Study Finds Procrastination Is Biggest Threat to Students' Academic Performance

The same proportion said procrastination caused them significant distress above any other problems, including family pressures or bullying. Itamar Shatz, the study's author and an affiliated lecturer at the University of Cambridge, said he expected the survey of US students would show they experienced harm from procrastination, but he was surprised by how strongly it affected them.

“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,” Shatz said. “It’s an obstacle that can interfere with academic success, with success in the workplace, it can cause issues in relationships, it can cause stress, it can cause health issues and stop us reaching out for help.”

The study also suggests that procrastination could be a factor in a “vicious cycle” that can cause or exaggerate other issues such as stress. “An example of such a feedback loop is a student procrastinating on a task, which causes them to feel stressed, which interferes with their sleep, which causes them to procrastinate on the task further,” the study said.

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 its impact on health and wellbeing conducted in the late 1990s and early 2000s. She said there is an established evidence base that clearly highlights the negative impact of procrastination on students’ lives. The descriptive study with a large sample provides additional insights into the relative impact of procrastination across a range of harms, she said, but it is just a snapshot, which limits the conclusions that can be drawn.

Sirois said myths about procrastination “being a character flaw” have persisted despite the existing research. “People procrastinate to avoid the difficult emotions associated with a task, which affords them short-term mood repair. 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 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, he said. “They should understand that procrastination isn’t just a time management flaw that they can fix with a flyer, but it is one of the biggest obstacles that students face and needs to be treated with positive interventions. The good thing is that research shows that interventions can help,” Shatz said.

Editor's Summary

A study of more than 65,000 US students found that nearly half identified procrastination as the main harm to their academic work, ahead of depression, ADHD, anxiety and financial worries. The findings, published in Plos One, add to longstanding evidence that procrastination can create stress and wellbeing problems, though outside researcher Fuschia Sirois said the descriptive data offer only a snapshot. Study author Itamar Shatz said universities should treat procrastination as a major obstacle and use interventions that research shows can help.