Chapter 2 Is Procrastination Really a Problem? What Are the Costs of Procrastinating?

[Procrastination is failing to get on with life itself. ]

I ATTENDED A CONFERENCE a few summers ago titled Living well and dying well: New frontiers of positive psychology, therapy, and spiritual care. During a discussion of coping with death and counseling individuals who are grieving, one of the psychologists in attendance noted two kinds of regrets that people express in their grief over the loss of a loved one: regrets of commission and omission. The second regret, the things we omitted doing while our loved one was alive, captured my interest. Regrets of omission are so often the result of procrastination.

I asked this psychologist, "What is the nature of these regrets of omission?"adding, "Are these:

1. Things people really intended to do but never did (i. e., procrastination) ?

2. Generalized possibilities of what they could have done?

3. Cultural scripts of what they think they should have done, what would have been nice to do?

4. Internalized expectations about what the loved one might have wanted them to do?

The psychologist replied that all four types were part of the regrets he had seen in his practice.

So I pushed on a little further and asked which type of regret seemed most problematic. As I expected, given the guilt associated with procrastination, regret over the things these grieving people really intended to do but did not was most problematic. The regrets of omission related to our procrastination were most troubling in the grieving process.

Issue

Everyone procrastinates. I believe this, and research has documented this in a number of diferent ways. In fact, I think that people who say that they have never procrastinated might also say that they have never told a lie or been rude to someone. It is possible, I guess, but unlikely. We certainly do not like to admit to these undesirable actions.

So, if everyone procrastinates, why is it a problem?

The research evidence is clear. People who score high on self-report measures of procrastination also s