Procrastination is the biggest problem that can harm students’ academic performance at university, according to a study of more than 65,000 young people who placed it above issues such as ADHD, anxiety or financial worries. The study found that nearly half of the students surveyed named procrastination as the thing damaging their ability to do academic work, more than twice the number who named depression, while the same proportion said procrastination caused them significant distress above any other problems including family pressures or bullying. Itamar Shatz, the author of the study and an affiliated lecturer at the University of Cambridge, said that while he expected the survey of US students would show that they experienced harm from procrastination, he was surprised by how strongly it affected them.
Shatz said: “Pretty much all of us procrastinate but it’s not a huge impediment for all of us. For the people that it is, it can be huge. It’s not just something we occasionally run into but, as we can see in these findings, it can be a major obstacle.
Fuschia Sirois, a psychology professor at Durham University and a co-editor-in-chief of the British Journal of Health Psychology, who was not involved in the study, said: “The salience of procrastination in students’ lives and its harms has been a topic of research for almost 30 years, with the first studies on the impact of procrastination on health and wellbeing conducted in the late 1990s and early 2000s. So this is an issue for which there is an established evidence base that clearly highlights the negative impact of procrastination on students’ lives. But it is just a snapshot, so limits the conclusions we can draw.” Sirois said myths about procrastination “being a character flaw” have persisted despite the existing research.
But in the long run the feelings of guilt, shame and stress from procrastinating catch up to them and take a toll on health and wellbeing,” she said. Shatz, who has recently published a guide to overcoming procrastination, said that procrastination should not be compared with laziness, because procrastinators can often be highly motivated to tackle a task only to be derailed by other distractions such as perfectionism or burn-out. Universities should be aware that many of their students are likely to be hampered by procrastination.
The good thing is that research shows that interventions can help,” Shatz said.
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