Why do Business Owners Procrastinate ?

Why do We Procrastinate?

There can be many hypotheses and theories about anything and everything. There can be many suppositions about why we do certain things, like procrastinate. However, to understand the truth of the matter, we have to refer to scientific studies.

A study done almost ten years ago revealed that almost every college student (80 to 95% of them) procrastinated regularly, especially in regards to assignments and coursework. An earlier study showed that even PhD. candidates procrastinated often, resulting in failures to complete their dissertations. In yet another study, it was found that, at the beginning of the semester, procrastinators showed less stress and suffered fewer illnesses than did non-procrastinators. This is good, but as the semester wore on and final exams loomed, the stress and illnesses among procrastinators rose dramatically.

It was found that the overwhelming reason for such behaviors was that of cognitive distortions–such things like over-generalization, jumping to conclusions, always being right, labelling, discounting positive events, and others. The results to students were that they

• Overestimated the time that remained to complete tasks.
• Overestimated the level of motivation they would have in the future.
• Underestimated the time required to complete a task or activity.
• Mistakenly assumed that they needed to think or feel a certain way in order to properly work on a project.

There is no information on why these studies were focused on college and university students. One plausible explanation is that younger people are not usually constrained by time parameters (certainly not to a great extent) and that any procrastination could be attributed to “being a child”. Older adults (such as business people) may have “outgrown” this tendency or been retrained to time management techniques.

Regardless of age or social standing, procrastination is not considered to be a serious condition. A professor of psychology at a Chicago university did estimate that 20% of adults were chronic or habitual procrastinators, leading them to paying bills late and filing tax returns late. In the business environment, this can mean not meeting deadlines for projects, or arriving late at important meetings or conferences. Although there can be serious repercussions to these activities, they are usually not thought to be life-threatening.

According to another psychologist, non-procrastinators were generally very conscientious. Such people also tended to be highly self-disciplined, persistent and personal responsible–all good qualities to acquire or maintain, especially if you are in business. Thus, if you do find yourself prey to cognitive distortions–the root cause of most procrastination–or exhibit procrastination for any other reason, then it behooves you to get therapy to eradicate these behaviors.

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