Are you a procrastinator?
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This is post 1 of my series Inside the Mind of a Procrastinator.
The first point in the article by Hara Estroff Marano gives this statistic:
Twenty percent of people identify themselves as chronic procrastinators. For them procrastination is a lifestyle, albeit a maladaptive one. And it cuts across all domains of their life. They don’t pay bills on time. They miss opportunities for buying tickets to concerts. They don’t cash gift certificates or checks. They file income tax returns late. They leave their Christmas shopping until Christmas eve.
The article does not define a chronic procrastinator, but I would have assumed that the percentage of people who procrastinate, would be in the 80 plus range. Practically everyone I know procrastinates at some time over some unpleasant task. That doesn’t mean all of them are chronic.
I also wonder, if twenty percent identify themselves as chronic procrastinators, is there another twenty or greater percentage lying to themselves or others?
The Wikibook, Overcoming Procrastination, says this about chronic procrastination:
When procrastination grows so prevalent that it becomes a personality trait, its severity is said to be chronic. In this form of procrastination, the problem has become a generalized habitual self-destructive pattern. Putting things off has become a core habit. The chronic procrastinator cannot get anything accomplished on time, resulting in serious career struggles, persistent financial problems, and a diminished quality of life.
Procrastinators Anonymous —yes, they have meetings— list ten signs of compulsive procrastination.
- Disappointment is a way of life. We constantly disappoint other people and ourselves by not keeping our promises.
- We have enormous difficulty getting started on new projects, or transitioning from one project to another.
- We have a very poor sense of time, chronically underestimating or overestimating how long a task will take us to complete.
- We have difficulty organizing projects by breaking them down into steps; we don’t know where to start, even when we’re willing to start.
- We are surrounded by clutter and disorganization in our homes and work spaces.
- We are regularly late for appointments.
- We are acutely aware of what we should be doing, or think we should be doing, and oddly out of touch with what we actually want and need.
- We feel uncomfortable saying “no” to requests from others, and instead express our resentment through the passive resistance of procrastination.
- We suffer from Demand Resistance, causing us to do anything and everything except the one thing we most need to do.
- We are short-term thinkers, focusing on short-term pleasure while ignoring long-term well-being.
You may not have all these signs, but if you exhibit a number of these behaviours, you could have a problem with procrastination. As I review the list, most of those behaviours have been mine at one time or another. That’s why I consider myself to be a serious or chronic procrastinator.
Next post: I’ll take a look at common perceptions.
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Comments
My god, you couldn’t get it more right. It is heartening that there are other procrastinators of the worst sort.
The ten point procrastination signature is spot on. I am supposed to be a high-flier in the academic circles, with wings that may get clipped if this condition is not brought under control. So far, I have ‘got away’ with procrastination by making up for it otherwise (motivation in certain niche fields, etc, at the expense of a more all round profile), but there have been too many experiences that have caused a loss of face and dissappointments (to myself and others!).
Wow. Describes me in exact. Trying to stop is proving very difficult tho.