a foundation for cognitive engagement and student achievement as they refer to how much the students are willing to invest in their learning (Appleton et al., 2008; Fredricks et al., 2004). Previous studies indicate that many higher education students struggle with time and effort management skills (Parpala et al., 2010 ) and that these skills remain constant throughout the studies and are hard to change (Parpala et al., 2017a ). Many students study without study schedules and thus fail to pass the courses because they run out of preparation time, such as for exams (Asikainen et al., 2013 ). Thus, many interventions to reduce procrastination have focused on improving time management skills (e.g., Ariely and Wertenbroch, 2002 ; Häfner et al., 2015 ; Levrini and Prevatt, 2012 ).

There are also critical voices claiming that time and effort management skills, or lack thereof, are not enough to explain the phenomena and that research focusing on the role of time and effort management skills in procrastination does not take the persons’ internal experiences enough into account (Glick and Orsillo, 2015 ). It has been suggested that when exploring factors that maintain and cause procrastination, we have to widen the perspective to include a broader theory of regulation of inner experiences, namely, psychological flexibility (Hayes, 2004 ; Hayes et al., 2012 ). Recent studies concerning procrastination have brought up the importance of psychological flexibility in decreasing procrastination and suggest that procrastination may also result from person’s psychological inflexibility (Eisenbeck et al., 2019 ; Gagnon et al., 2016 ; Glick et al., 2014 ; Scent and Boes, 2014 ).

1.3 Psychological flexibility and academic self-efficacy beliefs

Psychological flexibility refers to one’s ability to be consciously present, confronting and accepting the negative experiences, emotions and thoughts one might have, and being able to take action about achieving one’s own goals despite unpleasant feelings and thoughts, and further, being able to react to negative feelings and thoughts from a new perspective (Chawla and Ostafin, 2007 ; Hayes et al., 2006 ). Thus, it is a central factor influencing the way students react in a stressful and challenging situation. Procrastinators often fail to regulate their actions in situations that are challenging and involve high levels of stress and cognitive workload and avoiding the unpleasant feelings generated by the situation (Ferrari, 2001 ). This experiential avoidance, or an unwillingness to encounter unpleasant experiences, such as anxiety, is a key component of psychological inflexibility (Sutcliff et al., 2019 ). Tasks that are considered to be difficult and challenging and do not provide instant rewards tend to be delayed and avoided (Blunt and Pychyl, 2000 ; Sirois and Pychyl, 2013 ; Steel, 2007 ). Escaping from stressful and aversive situations might relieve stress and are thus rewarding. As an example, students are always faced with a trade-off when choosing between procrastinating or studying (Kirby et al., 2005 ; Olsen et al., 2018 ) . One alternative is to complete the challenging academic tasks on time which leads to delayed rewards in the form of achieving academic and career goals (see e.g., Sutcliff et al., 2019 ). These goals often strongly align with students' values. However, students always have an alternative to choose an immediate, positive reinforcers in the form of avoidance or escape from negative internal experiences elicited by challenging tasks, such as engaging in social or leisure activities that are not related to the task at hand. Consequently, a number of recent studies have suggested that procrastination is strongly characterised by avoidant tendencies and aversive experiences and is thus mainly involved with the person’s ability to deal with negative emotions, in addition to their time and effort management skills (Sirois, 2014 ; Ticeand Bratslavsky, 2000 ; Hailikari et al., submitted).

Psychological flexibility is thought to be constructed of six core psychological processes, which are cognitive defusion, self-as-context, being present, acceptance, values and committed actions (Hayes et al., 2012 ). These processes include the ability to observe and recognise ones’ own thoughts and seeing them just as thoughts rather than truths; keeping a flexible perspective-taking attitude on one’s thinking and feeling; the ability to remain in the present moment and be mindful of thoughts, feelings, and sensations without judging them; confronting negative thoughts and emotions without attempting to change them; clarifying one’s hopes, values and goals in life and finally, doing and taking actions which are consistent with one’s hopes, values and goals (Flaxman et al., 2013 ; Hayes et al., 2012 ). Each of these processes is a psychological skill that can be enhanced in different life domains.

Previous research has clearly shown a link between high levels of procrastination and psychological inflexibility. Eisenbeck et al. ( 2019 ) found that procrastination and psychological distress were associated with psychological inflexibility and further, psychological inflexibility mediated the relationship between general psychological distress and procrastination. The role of psychological flexibility’s sub-processes in procrastination among university students has also been studied, and it was found that committed actions were moderately negatively correlated with procrastination suggesting that committed action could be a promising variable in the study of procrastination (Gagnon et al. 2016 ). Another study showed that procrastination was negatively and moderately related to lower levels of acceptance, adding support to the negative link between psychological flexibility and procrastination (Glick et al., 2014 ). The significance of psychological flexibility in the university context has been studied less, but recent research in this context showed that psychological flexibility has a strong relationship with student engagement and study progression (Asikainen, 2018 ; Asikainen et al., 2018 ).

A recent study by Jeffords et al. ( 2018 ), showed that psychological flexibility is closely related to self-efficacy. Self-efficacy has often been studied previously, focusing on procrastination with results showing an inverse relationship with procrastination (Howell and Watson, 2007; Steel, 2007 ; Wolters, 2003 ). Academic Self-efficacy beliefs describe students’ beliefs in their own capabilities to learn new things and to complete given tasks successfully (Bandura, 1997 ). According to the study by Jeffords et al. ( 2018 ) students who reported greater psychological flexibility felt more efficacious in their ability to complete their studies, whereas students who reported greater inflexibility also reported feeling less efficacious. Similar findings have been reported in relation to students’ time and effort management skills. Bembenutty ( 2009 ) showed that college students who have greater academic self-efficacy also tend to show increased management of their time and study environment (see also Burlison et al., 2009 ; Park and Sperling, 2012 ). Academic Self-efficacy beliefs have been proposed as a possible explanation for procrastination in the academic context, indicating that low academic self-efficacy beliefs are associated with an increased tendency to procrastinate (Judge and Bono, 2001 ). If one’s academic self-efficacy beliefs are low, the motivation to initiate work or to commit to required action should also be low, resulting in avoidance behaviour and consequently procrastination (Grunschel et al. 2013 ). On the other hand, students who believe that they can and will do well are more likely to be motivated to self-regulate, persist and engage in studying (Pintrich and Schunk, 2002 ; Zimmerman, 2000 ). Academic Self-efficacy beliefs have been found to be among the strongest predictive factors of performance in various domains (e.g., Lane and Lane, 2001 ; Pajares, 1996 ). Thus, when exploring the maintaining factors of procrastination, it is important to include academic self-efficacy.

1.4 Aim of the study

Taken together, previous research suggests that time and effort management skills, psychological flexibility and self-efficacy are all closely related to procrastination. Although the studies in this area support a tentative connection between these factors, it is far from conclusive. To our knowledge, no previous study has brought together these central constructs in explaining procrastination. They have been explored separately as they represent different research traditions. The aim of the present study is to include all these variables and explore their interrelations and how they together predict procrastination among students that experiences challenges with their study skills. There is a need to understand the underlying mechanisms of procrastination and which constructs are especially important if the aim is to reduce procrastination among higher education students. This research focuses on answering the following research question: How are university students’ time and effort management skills, psychological flexibility and self-efficacy associated with (a) each other and (b) to their reported level of procrastination.

2 Methodology

2.1 participants.

The data were collected from students studying arts and humanities at a Finnish university. Prolonged study times are a great challenge at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Kurri, 2006 ). Recent research also suggests that students procrastinate more in the field of arts and humanities compared to other academic fields (Nordby et al., 2017 ). The data came from the students who participated in a voluntary time management and well-being course, and who were willing/eager to improve their study skills. This course was advertised for students who have challenges with their time-management and well-being. A total of 149 students voluntarily participated in the study and answered the questionnaire in autumn 2019. Students responded to the questionnaires at the beginning of the course as a part of their pre-assignment. Of these students, 14 were excluded because their answers had many missing values concerning the measured dimensions (> 50%). Thus, a total of 135 students provided the data. In the questionnaire, the students were asked to evaluate their own time and effort management skills, academic self-efficacy, tendency to procrastinate and psychological flexibility. Of these students, 22 were male students and 110 female students. Two students identified as ‘other gender’, and one did not answer this question. Approximately a quarter of the students in the Faculty of Arts are male and, thus, the sample distribution is similar to the population. The average age of the participants was 28.1 years (SD = 7.62).

2.2 Instruments

We used two scales, focusing on time and effort management skills and academic self-efficacy, from the HowULearn questionnaire (Parpala and Lindblom-Ylänen, 2012 ). HowULearn -questionnaire and its scales are widely used and validated in Finnish and international contexts (e.g., Cheung et al., 2020; Parpala et al., 2010 ; Postareff et al., 2018; Ruohoniemi et al., 2017 ; Rytkönen et al., 2012). The HowULearn questionnaire has also been translated in the context of Danish higher education (Herrmann et al., 2017 ). Time and effort management skills are measured with four items on a Likert-scale from 1 to 5 (e.g. 'I am generally systematic and organised in my studies’). Concerning students’ academic self-efficacy, we used a scale from HowULearn questionnaire which has been constructed based on (Pintrich and Garcia ( 1991 ) Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ). Five items, using a Likert scale from 1 to 5, were modified to suit the academic self-efficacy. As it is applied here, academic self-efficacy refers to students’ appraisal of their ability to master academic tasks including their judgements about their ability to accomplish a task as well as their confidence in their skill to perform that task. Based on these items, an academic self-efficacy scale for constructed (5 items, e.g., ‘I believe I will do well in my studies as long as I make an effort’). Psychological flexibility was measured according to the work-related acceptance and action questionnaire (WAAQ) (Bond et al., 2013) which was recently developed to fit the higher education context in Finland (7 items, e.g., ‘My worries do not prevent me from succeeding in my studies’ (Asikainen, 2018 ). The items used a 7-point Likert scale (1 = totally disagree, 7 = totally agree). Procrastination was measured with a short version of the Pure procrastination scale (PPS) (Svartdahl and Steel, 2017 ) using a 5-point Likert scale (5 items, e.g.,’ In preparation for some deadlines, I often waste time by doing other things’). This short version of the original pure procrastination scale has been proven to be a robust instrument to measure academic procrastination (Svartdahl et al., 2017; see also Klein et al., 2019 ).

