Procrastination - Study Skills. Structured Procrastination. Procrastination: Ten Things To Know. There are many ways to avoid success in life, but the most sure-fire just might be procrastination . Procrastinators sabotage themselves. They put obstacles in their own path. They actually choose paths that hurt their performance. Why would people do that? I talked to two of the world's leading experts on procrastination: Joseph Ferrari, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology at De Paul University in Chicago, and Timothy Pychyl, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.
Neither one is a procrastinator, and both answered my many questions immediately. Twenty percent of people identify themselves as chronic procrastinators. Good and Bad Procrastination. December 2005 The most impressive people I know are all terrible procrastinators. So could it be that procrastination isn't always bad? Most people who write about procrastination write about how to cure it.
But this is, strictly speaking, impossible. There are three variants of procrastination, depending on what you do instead of working on something: you could work on (a) nothing, (b) something less important, or (c) something more important. That's the "absent-minded professor," who forgets to shave, or eat, or even perhaps look where he's going while he's thinking about some interesting question.
That's the sense in which the most impressive people I know are all procrastinators. What's "small stuff? " Good procrastination is avoiding errands to do real work. Good in a sense, at least. Some errands, like replying to letters, go away if you ignore them (perhaps taking friends with them). In fact, it may not be a difference in degree, but a difference in kind.