Procrastination

Many people are familiar with putting off unpleasant tasks - such as studying for exams, writing academic papers, completing tax returns or preparing presentations - rather than completing them immediately. For some people, however, procrastination becomes so severe that they suffer considerably and are at risk of serious negative consequences, such as dropping out of education or career failure. Constant procrastination is often seen by those affected and those around them as a personal weakness of will or as laziness. However, procrastination has nothing to do with laziness and cannot be changed with such concepts. Rather, it is a serious problem of self-control for which professional psychological help is available.

Disorder pattern

Procrastination is the scientific term for pathological procrastination. Procrastination is a serious work disorder and can affect private everyday activities as well as school, academic and professional activities.

7% of the students who took part in one of our large cross-sectional studies at the University of Münster achieve procrastination scores above the average of those who seek treatment from us for this problem. This means that there are many students who have this problem to such an extent that it would be worthwhile for them to seek treatment.

Although the consequences of procrastination are similar in many cases, there are various factors that promote procrastination: problems in setting priorities, lack of or unrealistic planning, difficulties in differentiating oneself from alternative tendencies to act, deficits in time management or in the ability to concentrate, aversion to the task, fear of failure or criticism, misjudgement of the task or of one's own willingness and ability to make an effort.

Procrastination can occur as part of a diagnosable mental disorder, such as depression, anxiety disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; see links). In such cases, treatment of the primary mental disorder is a prerequisite for resolving the work disorder. However, chronic procrastination also impairs mental well-being and can itself become the cause of other psychological stress and symptoms.

Diagnostics

Procrastination is an everyday phenomenon that most people are familiar with. In one study, only 2% of people stated that they never procrastinate.

It is not possible to define when procrastination becomes a problem that should be treated. The threshold for each person is where procrastination leads to suffering and impairment in studies, work or other areas of life. A thorough diagnosis is therefore carried out to analyze the individual factors that trigger and maintain procrastination, as well as the areas in which there are deficits. In addition to self-observation, standardized questionnaires are also used for this purpose. You can complete these questionnaires for yourself in our self-test on this page.

Treatment

Learning and systematically practicing new work habits is a central component of our treatment services. The following components have proven their worth:

•     Structuring work behavior
•     Setting realistic goals
•     Creating realistic plans
•     Dealing with sources of distraction and negative feelings
•     Establishing a reward system
•     Restructuring thoughts that promote procrastination

We offer professional help for students and members of the University of Münster in the form of individual and group treatments. The aim is to improve self-control using cognitive behavioral therapy methods. You can find out how pronounced your procrastination behavior is in our German self-test.

You can find out more about our treatment options here.