2.3 Statistical analysis

Missing value analysis was conducted on the items measuring the scales. There were only four separate missing values concerning different items and, thus, these were replaced with means. The relationships between the scales were analysed with Pearson’s correlation analysis. In addition, linear regression analysis was conducted on the scales measuring academic self-efficacy, time and effort management (= organised studying) and psychological flexibility explaining procrastination. In addition, the students were then divided into three score groups (low/medium/high) based on their scores measuring time and effort management and psychological flexibility where the middle group was formed using the mean + − a half standard deviation. The groups were combined and thus, six score groups were conducted. The differences in these groups in procrastination was analysed with One-way ANOVA and Tukey’s test.

According to the Cronbach alpha analysis, the scales measuring psychological flexibility, procrastination and academic self-efficacy had very good reliability (α = 0.83–0.90). The reliability for the scale measuring time and effort management can be regarded as acceptable (see Table 1 ). Adding more items to measure the same dimension, would most probably have increased the alpha on Organised studying (Taber 2018). However, as the scale has been used in many previous studies with good reliability (Herrmann et al., 2017 ; Parpala et al., 2010 ; Ruohoniemi et al., 2017 ) its use can be considered to be acceptable.

The correlational analysis showed that there was a clear relationship between procrastination, psychological flexibility, academic self-efficacy and time and effort management skills. Procrastination was statistically significantly and negatively correlated with time and effort management skills (r = − 0.584, p < 0.001), academic self-efficacy ( p = − 0.358, p < 0.001) and psychological flexibility (r = − 0.461, p < 0.001). In addition, academic self-efficacy was positively related to psychological flexibility ( p = 0.322, p < 0,001) and time and effort management skills ( p = 0.357, p < 0.001). In addition, time and effort management skills and psychological flexibility correlated positively with each other (r = 0.332, p < 0.001). The correlations can be seen in Table 2 .

3.1 Regression analysis

A linear regression model was conducted with psychological flexibility, time and effort management and academic self-efficacy as predictors of procrastination. As presented in Table 3 , time and effort management skills, psychological flexibility and academic self-efficacy explained a significant level of variance in procrastination (Adjusted R Square = 0.382). Both time and effort management (t = − 5.63, p < 0.001) and psychological flexibility (t = − 3.06, p = 0.003) explained the variance in procrastination statistically significantly meaning that students who reported greater use of time and effort management strategies and higher psychological flexibility reported less tendency to procrastinate. Academic self-efficacy failed to emerge as an individual predictor of procrastination t = − 1.04, p = 0.301). The results of the regression analysis can be seen in Table 3 .

3.2 Differences in score groups

The One-way ANOVA of the score groups showed that there were differences in experiences of procrastination according to the score groups. According to the Tukey’s test, the group with a high score on time and effort management as well as psychological flexibility scored statistically significantly lower on procrastination than the other score groups (see Table 4 ). In addition, the group with a low score in time and effort management as well as on psychological flexibility scored higher in procrastination than the group scoring average on time and effort management and high on psychological flexibility as well as the group scoring high on time and effort management and average on psychological flexibility. The group scoring average on time and effort management and low on psychological flexibility also scored statistically significantly higher on procrastination than the group scoring high on time and effort management and average on psychological flexibility.

4 Discussion

Procrastination is consistently viewed as problematic to academic success and students’ general well-being (Steel, 2007 ). Students’ time management skills as well as ability to manage their own actions despite the negative feelings have been identified as central factors associated with procrastination along with students’ academic self-efficacy beliefs. To this point, however, only a few studies have included all these measures and compared their impact on procrastination. Thus, an aim with the present study was to explore how students’ time and effort management skills, psychological flexibility and academic self-efficacy are interrelated and associated with procrastination as they have been commonly addressed separately in previous studies.

Designed to address this limitation, our findings support three noteworthy findings regarding academic procrastination among students who experience problems in their time management skills. Firstly, our findings show that students’ ability to organise their time and effort had the strongest association with procrastination out of the variables included in the study. Secondly, our findings indicate that psychological flexibility has a strong individual role in explaining procrastination along with time and effort management skills, although to a slightly smaller degree. And thirdly, our findings suggest that these two constructs appear to be closely related and clearly go hand in hand and, thus, both need to be considered. In the remainder of this section, we review the findings that support these points, identify implications for research and practice, and discuss some limitations to these conclusions.

Time management has been repeatedly identified in previous studies as a major factor contributing to procrastination (Ferrari, 2001 ; Senécal et al., 1995 ; Steel, 2007 ; Wolters, 2003 ). Our findings add to this work by showing that in our study time and effort management skills were strongly related to self-reported level of procrastination and explained the largest variance of procrastination in the regression. This finding implies that students’ time and effort management skills can be used to understand their self-reported levels of academic procrastination. However, it appears that time and effort management skills alone are not enough to explain the phenomenon of procrastination as we assumed. In our study, psychological flexibility also had a strong individual role in explaining large variation of procrastination. This is in line with the recent research suggesting that psychological flexibility is also a central construct explaining procrastination (Dionne, 2016 ; Gagnon et al. 2016 ). These two factors were also strongly correlated with each other as well as with academic self-efficacy beliefs which suggests that they share common variance. Their central role was further explained by regression analysis which showed that together they explained almost 40% of the variance in procrastination. Interestingly, in the present study academic self-efficacy beliefs did not have a direct association with procrastination. This finding is in contrast with previous studies showing that lower self-efficacy beliefs are associated with an increased tendency to procrastinate (Judge and Bono, 2001 ; Wolters, 2003 ). However, some studies have similarly reported a non-significant association between self-efficacy and procrastination. For example, Klassen et al. ( 2010 ) showed with Canadian and Singaporean students that although procrastination negatively and significantly correlated with academic self-efficacy, in the regression model there was no association between academic self-efficacy and procrastination. Only self-efficacy for self-regulation and self-esteem had a significant relationship with procrastination (Klassen et al., 2010 ). This finding is very similar to our result. The most likely explanation for the result is that time and effort management skills and psychological flexibility have a more direct and stronger relationship with procrastination than academic self-efficacy even though it is closely related to all these constructs. It might be that if one is committed to value-based actions which are at the core of psychological flexibility, the negative thoughts one might have about oneself may not be hindering one’s goal-based actions (Hayes et al., 2006 ). This is an interesting finding, and it would be useful to study it in more detail in subsequent studies.

As a third noteworthy finding, our findings provide insight into the relations between time and effort management and psychological flexibility as factors contributing to procrastination. Psychological flexibility and time and effort management skills appear to go hand in hand. When the students were divided to three groups based on their scores on psychological flexibility and time and effort management, the largest groups were the ones in which both time and effort managements skills and psychological flexibility were either low or high. The groups where one of these measures would be high and the other would be low were the smallest in implicating their close relationship. Therefore, it seems that if a person rates his/her time and effort management skills highly, he/she rates his/her psychological flexibility high as well. Also, significant correlations between these measures support this notion. A significant positive correlation between time and effort management and psychological flexibility has also been found in previous study (Asikainen et al., 2019 ). Interestingly, the group that rated both time and effort management and psychological flexibility highly rated their tendency to procrastinate as markedly low compared to other groups. The opposite phenomenon was true for the group that rated their time and effort management skills and psychological flexibility low. This group rated their tendency to procrastinate very highly. Interestingly, if the rating on one of these measures, especially on time and effort management studying was lower, the tendency to procrastinate increased drastically. Although this conclusion fits with common-sense expectations regarding these constructs and their relationship, our findings are the first to establish this relationship empirically.

One implication of this finding is that future efforts to remediate students’ procrastination should account for both these factors. Only when accounting for both time and effort management and psychological flexibility can students’ procrastination be understood. Instead of taking procrastination merely as a self-regulation problem, it is also strongly influenced by a person’s inability to cope with negative emotions that arise in challenging situations (Eisenbeck et al., 2019 ; Gagnon et al., 2016 ; Glick et al., 2014 ). It may be suggested that time and effort management support psychological flexibility. Some studies on time allocation suggest that psychological flexibility process includes allocating one’s time to important and value-based actions in everyday life (Kashdan and Rottenberg, 2010 ). Thus, when time is allocated to support value-based action well-being also increases (Sheldon et al., 2010 ). Thinking about your own values and setting goals can also be considered to be a central part of both time and effort management (Entwistle and McCune, 2004 ) and psychological flexibility (Hayes et al., 2006 ). Thus, we could suggest that when practising psychological flexibility, time management is a part of the process in which one needs to plan how to allocate time to support one’s own personal values. Fostering students’ psychological flexibility as well as time and effort managements skills, could be a promising tool to decrease procrastination. As procrastinators often fail to regulate their actions in challenging or stressful situations (Ferrari, 2001 ), it might be that psychological flexibility could be a central construct. More attention should be paid to encouraging students to pursue value-based committed actions, despite the negative thoughts and feelings one might have. Thus, students’ capacity to cope with their negative thoughts and emotions should be enhanced during their studying (Asikainen, 2018 ).

4.1 Limitations

There are also some limitations that should be addressed. The participants consisted of a selected sample of students which most probably influenced the results. The students took part in a time management and well-being course which was directed especially at those students who had experienced problems with their studies. Thus, the sample of the students in this study was selected and most probably consisted mostly of students who were eager and motivated to improve their time management skills and studying. That might also explain why the time and effort management skills were the strongest explanatory variable of procrastination in the present study. Thus, these results of the study are not generalisable to general student population and the selected sample most probably influenced the results. More research is still needed with a bigger and more representative population. Studies should also explore the role of time and effort management skills in procrastination with a more representative student population. The number of participants was rather low which gave limited opportunities for analysis. For example, the number of students in different score groups was rather low, and in some cases too low for the analysis. Therefore, the results should be interpreted with care. Still, we wanted to include the One Way Anova analysis in our study as it clearly showed that psychological flexibility and time and effort management skills are aligned with each other and students with high scores in both of these dimensions report much less procrastination than other students. Furthermore, one major limitation of the study is that the data are based solely on self-reports. This means that we have measured students’ experiences of these variables. However, we used validated questionnaires which have been shown to be reliable in measuring these constructs and thus, we argue that these results also bring valuable insights to research in procrastination which should be further explored. Future research should also include other measures such as accumulation of credits to see how these measures relate to students’ study progression. In addition, our data are also cross-sectional in nature and thus represents only one particular timeframe. Thus, it is not possible to draw any conclusions regarding the predictive value of the variables. In future research we should also include longitudinal data to explore more closely the relationship between these measures. Despite of the numerous limitations in our study, we argue that this paper provides a novel exploration of these predictors of procrastination together which has not been provided in previous studies.

