Procrastination

I am up early and should be prepping for a lecture at 1pm, ironically on time management and procrastination, and I find myself procrastinating.

So, when someone (like me) procrastinates, we purposefully and needlessly defer actions or tasks to a later time.  In psychology, this behaviour has been cited by some as a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision (Ferrari et al., 1995).  However, this is all too often to the detriment of of performance or learning.

Apparently, we can think of procrastinators as two main types:  the 'relaxed' type (Solomon and Rothblum, 1984) and the 'tense-afraid' type (Fiore, 1989).  The relaxed type of procrastinators direct energy into other tasks in order to avoid their responsibilities, which they view in a negative way.  The tense-afraid type of procrastinators usually feel overwhelmed with pressure, unrealistic about time, uncertain about goals and many other negative feelings.  They may feel a sense of malaise.

Sapadin and Maguire (1997) have more recently come up with six different types of procrastinators.  There's the 'perfectionist', the 'dreamer, the 'worrier', the 'defier', the 'crisis-maker' and the 'over-doer'.  The 'perfectionist' won't settle for anything less than perfect and dreads not being able to produce something as such.  The 'dreamer' has great ideas, but doesn't get around to tackling the details.  The 'worrier' fears that doing anything to change things will make them worse (although he or she knows that things are inherently wrong).  The 'defier' resists doing anything that has been delegated to him/her.  The 'crisis-maker' manages to make a problem (usually a big one) where none exists, and often by starting too late.  Finally, the 'over-doer' just takes on way too many things.  

Do any of these resonate with you so far?

Now back to the 'relaxed' type procrastinator.  This type seems, at first, to be less complicated, but careful observation of their thoughts and emotions suggests otherwise.  This type of procrastinator has been found to be much more common amongst college students than the 'tense-afraid' type (Solomon and Rothblum, 1984).  It has been suggested that if we try to analyse 'relaxed' procrastinators according to Maslow's ideas of a needs hierarchy, that we may consider that this type of procrastinator is too reliant upon others, or be preoccupied with meeting their basic emotional needs for attention and approval by peers, love, or self-esteem.  For some students the desire to have these needs met critically impinges upon getting on with studying.  

The notion that the above attention-craving behaviour may induce procrastination is an interesting phenomenon to me.  I think that procrastination deserves further research, especially in regards ways to understand, prevent and deal with it.

I will be posting in the future on the last category. 

References                                            

Fiore, N. (1989). The Now Habit: A Strategic Program For Overcoming Procrastination And Enjoying Guilt-Free Play. New York: Penguin Group.

Sapadin, L., and Maguire, J. (1997). It's about time!: The six styles of procrastination and how to overcome them. New York, N.Y., U.S.A: Penguin Books.

Solomon, L. J., and Rothblum, E. D. (1984). Academic procrastination: Frequency and cognitive-behavioral correlates. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 31(4), 503-509.