Am I a PROcrastinator?

or do I just work better under pressure

Do you often find yourself frantically putting together a term paper (or blog post) at the very last minute? Do you justify yourself by saying, “It’s okay because I can pull it off”? Well, thats me. Four years of university, and I still haven’t found a solution to this major problem.

Fortunately for me, procrastination is a very prevalent from self-regulatory failure observed in many different settings and in a whole lot of the population. In a study done by Solomon and Rothblumin (1984) on academic procrastination, 46% of the students reported that they “always” or “nearly always” postpone writing a paper, and 30% procrastinate studying for exams or reading the textbook. Numerous studies have devoted time and money into identifying the causes behind procrastination, with theories such the temporal motivation theory by Steel and Konig (2006),which was supported by a meta-analysis (Steel, 2007), with key predictors such as task aversiveness, task delay, self-efficacy, and impulsiveness. Procrastination is something all PROcrastinators must overcome because studies have shown it to be significantly correlated with a variety of negative mental health variables, such as depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and poor study habits (Solomon & Rothblumin, 1984). In another study done by Tice and Baumiester (1997) on psychology students, they found that procrastinators turned in their paper significantly later than non-procrastinators, and non-procrastinators received significantly better grades in their term paper and 2 exams. Surprised?

I believe that the first step to overcoming a problem is acknowledging that you are indeed, in need of help. In 1986, Professor Lay from York University developed the procrastination scale for people to use to diagnose their level of procrastination. It has a separate inventory intended for student populations. It is based on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from “extremely uncharacteristic” to “extremely characteristic”, including a “neutral” answer. The questionnaire includes items such as, “I do not do assignments until just before they are to be handed in” and “When I have a deadline, I often waste time by doing other things”. Some surprising items for me were, “I usually make decisions as soon as possible”, “I generally return phone calls promptly”, and “If a bill for a small amount comes, I pay it right away”. Although I knew that I had a strong tendency to procrastinate academically, I didn’t realize that returning phone-calls late, missing bill payments, and being indecisive were also indicators of procrastination. It’s not only effecting my academics, but my everyday life as well. That just made me a whole lot worse than I thought.

So, how can I fix this? How can I prevent myself from writing my next blog post on March 13th? A study has found that self-imposing deadlines to improve work performance can be effective, although not as effective as external deadlines (Ariely & Wertenbroch, 2002). Perhaps I will try imposing a deadline for my next blog post, a bit sooner than the actual deadline of March 13th. I hereby propose to submit the next blog post before reading break ends.

The procrastination scale for student populations: http://www.yorku.ca/rokada/psyctest/prcrasts.pdf

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References:

Solomon, L. J., & Rothblum, E. D. (1984). Academic procrastination: Frequency and cognitive-behavioral correlates. Journal of Counseling psychology, 31(4), 503.

Steel, P., & König, C. J. (2006). Integrating theories of motivation. Academy of Management Review, 31(4), 889–913.

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

Tice, D. M., & Baumeister, R. F. (1997). Longitudinal study of procrastination, performance, stress, and health: The costs and benefits of dawdling.Psychological Science, 454–458.

Lay, C. H. (1986). At last, my research article on procrastination. Journal of research in personality, 20(4), 474–495.

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