4.2 Practical implications and conclusions

One promising way to support students’ psychological flexibility and learning processes could be to combine study skills courses, such as time and effort management intervention courses with acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)-based intervention courses, in which students could practise tolerating stress and negative thoughts as well as developing their time and effort management. Recent studies (Asikainen et al., 2019 ) have shown that this kind of ACT-interventions including reflection of one’s own study processes and practising new ways to study, in this way practising new ways to study, can enhance students’ psychological flexibility and time and effort management and in this way, foster students’ well-being and study skills. ACT-based intervention has shown to have multiple positive effects on students’ well-being and studying (Asikainen et al., 2019 ; Levin et al. 2017 ; Räsänen et al. 2016 ). In addition, ACT-based training can help students to manage psychological inflexibility and encourage persistence behaviour, which in turn is likely to have a positive impact on students’ self-efficacy and further, to their academic performance (Jeffords et al. 2018 ). Earlier studies have found that ACT-based interventions targeted at students who suffer from procrastination can decrease experiences of procrastination (Scent and Boes, 2014 ; Wang et al., 2015 ). One study has suggested that different core processes of psychological flexibility have different effects on procrastination. That is, although all the components correlate with procrastination, acceptance and committed actions significantly predict experiences of procrastination (Gagnon et al., 2016 ). Thus, it seems that being more open and accepting of one’s emotional experiences or thoughts and being willing to engage in difficult activities to persist in the direction of important values is important in reducing procrastination.

As time and effort management in our study was the predominant factor associated with procrastination, we suggest that time management should be promoted for higher education students. It has been shown that many students have trouble with time management (Parpala et al., 2010 ). Many studies have shown that different time management strategies are beneficial for different students. These include things like setting goals and planning how to achieve these (Häfner et al., 2015 ), setting deadlines (Ariely and Wertenbroch, 2002 ) and monitoring time use (Asikainen et al., 2019 ). These skills should be enhanced during university study because it has been shown that time and effort management skills remain rather constant without a conscious effort to influence them (Lindblom-Ylänne et al., 2017 ).

To conclude, our study brings novel insights into the underlying mechanisms of procrastination. Our study showed that both psychological flexibility and time management are important factors influencing procrastination, and furthermore, they appear to be closely related factors and together influence procrastination behavior. Thus, both these factors should be considered when the focus is on reducing procrastination. Students who tend to procrastinate might benefit from trainings that focus on training both time management skills and psychological flexibility and not focusing on only either one. This might produce the best results.

Data availability

The data is available on demand.

Ariely, D., & Wertenbroch, K. (2002). Procrastination, deadlines, and performance: Self-control by precommitment. Psychological Science, 13 (3), 219–224.

Google Scholar

Asikainen, H. (2018). Examining indicators for effective studying – The interplay between student integration, psychological flexibility and self-regulation in learning. Psychology, Society, & Education, 10 (2), 225–237.

Asikainen, H., Hailikari, T., & Mattsson, M. (2018). The interplay between academic emotions, psychological flexibility and self-regulation as predictors of academic achievement. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 42 (4), 439–453.

Asikainen, H. & Kaipainen, K. & Katajavuori, N. (2019). Understanding and promoting students’ well-being and performance in university studies. Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice, 16 (5), 1–15.

Asikainen, H., Virtanen, V., Parpala, A., & Lindblom-Ylänne, S. (2013). Understanding the variation in bioscience students’ conceptions of learning in the 21st century. International Journal of Educational Research, 62 , 36–42.

Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control . Freeman.

Bembenutty, H. (2009). Academic delay of gratification, self-regulation of learning, gender differences, and expectancy-value. Personality and Individual Differences, 46 (3), 347–352.

Blunt, A. K., & Pychyl, T. A. (2000). Task aversiveness and procrastination: A multi-dimensional approach to task aversiveness across stages of personal projects. Personality and Individual Differences, 28 (1), 153–167.

Burka, J. B., & Yuen, L. M. (1982). Mind games procrastinators play. Psychology Today, 16 (1), 32–34.

Burlison, J. D., Murphy, C. S., & Dwyer, W. O. (2009). Evaluation of the motivated strategies for learning questionnaire for predicting academic performance in college students of varying scholastic aptitude. College Student Journal, 43 (4), 1313–1324.

Cassady, J. C., & Johnson, R. E. (2002). Cognitive test anxiety and academic performance. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 27 (2), 270–295.

Chawla, N., & Ostafin, B. (2007). Experiential avoidance as a functional dimensional approach to psychopathology: An empirical review. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 63 (9), 871–890.

Chun Chu, A. H., & Choi, J. N. (2005). Rethinking procrastination: Positive effects of “active” procrastination behavior on attitudes and performance. The Journal of Social Psychology, 145 (3), 245–264.

Dewitte, S., & Lens, W. (2000). Procrastinators lack a broad action perspective. European Journal of Personality, 14 (2), 121–140.

Dionne, F. (2016). Using acceptance and mindfulness to reduce procrastination among university students: Results from a pilot study. Revista Prâksis, 1, 8–20.

Eisenbeck, N., Carrenob, D. F., & Uclés-Juárezb, U. (2019). From psychological distress to academic procrastination: Exploring the role of psychological inflexibility. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 13, 103–108.

Entwistle, N. (2009). Teaching for understanding at university . Palgrave Macmillan.

Entwistle, N., & McCune, V. (2004). The conceptual bases of study strategy inventories. Educational Psychology Review, 16 (4), 325–346.

Entwistle, N., McCune, V., & Walker, P. (2001). Conceptions, styles, approaches within higher education: analytic abstractions and everyday experience. In R. J. Sternberg & L.-F. Zhang (Eds.), Perspectives on thinking, learning, and cognitive styles (pp. 73–102). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc.

Ferrari, J. R. (2001). Procrastination as self-regulation failure of performance: effects of cognitive load, self-awareness, and time limits on ‘working best under pressure. European journal of Personality, 15 (5), 391–406.

Ferrari, J. R., O’Callaghan, J., & Newbegin, I. (2005). Prevalence of procrastination in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia: arousal and avoidance delays among adults. North American Journal of Psychology, 7 (1), 1–6.

Flaxman, P., Bond, F., Livheim, F., & Hayes, S. (Eds.). (2013). The mindful and effective employee: An acceptance and commitment therapy training manual for improving well-being and performance . New Harbinger Publishers.

Gagnon, J., Dionne, F., & Pychyl, T. A. (2016). Committed action: An initial study on its association to procrastination in academic settings. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 5 (2), 97–102.

Glick, D. M., Millstein, D. J., & Orsillo, S. M. (2014). A preliminary investigation of the role of psychological inflexibility in academic procrastination. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 3 (2), 81–88. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcbs.2014.04.002

Article Google Scholar

Glick, D. M., & Orsillo, S. M. (2015). An investigation of the efficacy of acceptance-based behavioral therapy for academic procrastination. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144 (2), 400–409.

Grunschel, C., Patrzek, J., & Fries, S. (2013). Exploring the reasons and consequences of academic procrastination: An interview study. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 28 (3), 841–861. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-012-0143-4

Haarala-Muhonen, A., Ruohoniemi, M., & Lindblom-Ylänne, S. (2011). Factors affecting the study pace of first-year law students: in search of study counselling tools. Studies in Higher Education, 36 (8), 911–922.

Hailikari, T., Nieminen, J. H., & Asikainen, H. (submitted). The ability of psychological flexibility to predict study success and its relations to cognitive attributional strategies and academic emotions.

Hayes, S. C. (2004). Acceptance and commitment therapy, relational frame theory, and the third wave of behavioral and cognitive therapies. Behavior Therapy, 35 (4), 639–665.

Hayes, S., Luoma, J., Bond, F., Masuda, A., & Lillis, J. (2006). Acceptance and commitment therapy: Model, processes, and outcomes. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 44 (1), 1–25.

Hayes, S. C., Pistorello, J., & Levin, M. E. (2012). Acceptance and commitment therapy as a unified model of behavior change. The Counseling Psychologist, 40 (7), 976–1002.

Herrmann, K. J., Bager-Elsborg, A., & Parpala, A. (2017). Measuring perceptions of the learning environment and approaches to learning: validation of the learn questionnaire. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 61 (5), 526–539.

Howell, A. J., Watson, D. C., Powell, R. A., & Buro, K. (2006). Academic procrastination: The pattern and correlates of behavioural postponement. Personality and Individual Differences, 40 (8), 1519–1530.

Häfner, A., Stock, A., & Oberst, V. (2015). Decreasing students’ stress through time management training: An intervention study. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 30 (1), 81–94.

Jeffords, J. R., Bayly, B. L., Bumpus, M. F., & Hill, L. G. (2018). Investigating the relationship between university students’ psychological flexibility and college self-efficacy. Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory and Practice, 22 (2), 351–372.

Judge, T. A., & Bono, J. E. (2001). Relationship of core self-evaluations traits—self-esteem, generalized self-efficacy, locus of control, and emotional stability—with job satisfaction and job performance: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86, 80–92.

Kashdan, T. B., & Rottenberg, J. (2010). Psychological flexibility as a fundamental aspect of health. Clinical psychology review, 30 (7), 865–878.

Katz, I., Eilot, K., & Nevo, N. (2014). “I’ll do it later”: Type of motivation, self-efficacy and homework procrastination. Motivation and Emotion, 38 (1), 111–119.

Kirby, K. N., Winston, G. C., & Santiesteban, M. (2005). Impatience and grades: Delay-discount rates correlate negatively with college GPA. Learning and Individual Differences, 15 (3), 213–222.

