Procrastination Personalities
In Piers Steel’s meta analysis there are 5 personality traits that have a direct correlation to people’s tendency to procrastinate: neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness (how open the person is to new experiences), intelligence/aptitude, conscientiousness.
Thinking about my own behaviour and what happens for me when I procrastinate I can say that I have traits in all of these groups. The trait I have the most commonality with it neuroticism, I identify as a procrastinating perfectionist, which doesn’t actually make sense. Although I am aware that perfection does not actually exist, I expect a lot from myself always and place a lot of internal pressure and expectation on myself before I have even started a task. The concept of ‘good enough is good enough’ is quite alien to me. According to Steel, my expectations of myself may be part of the reason I procrastinate doing certain tasks; if it feels too big and there is too much pressure, people are more likely to procrastinate.
Procrastination and the Pandemic
I also find that I am easily distracted, particularly by social media. I have definitely noticed that my procrastination, scrolling habits and screen time, in general, have increased during the pandemic. This is a predictable outcome of being stuck indoors for months at a time, particularly as a high-risk person who is shielding. I am not the only person who is experiencing this. Exhaustion, poor mental health, incidences of disability and lack of stimulation have all increased during the pandemic. These are also factors that impact procrastination behaviours and executive function in general (Johnson 20201). I find that scrolling is an activity that I can engage with far more easily than reading or even watching TV, particularly when I am feeling unwell. However, it is a time sink. Often I think that I have been scrolling for 10 minutes when really an hour will have passed. I am not entirely sure that scrolling is a total waste of time, as I have learned quite a lot from educators on social media. However, I am curious about how scrolling impacts my procrastination behaviours, particularly with reference to this project.
Picture of a Procrastinator
Steel’s website procrastinus.com offer’s a procrastination quiz that allows participants to view what kind of procrastinator they are and then offers potential solutions to help.
According to the quiz, I am a Master Procrastinator, scoring 77.78 out of 100 for procrastination behaviours. This is something I already knew, but seeing it in black and white like this does leave me feeling a little despondent, despite all the research I have done on this topic so far. I had planned to ask my participants to take the quiz and share their results with me before the interviews, like an informal survey. I have now decided against doing that because:
- Procrastination and shame are already so interlinked, I do not want to make my participants feel worse about it.
- They may be less open to talking about procrastination after taking the quiz and receiving a label on their procrastination behaviour.
- Is it ethical or appropriate for me to categorise students this way? What purpose does it serve?
Upon reflection, I think my personal observations about my participants and where they fit into Steel’s model of procrastination personality traits should also remail private. I was planning to ask them to categorise themselves after taking the quiz, but again, this feels like it might add unneccessary pressure and cause my participants to feel judged rather than supported.
I think one way of circumventing some of the ethical concerns I have around labelling people is to interview people who either self-identify currently as procrastinators, or who previously identified as procrastinators. This way, any possible judgement felt is not coming from me, but from their own assessment of their behaviour.
Bibliography
Johnson, N. (2021). Are you procrastinating more? Blame the pandemic. [online] National Geographic. Available at: <https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/are-you-procrastinating-more-blame-the-pandemic#:~:text=Procrastination%20has%20roots%20in%20our,the%20brain%20vying%20for%20control.&text=%E2%80%9CThe%20pandemic%20has%20caused%20increased,%2C%20leading%20to%20more%20procrastination.%E2%80%9D>
Steel, P. (2007). The Nature of Procrastination: A Meta-analytic and Theoretical Review of Quintessential Self-regulatory Failure. Psychological Bulletin, 133(1), 65–94.