The Psychology of Procrastination: Why We Delay and How to Overcome It

Authors: Mohammed Saad Alsenaidi

Country: Saudi Arabia

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Abstract: This research examines behavioral side aspects of procrastination. Procrastination is defined as intentional behavioral delay for more than intended. Procrastination is primarily measured self-reportedly, and it is typically phrased “to put off action until later.” It is pointed out that self-reported procrastination may introduce a number of problems because the actual behavior may not be reflected. Since surveys of the main construct in procrastination research are typically far removed from actions, they may not actually be procrastination questions, situations or events. Such a reliance on self-reported, off-line, retrospective questions may bias results. As such, procrastination research is said to have gone astray by focusing on self-reported measures instead of behavioral delay. Still, objective behavioral measurements of procrastination are difficult to obtain and establish in the real world. Meanwhile, since procrastination occurs during task commencement, during the implementation phase right after task formulation, it is argued that a shift from the planning to implementation phase of action may yield behavioral delay in procrastination settings. A brief examination of behavioral delay measures in procrastination followed here is suggested.
For procrastination to take place, there must at least be a discrepancy between the behavioral intention to act in a certain way and the corresponding behavior. Since procrastination is defined as intentional delay, it is action possibility that is naturally ensuing. Such a viewpoint, however, is absent in the self-reported, offline conception of procrastination. This is somewhat paradoxical, given that the structural definition refers to behavioral absence during opportunity. Since self-reported procrastination focuses on the task formulation phase of action and its behavioral delay aspects are more deeply embedded in behavioral delay per se and the resulting consequences, it is plausible that a greater realization of procrastination would be to focus on behavioral measures of procrastination (Svartdal et al., 2018).

Keywords: Procrastination - Social psychology - Action Control - Impulsiveness - Delay Engagement Models - Temporal Discounting

Paper Id: 232478

Published On: 2024-01-09

Published In: Volume 12, Issue 1, January-February 2024

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