Klassen, R. M., Ang, R., Chong, W., Krawchuk, L., Huan, V., Wong, I., & Yeo, L. (2010). Academic Procrastination in two settings: Motivation correlates, behavioral patterns, and negative impact of procrastination in Canada and Singapore. Applied Psychology, 59 (3), 361–379.

Klassen, R. M., Krawchuk, L. L., & Rajani, S. (2008). Academic procrastination of undergraduates: Low self-efficacy to self-regulate predicts higher levels of procrastination. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 33 (4), 915–931.

Klein, E. M., Beutel, M. E., Müller, K. W., Wölfling, K., Brähler, E., & Zenger, M. (2019). Assessing procrastination. European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 35, 633–640.

Klingsieck, K. B. (2013). Procrastination. When good things don’t come to those who wait.” European Psychologist, 18 (1), 24–34.

Kurri, E. (2006). Opintojen pitkittymisen dilemma. Tutkimus opintojen sujumattomuustekijöistä yliopistossa ja niihin vaikuttamisen keinoista [The Dilemma of Prolonged Studies. A Research on Reasons behind Prolonged Studies and How to Make a Change]. Otus (Research Foundation of the Finnish Student Unions) 27. Helsinki: University Press.

Lane, J., & Lane, A. (2001). Self-efficacy and academic performance. Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal, 29, 687–693.

Levin, M. E., Haeger, J. A., Pierce, B. G., & Twohig, M. P. (2017). Web-based acceptance and commitment therapy for mental health problems in college students: A randomized controlled trial. Behavior Modification, 41 (1), 141–162.

Levrini, A., & Prevatt, F. (2012). Succeeding with adult ADHD: Daily strategies to help you achieve your goals and manage your life . American Psychological Association.

Lindblom-Ylänne, S., Haarala-Muhonen, A., Postareff, L., & Hailikari, T. (2017). Exploration of individual study paths of successful first-year students: an interview study. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 32 (4), 687–701.

Lindblom-Ylänne, S. A., Saariaho-Räsänen, E. J., Inkinen, M. S., Haarala-Muhonen, A. E., & Hailikari, T. K. (2015). Academic procrastinators, strategic delayers and something betwixt and between: An interview study. Frontline Learning Research, 3 (2), 47–62.

Nordby, K., Klingsieck, K. B., & Svartdal, F. (2017). Do procrastination-friendly environments make students delay unnecessarily? Social Psychology of Education, 20 (3), 491–512.

Olsen, R. A., Macaskill, A. C., & Hunt, M. J. (2018). A measure of delay discounting within the academic domain. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 31 (4), 522–534.

Pajares, F. (1996). Self-efficacy beliefs in academic settings. Review of Educational Research, 66 (4), 543–578.

Park, S. W., & Sperling, R. A. (2012). Academic procrastinators and their self-regulation. Psychology, 3 (1), 12–23.

Parpala, A., & Lindblom-Ylänne, S. (2012). Using a research instrument for developing quality at the university. Quality in Higher Education, 18 (3), 313–328.

Parpala, A., Asikainen, H., Ruohoniemi, M., & Lindblom-Ylänne, S. (2017). The relationship between the development of time and effort management and experiences of the teaching-learning environment in a university context. International Journal of Learning and Change, 9 (2), 170–184.

Parpala, A., Lindblom-Ylänne, S., Komulainen, E., Litmanen, T., & Hirsto, L. (2010). Students’ approaches to learning and their experiences of the teaching–learning environment in different disciplines. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 80 (2), 269–282.

Pintrich, P. R., & Garcia, T. (1991). Student goal orientation and self-regulation in the college classroom. In M. L. Maher & P. R. Pintrich (Eds.), Advances in motivation and achievement (Vol. 7, pp. 371–402). JAI Press.

Pintrich, P. R. (2004). A conceptual framework for assessing motivation and self-regulated learning in college students. Educational Psychology Review, 16 (4), 385–407.

Pintrich, P. R., & Schunk, D. H. (2002). Motivation in education: Theory, research, and applications . Prentice Hall.

Rothblum, E. D., Solomon, L. J., & Murakami, J. (1986). Affective, cognitive, and behavioral differences between high and low procrastinators. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 33 (4), 387–394.

Ruohoniemi, M., Forni, M., Mikkonen, J., & Parpala, A. (2017). Enhancing quality with a research-based student feedback instrument: A comparison of veterinary students’ learning experiences in two culturally different European universities. Quality in Higher education, 23 (3), 249–263.

Räsänen, P., Lappalainen, P., Muotka, J., Tolvanen, A., & Lappalainen, R. (2016). An online guided ACT intervention for enhancing the psychological wellbeing of university students: A randomized controlled clinical trial. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 78, 30–42.

Scent, C. L., & Boes, S. R. (2014). Acceptance and commitment training: A brief intervention to reduce procrastination among college students. Journal of College Student Psychotherapy, 28 (2), 144–156.

Senecal, C., Koestner, R., & Vallerand, R. J. (1995). Self-regulation and academic procrastination. The Journal of Social Psychology, 135 (5), 607–619.

Schraw, G., Wadkins, T., & Olafson, L. (2007). Doing the things we do: A grounded theory of academic procrastination. Journal of Educational psychology, 99 (1), 12–25.

Sheldon, K. M., Cummins, R., & Khamble, S. (2010). Life-balance and well-being: Testing a two-pronged conceptual and measurement approach. Journal of Personality, 78, 1093–1134.

Sirois, F. M. (2014). Procrastination and stress: Exploring the role of self-compassion. Self and Identity, 13 (2), 128–145.

Sirois, F. M., Melia-Gordon, M. L., & Pychyl, T. A. (2003). “I’ll look after my health, later”: An investigation of procrastination and health. Personality and Individual Differences, 35, 1167–1184.

Sirois, F., & Pychyl, T. (2013). Procrastination and the priority of short-term mood regulation: Consequences for future self. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 7 (2), 115–127.

Stead, R., Shanahan, M. J., & Neufeld, R. W. (2010). “I’ll go to therapy, eventually”: Procrastination, stress and mental health. Personality and Individual Differences, 49 (3), 175–180.

Steel, P. (2007). The nature of procrastination: A meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure. Psychological bulletin, 133 (1), 65–94.

Steel, P., Brothen, T., & Wambach, C. (2001). Procrastination and personality, performance, and mood. Personality and Individual Differences, 30 (1), 95–106.

Sutcliffe, K. R., Sedley, B., Hunt, M. J., & Macaskill, A. C. (2019). Relationships among academic procrastination, psychological flexibility, and delay discounting. Behavior Analysis: Research and Practice, 19 (4), 315–326.

Svartdal, F., & Steel, P. (2017). Irrational delay revisited: Examining five procrastination scales in a global sample. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 1927.

Tice, D. M., & Bratslavsky, E. (2000). Giving in to feel good: The place of emotion regulation in the context of general self-control. Psychological Inquiry, 11 (3), 149–159.

Visser, L., Korthagen, F. A., & Schoonenboom, J. (2018). Differences in learning characteristics between students with high, average, and low levels of academic procrastination: students’ views on factors influencing their learning. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 808.

Wang, S., Zhou, Y., Yu, S., Ran, L. W., Liu, X. P., & Chen, Y. F. (2015). Acceptance and commitment therapy and cognitive–behavioral therapy as treatments for academic procrastination: A randomized controlled group session. Research on Social Work Practice, 27 (1), 48–58.

Wolters, C. A. (2003). Understanding procrastination from a self-regulated learning perspective. Journal of educational psychology, 95 (1), 179–187.

Wolters, C. A., Won, S., & Hussain, M. (2017). Examining the relations of time management and procrastination within a model of self-regulated learning. Metacognition and Learning, 12 (3), 381–399.

Zimmerman, B. J. (2000). Self-efficacy: An essential motive to learn. Contemporary educational psychology, 25 (1), 82–91.

Download references

Open access funding provided by University of Helsinki including Helsinki University Central Hospital. No funding provided for the study.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Faculty of Educational Sciences, Centre for University Teaching and Learning (HYPE), University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

T. Hailikari, N. Katajavuori & H. Asikainen

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

The idea for the article was by TH. All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation and data collection were performed by TH and the analysis were performed by HA. The first draft of the manuscript was written by TH and NK was responsible for writing the parts regarding psychological flexibility and discussion. All authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to T. Hailikari .

Ethics declarations

Conflicts of interest.

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethics approval

This study was conducted followed by the ethical principles of research with human participants and ethical review in the human sciences in Finland. https://tenk.fi/en/ethical-review/ethical-review-human-sciences

Consent to participate

The participants were fully informed about the purpose of the study and the use of materials. Written consent was obtained from all the participants.

Consent for publication

The participants were fully informed that the obtained materials will be used for research and publication purposes.

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Hailikari, T., Katajavuori, N. & Asikainen, H. Understanding procrastination: A case of a study skills course. Soc Psychol Educ 24 , 589–606 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-021-09621-2

Download citation

Received : 20 November 2020

Accepted : 22 February 2021

Published : 22 March 2021

Issue Date : April 2021

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-021-09621-2

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Procrastination
Time-management
Psychological flexibility
Academic self-efficacy
Find a journal
Publish with us
Track your research

Procrastination

Why wait the psychological origins of procrastination, research provides insights into why we procrastinate and how to stop..

Posted October 8, 2015

What Is Procrastination?
Find a therapist near me

Jordan Miller-Ziegler contributed to this article.

“I love deadlines,” English author Douglas Adams once wrote. “I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”

So why do we procrastinate? Are we built to operate this way at some times? Or is there something wrong with the way we’re approaching work?

These questions are central to my research on goal pursuit , which could offer some clues from neuroscience about why we procrastinate – and how to overcome this tendency.

To do, or not to do

It all starts with a simple choice between working now on a given project and doing anything else: working on a different project, doing something fun or doing nothing at all.

The decision to work on something is driven by how much we value accomplishing the project in that moment – what psychologists call its subjective value. And procrastination , in psychological terms, is what happens when the value of doing something else outweighs the value of working now.

It’s simple advice, but adhering to this strategy can be quite difficult, mainly because there are so many forces that diminish the value of working in the present.

The distant deadline

One way to increase the value of completing a task is to make the finish line seem closer. For example, vividly imagining a future reward reduces delay discounting .

