Behind the Ironic Column

I saw the article in the paper this morning about procrastination and even started to read it – then I thought I’d just wait and read it later when I had more time to consider the implications. After all, procrastination is a serious subject and one wouldn’t want to delve into it precipitously. Besides, didn’t I hear something about this story on NPR yesterday; the person who did the study was 5 years late in delivering it. It seems he might actually be an expert in procrastination.

Magazines and newspapers are full of advice on how to avoid being a procrastinator and how bad it can be for your life; especially if you put off things like payments to the IRS or parking tickets or proposing to that special someone before someone else steps in. Most of us, if we think about it for a few minutes, can point to some event in our lives that would probably have gone differently if we’d taken immediate action instead of delaying. If you don’t see anything like that in your life, congratulations, but I’m sure you have other character flaws.  

In some organizations, procrastination is definitely rewarded. I haven’t read all of the study that generated the most recent news articles, but reward is one of the angles you have to consider when extrapolating from the behavior of workers. If my boss routinely gets enthusiastic about some new project, spends several hours in meetings, and draws up a timeline, I do pay attention of course. But I don’t jump into it and start accomplishing tasks right away. After many instances of this behavior, I know that he is very likely to shelve the whole thing next week and any time I spend on it will be wasted. In this instance, procrastination is not only not bad, it’s a very good thing and actually improves productivity because I’m getting work done that actually needs to be done. On the other hand it also increases worker cynicism; but that’s a topic for another set of research.  

If you think changing your procrastination habit is hard, you’re exactly right. Psychologist William Knaus, author of several books and articles on procrastination, says that he’s found it harder to change this habit than to wean alcoholics away from booze. Do you want to find out just how bad you are? Research on these topics is still going on and new participants are welcome. Just go to http://www.procrastinus.com/ and take the online evaluation.  That site is run by Piers Steel, a professor at the University of Calgary and the author of the study that’s referenced in the newspaper stories.  The study was published in the January issue of Psychological Bulletin: “The Nature of Procrastination: A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review of Quintessential Self-Regulatory Failure.”  

Feeling concerned about all this? Especially about that label which includes the words quintessential and failure in the same sentence? Maybe you don’t really feel up to an online test today. Maybe there’s a better way. I’m sure in a few more years they’ll have developed a zapper to change those brain waves instantly. I think I’ll just wait for it.

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