Pychyl Timothy A. - Procrastination, Health, and Well-Being

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ISBN: 978-0-12-802862-9

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Joel H. Anderson , Ethics Institute, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Maria I. Argiropoulou , Department of Psychology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece

Eve-Marie C. Blouin-Hudon , Department of Psychology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

James Crooks , Department of Philosophy, Bishops University, Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada

Wendelien van Eerde , Human Resource ManagementOrganizational Behavior, Amsterdam Business School, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Benjamin Gigure , Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Mohsen Haghbin , Department of Psychology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Anastasia Kalantzi-Azizi , Department of Psychology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece

Bart A. Kamphorst , Ethics Institute, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Floor M. Kroese , Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Sanne Nauts , Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Timothy A. Pychyl , Department of Psychology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Denise T.D. de Ridder , Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Fuschia M. Sirois , Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom

Anastasia Sofianopoulou , Department of Psychology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece

Mamta Vaswani , Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

For some people, this book may come as a bit of a surprise. Whereas we might all understand a title such as Procrastination and Productivity, how do we make sense of a book that brings together procrastination and health? The common assumption is that procrastination, that thief of time, is a problem of poor planning, last-minute efforts, and compromised performance. We take it for granted that the needless delay of procrastination undermines our success, but is it also related to our health and well-being? The answer provided by the various contributions to this book is clearly yes. Over the past two decades, researchers have been demonstrating that procrastination is a very important issue in terms of understanding who is healthy and happy, and who is not.

In 1997, Dianne Tice and Roy Baumeister published the first empirical report that demonstrated a relation between procrastination and health in an undergraduate student sample. Many of the results were as expected. For example, in both of their studies, self-reported procrastination was correlated positively with students turning in assignments later and correlated negatively with assignment grades. In other words, procrastinators completed their work later and received significantly lower grades, revealing a cost to procrastination. Interestingly, the longitudinal design of their second study revealed that in the short term, students who reported higher levels of procrastination faired better than their peers who reported lower levels of procrastination. In the early part of the semester, procrastination scores were negatively correlated with stress and physical symptom reports. However, this trend reversed over time. Later in the semester, procrastination was positively correlated with stress and physical symptom reports. In addition, students who reported more procrastination also reported significantly more visits to health-care professionals. Finally, by summing their data across the semester, Tice and Baumeister demonstrated that the overall cumulative effect of procrastination on stress and health was negative. Although early in the semester students who procrastinated seemed to benefit, this was only true when the deadline was remote; the overall net effect of procrastination was poorer academic performance, higher stress, and more illness.

I remember not only reading this article at the time of its publication, but also the flurry of media calls asking me about this study and what I thought it meant. Of course, I was pleased to be able to comment on this research, because it provided empirical support for something that both counselors and researchers understood all too well. Procrastination has its costs, and these costs include increased stress, poorer well-being, and negative effects on health. This seemed obvious to anyone who worked with people who procrastinated, but there had been no empirical studies to provide evidence of these clinical reports or anecdotes relating procrastination to illness. Moreover, their work helped categorize the short-term gain, long-term costs of procrastination as another form of self-defeating behavior that is a hallmark of poor self-regulation; a pattern that Baumeister and his colleagues have studied in terms of alcohol and drug abuse, overeating, compulsive shopping, violence, and other impulsive acts ().