Formula For Procrastination Found

kandela writes "Science Daily reports that a University of Calgary academic has published a paper titled The Nature of Procrastination: A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review of Quintessential Self-Regulatory Failure in the Psychological Bulletin. The research reveals that most people's New Year's resolutions are doomed to failure, most self-help books have it completely wrong when they say perfectionism is at the root of procrastination, and procrastination can be explained by a single mathematical equation. The research is apparently the culmination of 10 years work. However, no indication was given of how much time was spent putting it off before it was begun." From the article: "Essentially, procrastinators have less confidence in themselves, less expectancy that they can actually complete a task... Perfectionism is not the culprit. In fact, perfectionists actually procrastinate less, but they worry about it more."

Links

[martyb]

Links to the sources:

• Dr. Piers Steel's home page [ucalgary.ca]
• Procrastination Central [procrastinus.com] his site on procrastination, with links to his research.

BTW: A quote I saw on the latter site:

"One of the greatest labor-saving inventions of today is tomorrow." Vincent T. Foss

MOD UP

[schwaang]

FTA:

Not all delays can be considered procrastination; the key is that a person must believe it would be better to start working on given tasks immediately, but still not start.

Re:It's a PR agency playing pseudo-scientist

[learn fast]

I think the poster doth protest a bit much.

Here's his resume:

http://www.ucalgary.ca/~steel/procrastinus/homepag e/homepage.html [ucalgary.ca]