No work is ‘effortless’

Not only can completing a project be devalued because it happens in the future, but working on a project can also be unattractive due to the simple fact that work takes effort.

Your work, your identity

When we write that procrastination is a side effect of the way we value things, it frames task completion as a product of motivation , rather than ability.

It was for this reason that the writer Robert Hanks, in a recent essay for the London Review of Books, described procrastination as “a failure of appetites.”

The source of this “ appetite ” can be a bit tricky. But one could argue that, like our (real) appetite for food, it’s something that’s closely intertwined with our daily lives, our culture and our sense of who we are.

So how does one increase the subjective value of a project? A powerful way – one that my graduate students and I have written about in detail – is to connect the project to your self-concept . Our hypothesis is that projects seen as important to a person’s self-concept will hold more subjective value for that person.

Because people are motivated to maintain a positive self-concept , goals connected closely to one’s sense of self or identity take on much more value.

Connecting the project to more immediate sources of value, such as life goals or core values, can fill the deficit in subjective value that underlies procrastination.

Elliot Berkman is Assistant Professor of Psychology and Director of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Oregon . Follow him on Twitter @Psychologician .

This article was originally published on The Conversation . Read the original article .

Elliot Berkman, Ph.D ., is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Oregon and director of the Oregon Social and Affective Neuroscience Lab.

Find a Therapist
Find a Treatment Center
Find a Psychiatrist
Find a Support Group
Find Online Therapy
United States
Brooklyn, NY
Chicago, IL
Houston, TX
Los Angeles, CA
New York, NY
Portland, OR
San Diego, CA
San Francisco, CA
Seattle, WA
Washington, DC
Asperger's
Bipolar Disorder
Chronic Pain
Eating Disorders
Passive Aggression
Personality
Goal Setting
Positive Psychology
Stopping Smoking
Low Sexual Desire
Relationships
Child Development
Self Tests NEW
Therapy Center
Diagnosis Dictionary
Types of Therapy

At any moment, someone’s aggravating behavior or our own bad luck can set us off on an emotional spiral that threatens to derail our entire day. Here’s how we can face our triggers with less reactivity so that we can get on with our lives.

Emotional Intelligence
Gaslighting
Affective Forecasting
Neuroscience

Type 2 Diabetes
Heart Disease
Digestive Health
Multiple Sclerosis
Diet & Nutrition
Supplements
Health Insurance
Public Health
Patient Rights
Caregivers & Loved Ones
End of Life Concerns
Health News
Thyroid Test Analyzer
Doctor Discussion Guides
Hemoglobin A1c Test Analyzer
Lipid Test Analyzer
Complete Blood Count (CBC) Analyzer
What to Buy
Editorial Process
Meet Our Medical Expert Board

How to Stop Procrastinating

What is procrastination, what causes procrastination.

Revenge Bedtime Procrastination
Negative Impacts
How to Overcome

Frequently Asked Questions

Procrastination is characterized by delaying work on a task that requires completion. While it’s not a mental health disorder, procrastination can cause psychological distress. Frequent procrastination may negatively affect your personal, school, or work lives.

This article will discuss the types of procrastination, what causes them, the negative impacts, and how to overcome procrastination.

Procrastination is when a person delays a task or puts something off until the last minute or even past the deadline.

Procrastinators will often do other tasks in advance of starting or returning to a task or commitment they're avoiding. For example, if there’s a difficult conversation to be had at work, procrastinators may take on other tasks to avoid the anticipated discomfort.

Impending deadlines may prompt procrastinators to check out on social media until the last minute or to do menial household activities like sweeping and washing floors, or other tasks they’ve been procrastinating doing for longer, like answering emails.

One estimate from 2010 claims that 20% of U.S. adults are procrastinators. Estimates may be higher today due to the ever-present distractions of technology and social media.

Types of Procrastination

Identifying what type of procrastinator you are is the beginning step in changing your behavior. There are six types of procrastination based on the main perceived issue causing the behavior:

Perfectionist : Has high standards and fear of not meeting expectations and puts off work because they fear they won't do it correctly
Dreamer : Has big goals but no plan for success
Worrier : Fears change, has worst-case scenario thinking, and resists risk-taking
Defier : Promise-maker with poor follow-through and many excuses or reasonings for not doing the task
Crisis-maker : May unintentionally or intentionally create chaos at the last minute to delay work
Over-doer : Has unrealistic expectations of what can be achieved and lacks priority-setting abilities

While everyone’s reasons for procrastinating are unique, there may be a common element of fear and perfectionism motivating procrastinating behavior. Perfectionism makes a person want to do every task flawlessly, which becomes a block to getting things done and leads to procrastination.

Procrastination is also associated with higher levels of anxiety and depression.

Anxiety and Procrastination

Anxiety is defined by symptoms like intrusive thoughts, excessive fear and worry, and physical symptoms. All of these can impact a person’s ability to follow through with impending tasks and meet deadlines.

What Is Revenge Bedtime Procrastination?

Revenge bedtime procrastination is when a person sacrifices sleep for staying up later and doing whatever they didn’t have time to do during the day. This may include scrolling through social media, watching television past bedtime, or so close to bedtime that it disrupts your total sleep.

This isn’t the same as truly unwinding or relaxing because this type of procrastination quickly adds to sleep deprivation, which is directly associated with mental distress and disorder, including depression.

What Is the Negative Impact of Procrastination?

Procrastination doesn’t do anyone any favors. It can create problems beginning in your school years, when you may delay deadlines, project management, and follow-through. Studies have shown that the earlier an assignment is submitted (indicating less procrastination), the higher the academic achievement.

Other negative impacts of procrastination are:

Increased risk for anxiety and depression
Low self-esteem
Increased stress
Poor impulse control

Putting things off you eventually do anyway also takes energy and time. Avoiding tasks doesn’t make you stop thinking about them or worrying about them.

How to Overcome Procrastination

Procrastination is a learned behavior, and it can be unlearned. A good place to start is to acknowledge that you’re procrastinating. Once you recognize this behavior in yourself, you can figure out what's causing you to procrastinate and change it.

Ways to overcome procrastination include:

Identifying the role of procrastination in your life
Making time for time management
Breaking up large projects into smaller tasks
Finding productive reasons to keep working on tasks and commitments
Keeping your goals realistic and reassessing goals and strategies as needed

Procrastination may stem from many factors, including an underlying mental illness or perfectionism. People who want to stop procrastinating can do so by assessing from where the problem arises and working to develop new coping methods.

A Word From Verywell

Everyone procrastinates from time to time. If constant procrastination is disrupting your life, it may be time to look at what's causing you to procrastinate. Whether it's being caused by perfectionism or an underlying mental health issue, there are plenty of ways to stop procrastinating and live a better life.

No. However, mental disorders such as anxiety disorders, OCD, ADHD, or eating disorders may include procrastination as a symptom. Knowing where the behavior stems from is important in helping you change these patterns.

Procrastination looks like avoiding a task, doing other tasks to distract from the current task, or making excuses. If you keep avoiding a task at all costs, you're procrastinating.

No. Procrastinators may try to justify their behavior by suggesting the act of putting things off somehow makes them more efficient or that they work better under pressure, but research suggests no one benefits from procrastination. It’s best to avoid procrastinating.

Steinert C, Heim N, Leichsenring F. Procrastination, perfectionism, and other work-related mental problems: Prevalence, types, assessment, and treatment—a scoping review . Frontiers in Psychiatry . 2021. doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2021.736776

American Psychological Association. The psychology of procrastination: Why people put off important tasks until the last minute . April 5, 2010.

Indiana State University. Types of procrastination .

Limburg K, Watson HJ, Hagger MS, & Egan SJ. The relationship between perfectionism and psychopathology: A meta-analysis . Journal of Clinical Psychology . 2016; 3 (10):1301–1326. doi: 10.1002/jclp.22435

Steinert C, Heim N, Leichsenring F. Procrastination, perfectionism, and other work-related mental problems: prevalence, types, assessment, and treatment—a scoping review . Front Psychiatry . 2021;0. doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2021.736776

American Psychological Association. Anxiety .

The Sleep Foundation. What is revenge bedtime procrastination?

Jones I, Blankenship D. Year two: Effect of procrastination on academic performance of undergraduate online students . Research in Higher Education . 2021;39(1-11).

McClean Hospital. Why you put off things until the last minute .

Princeton University’s McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning. Understanding and overcoming procrastination .

By Michelle Pugle Pulge is a freelance health writer focused on mental health content. She is certified in mental health first aid.

Talk to our experts

1800-120-456-456

Procrastination Essay

Essay on Procrastination

Have you ever postponed your homework until the last minute? Or maybe you studied for a test the day before?

Maybe it's too late to write a story until the last hour? We are all guilty of delaying jobs and postponing important work until the latest date. This is actually procrastination. It is the act of deliberately delaying any task or activity. In this case, we will look at the causes and solutions to this problem.

About Procrastination

As we shall see in this article, this is not a coincidence. Almost everyone is guilty of it at some point in their lives. So we ask ourselves this question - why do people procrastinate or are so busy all the time?

We live in the 21st century when time is of the essence. However, we are wasting our precious resources by wasting our time.

Saint Kabir had advised: what you have to do tomorrow, do today; what you have to do today, do it now. Procrastination is the habit of delaying a task or an activity until a later date. The habit of procrastinating the doing things is one of the worst habits of a person. People tend to be slothful to put off the finishing of a piece of work, implementation of a plan till another time. Life is not certain and it is possible that circumstances may change and one may not be able to do the work at all. It is good to procrastinate on things that are bad, but we are right and what we have decided to do, we must do in time.

Reasons for Procrastinating

One of the major reasons for procrastinating on a task is slothfulness. When a person is indulged in luxuries and slothfulness, it will blunt his edge of urge for action. When a person starts fearing the outcome of the task, he tends to procrastinate the task for a later date. Other factors for procrastinating work for a later date are low self-esteem, weak determination, less focus and distraction and also high impulsiveness.

