Overcoming Procrastination through Planning

Have you ever purposefully delayed or postponed a goal-directed action (for example, writing an essay or filling out tax forms) despite strong intentions to achieve the goal and suffident opportunities to pursue it7 If so, then you are in good company: so has a large percentage of the general (15 to 20 percent) 1 and the academic (80 to 85 percent of American college students) population. 2 In addition to academic exampies, procrastination has been studied in the areas of personal health (dieting, exerdsing), sodal relationships (contacting friends), work (j obseeking behavior), and financial management (retirement savings).3 Procrastination 1S a widespread phenomenon with potentially severe consequences, such as dropping out of scho01, compromised health, divorce, and job 10ss. Intuitive1y, it would seem relatively easy to dassify certain behaviors as procrastination. For example, the fact that a student put off reading a book chapter might at first glance be sufficient to label his or her behavior as procrastination. But after a doser look at the phenomenon, additional criteria that cannot be objectively judged from an outside perspective emerge. Building on the numerous definitions of the commonly used term pTOcrastination that can be found in the scientific literature,4 we suggest four criteria that must be fulfilled in order to dassify a behavior or a lack of behavior as procrastination. A person has to (1) cOlnmit to the goal in question, (2) have the opportunity to act on the goal, (3) expect to be worse off later in the case of a delay, and (4) voluntarily decide to put off the intended action Of in action until a later point. For example, not