Understanding and Treating Procrastination: A Review of a Common Self-Regulatory Failure

Abstract

Procrastination is a pervasive self-regulatory failure affecting approximately one-fifth of the adult population and half of the student population. It is defined as one's voluntarily delay of an in-tended course of action despite being worse off as a result of that delay. Procrastination has a negative impact on performance and is associated with poorer mental health. Stress, worry, and feelings of guilt are common among those who procrastinate recurrently. In addition, procrastina-tion is associated with fewer mental health-seeking behaviors and increased treatment delay, leading to greater distress and the exacerbation of illness. The current paper seeks to provide a theoretical and clinical understanding of procrastination by reviewing prior research. Procrasti-nation can be understood using different motivational theories, learning theory, self-efficacy theory, as well as biases and heuristics. Temporal motivational theory is proposed as an inte-grated explanation for procrastination, consisting of the interaction of four different variables: expectancy, value, impulsiveness, and time, each of which affects the tendency to procrastinate. A general implication is that procrastination should be regarded as an idiosyncratic behavioral problem that requires a cognitive case conceptualization or a functional analysis in order to guide therapists in their work. A number of treatment interventions might be used in relation to pro-crastination—for example, efficacy performance spirals, automaticity, stimulus control, stimulus cues, learned industriousness, and cognitive restructuring. Furthermore, the current paper ex-plores the evidence on using cognitive behavior therapy for procrastination, discussing the scar-city of randomized controlled trials and the lack of validated outcome measures, and highlighting the need for further research.