While skimming through CNN.com the other day looking for interesting bits of news, I came across something I just couldn’t ignore. The article’s title was “Procrastination Nation,” and the teaser said “Read this while you put off work.” Being a self-proclaimed procrastinator, I eventually clicked on the link.
Fellow procrastinators, it grieves me to say that I discovered some unhappy news for us. Apparently, procrastination tends to impact our lives negatively.
Head researcher Piers Steel, a Canadian psychology professor, said the study showed that procrastinators often end up with poorer health, less prosperity and less happiness than non-procrastinators.
The study encompassed all areas of procrastination, from work to filing taxes to spending habits. Steel found that 26 percent of Americans say they are habitual procrastinators. Men tend to procrastinate slightly more than women and young people more than older people.
Steel says procrastination has been steadily rising for the past few decades, mainly because the amount of temptations our society produces has increased.
Well, that’s not too hard to work out. Just think of all the ways we waste time during the day: Facebook, YouTube, cell phones, Facebook, computer and video games, email, instant messenger, TV and Facebook, to name just a few.
Here’s a startling statistic: 75 percent of college students say they procrastinate. That’s almost all of us.
I can’t honestly say this statistic surprises me. After all, I am the first to call myself a procrastinator. In fact, one could even say that I’m a little bit proud of it.
I think that might be true for a lot of us college-age procrastinators. We bemoan the fact that we can’t get anything done until the last minute, that we have no motivation, blah, blah, blah. But in actuality, we’re somewhat pleased with ourselves.
We know we can put off our homework until the night before or even the day of class and still finish. We have become such practiced procrastinators that we can enjoy our social lives almost as long as we’d like and ignore schoolwork until it is critical.
Our procrastination has been refined to an art form. We discuss it with our friends and proudly acknowledge what terrible procrastinators we are. It’s come to be viewed almost as a positive attribute rather than a self-injuring tendency.
But apparently, we are cultivating a habit that will result in some unhappy consequences in later adulthood.
In the CNN.com article, psychologist William Knaus stated that breaking procrastination habits often is more difficult than breaking alcoholics’ drinking habits. We’re not just building a habit, we’re forming an addiction.
There are many studies out there that give reasons for why people procrastinate: perfectionism, anti-coping tendencies and anxiety over failure, to name a few. I’m sure that we all have different reasons for doing it.
Before reading this study, I never really thought about procrastination affecting my life after school, because that’s my main arena for putting things off. However, I realized that procrastination has been creeping into some other areas of my life.
I tend to do more and more things at the last minute: go to Wal-Mart, wash my clothes, clean my room. The list goes on and on.
Steel found that self-proclaimed procrastinators have risen from five percent of the population in 1978 to 26 percent in 2006.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be all that proud of our procrastination. Sure, it saves us some time now; however, if that’s the only benefit, what are we doing this for?
Right now, we are cultivating most of the habits that we’ll carry throughout our lives. As much as I enjoy procrastinating now, is it something I want to keep doing? Probably not.
So I am making it one of my goals this semester to procrastinate less. According to Steel, the less I procrastinate, the healthier, wealthier and happier I will be.
After studying the subject for so long, Steel is truly an expert in the procrastination field. His study, which was supposed to be completed in five years, actually took 10. I guess he wanted plenty of field research.