Procrastination is Harmful

Procrastination is harmful in various ways. It maintains tension in mind. It will relieve you of this tension if you do the work right now. Putting off work till another time more often may keep us deprived of the benefits, which might have accrued to us from its having been done. Opportunity knocks at the door once. Opportunity lost once is lost forever. There is no guarantee that the circumstances will remain the same. They may change and you may have to repent later on over the fact that you missed the opportunity. Sometimes it may prove tragic and change the good side of your career to a bad one.

A successful man is one who strikes the iron while it is hot. When procrastination becomes a habit, all cheerfulness and carefree living go out of life and we live a life of perpetual tension, which indeed is not a life worth living at all. While procrastination is harmful to individuals, it may be more harmful to groups, communities and nations.

We must ask ourselves whether we do actually realise the dangers emanating from procrastination and, therefore, shun it. We will perhaps find the answer in the affirmative as well as in the negative. We are still procrastinating steps for development in certain sectors of our life. For example, we have been sadly procrastinating in the educational sector. Even after more than five decades of economic planning, we find half of our population illiterate. We have taken steps to eradicate illiteracy, but our steps are not fast enough.

We have been procrastinating developing certain geographical regions of the country with the result that there are evident regional imbalances in terms of development. We have not yet been able to connect every village of India with a link road. This was the task of utmost importance, a task that ought to have been given priority in any scheme of development. Our pace of development could have been faster if proper planning and implementation had been done at the right time.

While procrastination is regarded as a bad habit, undue hurry or haste is equally a bad tendency. Promptness of action is advisable, but an impulsive decision is fraught with undesirable consequences. One must not delay or procrastinate in arriving at a decision in crucial matters, but unless a well-thought-out decision has been taken, it is more often than not risky to convert into action. Decisions taken in a hurry or haste without cool and calculated deliberation are likely to lead one into blind alleys or unfathomed troughs which it is difficult to get out from. The golden rule is first to get satisfied with the correct decision. Action should immediately follow the correct decision. Action should immediately follow the correct decision. Evil actions contemplated as a consequence of anger, revenge, greed, larceny, lust should be put off as indefinitely as possible till they die their natural death.

How to Avoid Procrastinating?

There are a few tips to curb the habit of procrastination.

Slothfulness:

We must shake off slothfulness altogether. One must be up and doing. Avoid indulgence in luxuries because this makes one blunt.

Value of Time:

Understanding the value of time is very important. Nothing great can be expected from one who does not understand the value of a minute, for seconds and minutes make an hour, a day, a month, a year and the whole life itself. If the value of a minute is descended deep into our mind and heart, sloth will disappear.

Idleness:

Idleness is fatiguing. One must, therefore oneself engage in some useful work like some household chores other than one's main occupation.

To ward off procrastination, one must plan one's work. Detailed planning is necessary. The entire gamut of work may be divided into fragments and time fixed for completing each fragment will facilitate satisfaction and invigorating. What we must have to do right from the time we get up from bed down to the time we go to bed must be clear to us and we must stick to it religiously.

Prioritization:

One may arrange the array of work in order of priorities. How many things are to be done and in what order of priority they must be taken — once this is planned in advance, then most of the battle is won and we can get out of the habit of procrastinating tasks.

Why Do We Procrastinate?

Reasons for postponing a person may vary. It depends on the individual and the situation-to-situation. However, there are international reasons why people delay their activities and actions.

One of the most important things is the fear of failure. When a person is slow to perform an important task or is not interested in completing it, the cause may be a deep fear of failure. It is human nature to avoid and fear failure. So by choosing not to complete the task, we can also avoid the consequences.

Another reason is a lack of focus and determination. Feelings of indifference and insecurity can often cause people to lose their will to do their jobs.

This leads to self-control. Sometimes a lack of goals and objectives is also a reason for a person to lose focus. With no goal in mind, they end up wasting energy on other useless activities.

There are other reasons a person may tolerate it. At times, a person may be a perfectionist. This distracts them from other activities. And then there are other reasons like laziness, low energy levels, easy distractions, etc.

How Can You Stop Procrastination?

Although procrastination is a normal part of life for us, it can be extremely difficult to do so. Procrastination can ruin your life and cause you to lose control of your schedules and deadlines. So when procrastination fades, you need to be in control and in control.

One way to stop procrastinating is to turn a dreadful task into smaller steps. If a task or task is too difficult, we often put it off. But if the work is depleted, then we can deal with it one step at a time without frustration. You can also create a detailed timetable or timeline of some sort to help you with the steps.

Sometimes a change in the work environment can be beneficial. It can give you the energy you need to stop procrastinating and complete the task. If possible, get a friend or parent to check your progress. It helps keep motivation levels up and encourages you to complete the task on time.

The key is not to become too preoccupied with the mundane things of life. We are all victims of procrastination. As long as it doesn't interfere with your entire system, take a break and go back to work!

Short Essay on Procrastination

Procrastination is not a rare thing; nine out of ten people, mostly students, nowadays procrastinate their work until the very last moment and it is also realised that they often feel guilty due to continuous postposing of their important work. The reasons for procrastination vary from person to person and situation to situation.

However, some causes are universal and some may have a particular reason to delay their important actions or tasks. The fear of failure stands on the top and another reason why most people procrastinate is lack of motivation.

Everyone needs motivation while starting a new task or action, but due to lack of motivation most, people procrastinate due to the hesitation of performing a new activity plus lack of motivation, while some procrastinate due to laziness, lack of interest and unwillingness to perform any work.

However, the end product of procrastination is always negative, like people start feeling much guilty, less focused, worried about upcoming projects or actions etc.

In conclusion, it should be stated that procrastination is rooted in many causes, such as numerous distractions, lack of motivation, fear of uncertainty and failure, and perfectionism. At the same time, the result stands the same with infinite consequences such as concern for career, studies, health, and personal qualities. Thus, procrastination prevents a person from rising through the ranks, succeeding in training, and developing a personality.

The major difference between a successful person and an unsuccessful person is that while the former put his decisions promptly into action and reaps the fruits, the latter procrastinates, thereby depriving himself of the fruit.

FAQs on Procrastination Essay

1. What is Procrastination really about?

Postponing or procrastination is the act of delaying or postponing activities until the last minute or beyond the deadline. Some researchers describe procrastination as "a form of self-indulgence that is characterised by unreasonable delays in performance despite negative consequences.

2. Why Are We Here?

We postpone activities that we find "difficult, unpleasant, contradictory or just boring or oppressive." If a task seems overwhelming or raises serious concerns, it is usually very easy to avoid it. Another reason people put things off, says Sirois, is lack of confidence.

3. What Are The 4 Types of Retreat?

They say that there are four main types of archetypes to avoid or procrastinate: the perpetrator, the negligent, the excessive, and the person who seeks new things.

4. Is procrastination a mental illness?

Some people spend a lot of time in the monastery until they can finish important daily tasks. They may have a strong desire to stop procrastination but may feel that they will not be able to do so. Delaying yourself is not a diagnosis of mental health. But yes, less control over your mind is a sign of mental illness.

Procrastination Essay for Students and Children

500+ words on procrastination essay.

Have you ever put off your homework till the last minute? Or perhaps studied for the test only a day before? Maybe delayed writing an essay till the last possible hour? All of us are guilty of delaying tasks and putting off important work until a later date. This is essentially procrastinating. It is the action of purposefully delaying any task or activity. In this procrastination essay, we will see the reasons and the solutions to this problem.

As we will see in this procrastination essay, this is not a rare phenomenon. Almost everyone is guilty of it at some point in their lives. So we ask ourselves this question – why do people procrastinate even when they are so busy most of the time? We live in the 21st century, where time is our most precious commodity. And yet, we waste this precious resource procrastinating our time away.

Why do we Procrastinate?

The reasons for a person procrastinating can be varied. It depends on person-to-person and situation-to-situation. However, there are some universal reasons that cause people to delay their tasks and actions. One of the most important ones is the fear of failure. When a person delays doing an important task or is disinterested in finishing it, the cause could be a deep-rooted fear of failure. It is in human nature to avoid and fear failure. So by choosing to never finish the task, we can avoid the consequences as well.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Another reason is the lack of focus and determination. Feeling directionless and unfocused can often cause people to lose their wills to do their jobs. This leads to procrastination. Sometimes the lack of goals and objectives is also the reason a person loses their focus. Since they do not have an end-goal in mind, they end up wasting energy in other useless tasks.

There are other reasons a person may procrastinate. Sometimes, a person may be too much of a perfectionist. This distracts them from other tasks. And then there are other reasons like laziness, low energy levels, easy distractions, etc.

Read 10 Ways to Stop Procrastinating here.

How to Stop Procrastinating?

While procrastinating is a very natural fault we all share, if it gets out of hand it can get quite troublesome. Excessive procrastination can disrupt your life and cause you to lose control of your schedules and deadlines. So when the procrastination gets out of hand, you need to reign it in and get back in control.

One way to stop procrastinating is to break down the dreaded task into little steps. If the work or the task is too overwhelming, we tend to procrastinate about it. But if the job is broken down, then we can tackle one step at a time without being overwhelmed. You can also create a detailed timetable or a timeline of some sort to help you with the steps.

At other times changing your work environment may be beneficial. It can provide you with the boost necessary to stop procrastinating and finish the task. If possible get a friend or a parent to keep a check on your progress. It helps keep the motivation levels up and encourages you to finish the task on time.

The main concern is not to over-focus or blame yourself for procrastinating sometimes. We are all a victim to procrastination from time-to-time. As long as it does not derail your entire schedule, give yourself a break and just get back to work!

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Which class are you in.

Travelling Essay
Picnic Essay
Our Country Essay
My Parents Essay
Essay on Favourite Personality
Essay on Memorable Day of My Life
Essay on Knowledge is Power
Essay on Gurpurab
Essay on My Favourite Season
Essay on Types of Sports

Download the App

Procrastination Essay

500+ words procrastination essay.

Procrastination is a tendency, attitude or behavioural trait of a person lacking willpower and vitality to do work. Most people have a tendency to not complete their work, and leave it for some other time. When people procrastinate, instead of working on important meaningful tasks, they find themselves performing trivial activities. They spend their time watching TV, playing video games, checking Facebook, obsessively cleaning, pacing back and forth through the office, or maybe just sitting and staring at a wall. Afterwards, they feel powerless and are overcome with feelings of guilt and frustration. They often end up doing nothing. So, the habit of procrastination is very harmful as it wastes so much time. This Procrastination Essay will help in understanding the meaning of procrastination, its effect on students’ lives and ways to overcome procrastination. So, students must go through it and take ideas which help them write an effective essay on this topic. Moreover, they can also get the list of CBSE Essays on different topics for their practice. It will help them to participate in various essay writing competitions.

