Procrastination or the ‘act of delaying or postponing something’ can be traced back all the way to Rome in the first century when a statesman named Cicero tried to convince the Roman Senate to unite against Mark Antony, fearing that war was imminent. Yet the Senate procrastinated out of fear and Rome was thrown into chaos. Another famous example would be Leonardo DaVinci who completed only 20 paintings in his life, having spent 16 years on the Mona Lisa not due to perfectionism but due to procrastination. It was reported that he often spent many hours doodling in his notebooks much like what most people do today. Victor Hugo, the author of ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’, went to extreme lengths to avoid procrastination; including stripping down naked and having his servant bring his clothes back after a couple of hours so that he would be forced to stay indoors and finish his book.
The above examples, when considered from a psychological perspective, appear to stem from either a fear of failure or lack of value. Kool et al. (2013) found that procrastination increases when the task is difficult or unpleasant. When the effort put in is more, there are greater losses to be had if faced with failure. Failure can damage self-image and lead to poor performances in future tasks. So, in order to protect their self-image; procrastination can serve as a way to justify the outcome of a task. For example, if an individual can complete a task successfully even after procrastinating, they can say that they have the ability to perform under pressure. And if the task is not completed, they can attribute the failure to procrastination (Ferrari et al. 1995, 2001).
Procrastination can also occur when individuals feel that the task to be completed lacks value, i.e., they do not benefit from it intrinsically or extrinsically (Rozental, 2017). This can be attributed to the self-determination theory which emphasises the need for motivation and autonomy among others, in order to grow psychologically (Deci & Ryan, 1995). A study done by Fries et al. (2009) with over 200 undergraduate students revealed that they would be more likely to procrastinate on tasks assigned to them rather than on tasks fulfilling to them personally which they felt they had more autonomy over. This translates into being one of the reasons why academic procrastination is so rampant as feelings of self-determination are quite low during most studying periods (Grund, Schmid & Fries, 2015).
In short, procrastination has and continues to affect most people even today. In order to minimise its damaging effect, care should be taken to become self-aware and tackle the crux of the problem in order to increase productivity.
