Procrastination

Procrastination is the avoidance of doing a task that needs to be accomplished. It is the practice of doing more pleasurable things in place of less pleasurable ones, or carrying out less urgent tasks instead of more urgent ones, thus putting off impending tasks to a later time. Sometimes, procrastination takes place until the "last minute" before a deadline. Procrastination can take hold on any aspect of life — putting off cleaning the stove, repairing a leaky roof, seeing a doctor or dentist, submitting a job report or academic assignment or broaching a stressful issue with a partner. Procrastination can lead to feelings of guilt, inadequacy, depression and self-doubt.

In a study of academic procrastination from the University of Vermont, published in 1984, 46% of the subjects reported that they "always" or "nearly always" procrastinate writing papers, while approximately 30% reported procrastinating studying for exams and reading weekly assignments (27.6% and 30.1% respectively). Nearly a quarter of the subjects reported that procrastination was a problem for them, regarding the same tasks. However, as many as 65% indicated that they would like to reduce their procrastination when writing papers and approximately 62% indicated the same for studying for exams and 55% for reading weekly assignments.

A 1992 study showed that "52% of surveyed students indicated having a moderate to high need for help concerning procrastination." It is estimated that 80%–95% of college students engage in procrastination, and approximately 75% consider themselves procrastinators.

In a study performed on university students, procrastination was shown to be greater on tasks that were perceived as unpleasant or as impositions than on tasks for which the student believed he or she lacked the required skills for accomplishing the task.

Gregory Schraw, Theresa Wadkins, and Lori Olafson in 2007 proposed three criteria for a behavior to be classified as academic procrastination: it must be counterproductive, needless, and delaying. Steel reviewed all previous attempts to define procrastination, and concluded in a 2007 study that procrastination is "to voluntarily delay an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay." Sabini & Silver argued that postponement and irrationality are the two key features of procrastination. Putting a task off is not procrastination, they argue, if there are rational reasons for doing so.

An approach that integrates several core theories of motivation as well as meta-analytic research on procrastination is the temporal motivation theory. It summarizes key predictors of procrastination (expectancy, value, and impulsiveness) into a mathematical equation.

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