What is Procrastination?

Procrastination is the tendency to delay an intended action or decision. It is defined as the act of needlessly delaying tasks to the point of experiencing subjective discomfort. The illusory idea underlying procrastination is a feeling that ‘later is better. This is also the common reason behind the ‘tomorrow’ outlook on life, which forces people to postpone everything for a ‘tomorrow’ that never comes. When the next day dawns, the pattern resurfaces, and procrastinators excuse themselves by promising again that ‘I will do it tomorrow. Hence, procrastination is seen as a ‘tomorrow syndrome’.

Effect of Procrastination on Students’ Life

Since the dawn of time, people have suffered from procrastination. It is a serious problem, especially among students. Most of the students put off their homework and studies for later, thinking that they have plenty of time to get it done. However, the work gets delayed and results in compromising the quality of education. Research has shown that it takes more time to complete a task when a student allows his focus to drift and the task becomes more difficult for him.

Some students waste up to one-third of their time procrastinating. Procrastination can take many forms. For example, a student has a paper due on Monday morning, but he went skiing with friends all weekend instead of studying. When students procrastinate, then they always have the excuse of “not having enough” time. The reasons for delaying and avoiding tasks for students are rooted in fear and anxiety. This fear is about doing poor, losing control, looking stupid, and having one’s sense of self or self-concept challenged. They avoid doing work to avoid their abilities being judged. So, what can students do to overcome their tendencies to procrastinate? Below are a few tips and methods that can help them.

Tips and Methods to Overcome Procrastination

There are many ways to break the vicious circle of procrastination. A good first step to overcoming procrastination is to identify distractions and their possible solutions. Another is to finish the work in the allocated time. If a task seems too big or overwhelming, break it down into a series of smaller, more achievable tasks or steps that will add up to completing the job. Concentrate on taking the first step, then the next, until you complete the full journey. Whenever students find themselves procrastinating, they should think about the good things that will happen when they stop procrastinating. Set specific dates and times to begin or continue the work. Put up notes or reminders in prominent places like the fridge or a mirror, to remind them that work needs to be done.

It is difficult to leave a bad habit. It also takes time and can’t be done overnight. So, don’t expect from yourself that you will suddenly break up with your procrastinating behaviour. Be realistic and figure out the strategies that work best for you. Practise them, notice small improvements in procrastinating behaviour and reward yourself. There is no quick fix for procrastination – it takes time and effort, and surely, no one else can fix it for you.

Students must have found “Procrastination Essay” useful for improving their essay writing skills. Visit BYJU’S website to get the latest updates and study material on CBSE/ICSE/State Board/Competitive Exams, at BYJU’S.

Register with BYJU'S & Download Free PDFs

Counselling

The Perks of Procrastination

Often the best ideas take time to develop. Go ahead, delay.

Harvard DCE Professional & Executive Development

For the procrastinators in our midst who often succumb to deadline-induced stress, it may be surprising to discover that procrastination has its advantages.

There’s no denying that procrastination chips away at productivity. But when it comes to the creative process, Adam Grant, a professor of management and psychology at the Wharton School, has found that procrastination can lead to better ideas.

In a New York Times op-ed column, Why I Taught Myself to Procrastinate , Grant explores the correlation between performance and procrastination habits, citing an experiment conducted by one of his former students. Jihae Shin, now a professor at the University of Wisconsin, asked participants to generate new business ideas. Some were randomly assigned to start right away. Others were given five minutes to first play Minesweeper or Solitaire. Everyone submitted their ideas, and independent evaluators rated how original they were.

The result? The procrastinators’ ideas were rated as 28 percent more creative.

“When people played games before being told about the task, there was no increase in creativity,” Grant wrote in the column. “It was only when they first learned about the task and then put it off that they considered more novel ideas. It turned out that procrastination encouraged divergent thinking.”

So how might you leverage procrastination to surface your best ideas? The approach depends on whether you’re an avid procrastinator or the opposite: a precrastinator.

Search all Innovation Strategy programs.

For “Precrastinators”

If you are the kind of person who dives immediately into a new project and finishes it way ahead of schedule, consider forcing yourself to wait.

Procrastination gives you time to consider divergent ideas, to think in nonlinear ways, and to make unexpected leaps.

Figure out ways to prevent yourself from completing creative projects before you’ve had the time to think about them in depth. If you’re writing, you might jot down a few sentences, then leave them unfinished while you grab lunch. Or write a first draft, but hold off on reviewing until a week later. Work against your gut instinct to finish immediately, and delay.

For Extreme Procrastinators

If you are the kind of person who waits until the last minute to look at an assignment, make it a habit to review it on the first day it’s assigned to you. Spend an hour with it, and jot down some initial notes.

Even if you are not yet actively working on the project, the assignment is in your mind, where the gears can turn until you return to it. You might also benefit from some creative exercises to help you overcome the paralysis that can set in during the creative process. Such tools can relieve pressure and jumpstart creative thinking.

Watch Adam Grant’s TED Talk

Find related Innovation Strategy programs.

Browse all Professional & Executive Development programs.

About the Author

It’s never too late to change careers.

A writer shares her experience making a career change.

Harvard Division of Continuing Education

The Division of Continuing Education (DCE) at Harvard University is dedicated to bringing rigorous academics and innovative teaching capabilities to those seeking to improve their lives through education. We make Harvard education accessible to lifelong learners from high school to retirement.

the Nature of Crisis: a Multi-Dimensional Perspective

This essay about defining crisis examines its complex nature across multiple dimensions including psychology, society, economics, and the environment. It explores how crises manifest as pivotal moments of intense difficulty that demand significant decisions, highlighting the personal, societal, and environmental impacts. The essay discusses the stages of a crisis, from trigger events to resolution, and emphasizes the importance of effective management and response strategies. It also considers how crises can drive innovation and reform, suggesting that they test resilience and adaptability, ultimately leading to progress and development when managed successfully. Through a comprehensive examination, the essay reveals the multifaceted character of crises and the critical responses they necessitate.

How it works

Crisis is a term that often conjures images of turmoil and upheaval, affecting individuals, communities, or even nations. It represents a point of intense difficulty or danger, where the decisions made can result in significant change. The essence of a crisis lies not just in the events themselves but also in the responses they demand and the outcomes they precipitate.

The concept of crisis is multi-faceted, operating across various domains such as psychology, sociology, economics, and environmental studies, each adding layers to its definition.

In psychology, a crisis is a pivotal moment when an individual faces an obstacle that is, for the time being, insurmountable through usual problem-solving methods. This definition underscores the personal aspect of crisis, highlighting the intense emotional and mental stress that can occur when one’s standard coping mechanisms fail in the face of a challenge.

In a broader societal context, crises can manifest as economic downturns, political instability, or significant social unrest. Here, the term describes scenarios where the structures that support daily life are disrupted, creating widespread uncertainty and hardship. The economic crisis, for instance, involves a sudden and significant decline in financial stability, which can lead to job losses, homelessness, and a decrease in consumer confidence. This type of crisis not only impacts the immediate economic conditions but also affects long-term growth prospects and the overall well-being of a society.

Environmental crises, such as natural disasters or climate change, highlight another dimension where the term applies. These situations often require immediate, coordinated responses to mitigate damage and provide relief. The defining feature of environmental crises is their capacity to alter landscapes, displace populations, and necessitate significant shifts in how communities operate and governments function.

The complexity of a crisis can often be understood through its stages of development. Initially, there is a trigger event that disrupts the status quo. This is followed by a period of escalation, where the effects of the trigger event become more pronounced and potentially spiral out of control. The peak of the crisis is typically where the highest intensity and greatest uncertainty are felt. Subsequently, the de-escalation phase occurs, involving efforts to manage and contain the crisis, aiming to restore order and stability. Finally, there is the resolution phase, where strategies are implemented to address the root causes and to mitigate future risks.

Responses to crises are as varied as their causes. Effective crisis management often involves a blend of immediate action and long-term strategy. It requires clear communication, robust planning, and often, an innovative approach to problem-solving that considers both human and systemic factors. Leaders and decision-makers play crucial roles during crises. Their ability to make informed, empathetic, and decisive choices can greatly influence the outcome and recovery process.

Moreover, crises often catalyze reform and innovation. The adversity and urgency of a crisis can break bureaucratic inertia and economic complacency, paving the way for new technologies, policies, and practices. For example, the global financial crisis of 2008 led to increased regulatory reforms in financial markets around the world, aiming to prevent a similar catastrophe. Similarly, the ongoing challenges of climate change are driving innovations in renewable energy and sustainable practices that might not have received the same focus without the pressing need imposed by environmental concerns.

In conclusion, a crisis is not merely a moment of conflict or danger but a test of resilience and adaptability. Whether it impacts an individual or spans across global systems, the defining characteristic of any crisis is the need for an effective response. Through understanding the intricate dynamics of crises, we can better prepare for and respond to the inevitable challenges they present. This comprehension is crucial not just for survival but for the progress and development that often follows in the wake of successfully navigated crises.

Cite this page

the Nature of Crisis: A Multi-Dimensional Perspective. (2024, May 12). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/the-nature-of-crisis-a-multi-dimensional-perspective/

"the Nature of Crisis: A Multi-Dimensional Perspective." PapersOwl.com , 12 May 2024, https://papersowl.com/examples/the-nature-of-crisis-a-multi-dimensional-perspective/

PapersOwl.com. (2024). the Nature of Crisis: A Multi-Dimensional Perspective . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/the-nature-of-crisis-a-multi-dimensional-perspective/ [Accessed: 20 May. 2024]

"the Nature of Crisis: A Multi-Dimensional Perspective." PapersOwl.com, May 12, 2024. Accessed May 20, 2024. https://papersowl.com/examples/the-nature-of-crisis-a-multi-dimensional-perspective/

"the Nature of Crisis: A Multi-Dimensional Perspective," PapersOwl.com , 12-May-2024. [Online]. Available: https://papersowl.com/examples/the-nature-of-crisis-a-multi-dimensional-perspective/. [Accessed: 20-May-2024]

Don't let plagiarism ruin your grade

Hire a writer to get a unique paper crafted to your needs.

Our writers will help you fix any mistakes and get an A+!

Please check your inbox.

You can order an original essay written according to your instructions.

Trusted by over 1 million students worldwide

1. Tell Us Your Requirements

2. Pick your perfect writer

3. Get Your Paper and Pay

Hi! I'm Amy, your personal assistant!

Don't know where to start? Give me your paper requirements and I connect you to an academic expert.

short deadlines

100% Plagiarism-Free

Certified writers

IMAGES

Procrastination Essay
Procrastination Essay
Procrastination Argumentative Essay Example
Procrastination Definition Essay
8 Causes For Procrastination And How To Overcome Them
PROCRASTINATION

VIDEO

How To Procrastinate♡
What procrastination looks like
The only way to END procrastination
Всё, что вы хотели знать про прокрастинацию, но откладывали спросить. #прокрастинация #shorts
Breaking Free from Procrastination
Procrastination: What Does It Look Like?

COMMENTS

Procrastination: Why It Happens and How to Overcome It
Procrastination is the act of delaying or putting off tasks until the last minute, or past their deadline. Some researchers define procrastination as a "form of self-regulation failure characterized by the irrational delay of tasks despite potentially negative consequences." According to Joseph Ferrari, a professor of psychology at DePaul ...
Procrastination
It's 8:30 p.m. before you finally sit down to write the paper. If the paper does indeed take five hours to write, you will be up until 1:30 in the morning—and that doesn't include the time that you will inevitably spend watching TV. And, as it turns out, it takes about five hours to write a first draft of the essay.
Procrastination Essay: Its Causes & Consequences
Procrastination Conclusion. In conclusion, it should be said that procrastination is rooted in many causes, such as numerous distractions, lack of motivation, fear of uncertainty and failure, and perfectionism. Each of them leads to negative consequences that concern career, studies, health, and personal qualities.
Understanding and Overcoming Procrastination
Procrastination is not a matter, solely, of having poor time management skills, either, but rather can be traced to underlying and more complex psychological reasons. These dynamics are often made worse by schools where students are constantly being evaluated, and especially in college where the pressure for grades is high and a lot can be ...
The Psychological Origins of Procrastination—and How We Can Stop
The psychology behind procrastination involves how we perceive of value, iStock. By: Elliot Berkman and Jordan Miller-Ziegler. September 29, 2016. 5 minutes. First Appeared on The Conversation. The icon indicates free access to the linked research on JSTOR. "I love deadlines," English author Douglas Adams once wrote.
Procrastination Psychology: Understanding Effects, Causes, and
Contrary to popular belief, procrastination is not caused by poor time management or a fear of failure. Rather, studies show that procrastination is due to self-regulation failure and a poor ability to manage emotions. Procrastinators recognize the harmful effects of putting tasks off, but can't overcome the emotional urge of a diversion.
Procrastination
Procrastination is a common form of self-regulatory failure with references to it throughout the historical record. Typically, it is "to voluntarily delay an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay," or to put off despite expecting to be worse off. By nature, this is a dysfunctional or irrational delay ...
Procrastination
Procrastination is a self-defeating behavior pattern, but it can be seen as serving a psychological purpose, especially for people with perfectionist tendencies, by protecting the individual ...
The psychological origins of procrastination
And procrastination, in psychological terms, is what happens when the value of doing something else outweighs the value of working now. This way of thinking suggests a simple trick to defeat ...
The Thief of Time: Philosophical Essays on Procrastination
Olav Gjelsvik discusses procrastination's relation to rationality: he considers various definitions of procrastination and shows that it is quite hard to define -- one too easily includes in one's definition instances in which postponing something is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
What Research Has Been Conducted on Procrastination? Evidence From a
Introduction. Procrastination is commonly conceptualized as an irrational tendency to delay required tasks or assignments despite the negative effects of this postponement on the individuals and organizations (Lay, 1986; Steel, 2007; Klingsieck, 2013).Poets have even written figuratively about procrastination, with such phrases as "Procrastination is the Thief of Time," and ...
Procrastination Concept and Reasons
Procrastination is a complex, multi-component phenomenon, and among them is the fact of postponement and the availability of deadlines. Procrastination is always followed by negative consequences, and procrastination, in turn, is always associated with negative emotions and experiences, such as anxiety and guilt.
Understanding procrastination: A case of a study skills course
Procrastination is consistently viewed as problematic to academic success and students' general well-being. There are prevailing questions regarding the underlying and maintaining mechanisms of procrastination which are yet to be learnt. The aim of the present study was to combine different ways to explain procrastination and explore how students' time and effort management skills ...
Why Wait? The Psychological Origins of Procrastination
Delay discounting is a factor in procrastination because the completion of the project happens in the future. Getting something done is a delayed reward, so its value in the present is reduced ...
Study Habits and Procrastination: The Role of Academic Self-Efficacy
The conceptual model, shown in. Figure 1. , assumes that the influence of Study Skill Habits on academic procrastination is mediated by Study Self-Efficacy. The SSH construct is specified as a formative latent construct, whereas SSE and procrastination are specified as reflective latent constructs.
PDF Why do so many people procrastinate and how do you overcome it?
There are some time management techniques that are well suited to overcoming procrastination and others that can make it worse. Those that reduce anxiety and fear and emphasize the satisfaction and rewards of completing tasks work best. Those that arc inflexible, emphasize the magnitude of tasks and increase anxiety can actually increase ...
Procrastination: Causes, Types, and How to Overcome It
Ways to overcome procrastination include: Identifying the role of procrastination in your life. Making time for time management. Breaking up large projects into smaller tasks. Finding productive reasons to keep working on tasks and commitments. Keeping your goals realistic and reassessing goals and strategies as needed.
Procrastination
Procrastination is the act of unnecessarily and voluntarily delaying or postponing something despite knowing that there will be negative consequences for doing so. It is a common human experience involving delays in everyday chores or even putting off tasks such as attending an appointment, submitting a job report or academic assignment, or ...
Procrastination Essay for Students in English
Procrastination is the habit of delaying a task or an activity until a later date. The habit of procrastinating the doing things is one of the worst habits of a person. People tend to be slothful to put off the finishing of a piece of work, implementation of a plan till another time.
Definition And Types Of Procrastination
However, to date, the definition of procrastination has remained a widely debated topic, and there is no single, universally accepted interpretation of the term. As noted by Ferrari (1991) and Steel (2002), researchers reached a consensus on two key characteristics of the phenomenon: the presence of delay in the realisation of an intention, and ...
Procrastination Essay for Students and Children
Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas. Another reason is the lack of focus and determination. Feeling directionless and unfocused can often cause people to lose their wills to do their jobs. This leads to procrastination. Sometimes the lack of goals and objectives is also the reason a person loses their focus.
Procrastination Essay For Students In English
Procrastination is the tendency to delay an intended action or decision. It is defined as the act of needlessly delaying tasks to the point of experiencing subjective discomfort. The illusory idea underlying procrastination is a feeling that 'later is better.
The Perks of Procrastination
The procrastinators' ideas were rated as 28 percent more creative. "When people played games before being told about the task, there was no increase in creativity," Grant wrote in the column. "It was only when they first learned about the task and then put it off that they considered more novel ideas. It turned out that procrastination ...
the Nature of Crisis: A Multi-Dimensional Perspective
The essay discusses the stages of a crisis, from trigger events to resolution, and emphasizes the importance of effective management and response strategies. It also considers how crises can drive innovation and reform, suggesting that they test resilience and adaptability, ultimately leading to progress and development when managed successfully.

What Is Procrastination?

Why Do You Procrastinate?

Present Bias

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Is Procrastination a Mental Illness?

Press Play for Advice On Completing Tasks

Procrastinators vs. Non-Procrastinators

The Negative Impact of Procrastination

How to Overcome Procrastination

Procrastination

What this handout is about

Introduction

Is there hope?

Why we do it

Because we are afraid

Because we expect ourselves to be perfect

Because we don’t like our writing

Because we’re too busy

Because it works

What to do about it

Take an inventory

How do you procrastinate?

Create a productive environment

Challenge your myths

Break it down

Get a new attitude

Ask for help

Get unblocked

Make yourself accountable

Leave your work out

Work on improving your writing when you don’t have a deadline

Evaluate your writing’s strengths and weaknesses

Hone your proofreading and editing skills

Learn how to tell time

Make an unschedule

Set a time limit

Be realistic about how long it takes you to write

Parting thoughts

Works consulted

The Psychological Origins of Procrastination—and How We Can Stop Putting Things Off

To do, or not to do

The distant deadline

No work is ‘effortless’

Your work, your identity

Get Our Newsletter

More Stories

Building Classroom Discussions around JSTOR Daily Syllabi

Scaffolding a Research Project with JSTOR

Making Implicit Racism

The Diverse Shamanisms of South America

Support JSTOR Daily

Procrastination Psychology: Understanding Effects, Causes, and Solutions

What is procrastination?

The harmful effects of procrastination

Choosing short-term rewards over long-term benefits

Don’t delay: take care of your mental health today

3 tips to help you procrastinate less

Practice self-compassion

Create a reward system

How to Subscribe

In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Procrastination

Related Articles Expand or collapse the "related articles" section about

Other Subject Areas

Procrastination by Piers Steel , Katrin Klingsieck LAST REVIEWED: 26 July 2017 LAST MODIFIED: 26 July 2017 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199828340-0140

The psychological origins of procrastination – and how we can stop putting things off

Disclosure statement

To do, or not to do

The distant deadline

No work is ‘effortless’

Your work, your identity

Case Management Specialist

Lecturer / Senior Lecturer - Marketing

Assistant Editor - 1 year cadetship

Executive Dean, Faculty of Health

Lecturer/Senior Lecturer, Earth System Science (School of Science)

The Thief of Time: Philosophical Essays on Procrastination

What Research Has Been Conducted on Procrastination? Evidence From a Systematical Bibliometric Analysis

Introduction

Data and Methodology

Panoramic Overview of Procrastination Research