Procrastination is a universal phenomenon which is defined as a voluntary tendency to postpone planned, necessary and important tasks despite the potentially negative consequences that ensue.

Postponing a task is not always procrastination : sometimes, when it is reasonable, it facilitates the achievement of objectives. This is the case, for example, of postponing one activity to increase the duration of another, considered more important.

It is as if the procrastinator was responding to his most immediate needs instead of meeting its most important needs. Research has shown that tasks postponed by the procrastinator were tasks deemed unpleasant or whose reward was non-existent or difficult to see.

This is a real conflict between what the individual feels he has to do and what the individual actually does.

Procrastination is a very common phenomenon: it is estimated that 80 to 90% of students engage in behaviors related to procrastination. It is about an hour of procrastination each day, on average.

Another study showed that about 20% of the western population is affected by some form of chronic procrastination. 

It is now recognized that procrastination is a failure of self-regulation leading to poor performance as well as a noticeable decrease in well-being. It is also associated with high levels of stress, anxiety, trough, low academic results as well as low life satisfaction.

Nguyen and his team found an association between procrastination and lower earnings, shorter tenure and higher risk of unemployment. Extreme and persistent procrastination is consistently associated with poor physical and mental health.

Many authors have highlighted a number of links between procrastination and character traits, cerebral areas, and behaviors.

Lack of energy. Procrastination is strongly associated in individuals with a lack of energy and physical expenditure.

Sex and loneliness. Men tend to procrastinate more than women, as do young people more than older people, single people more than people in a relationship. Procrastinators seem less well integrated than others in their social and professional life.

Deadline. Procrastinators tend to procrastinate more when deadlines (or deadlines) approach to minimize emotions like shame, guilt, or regret.

perfectionism. In education, it seems that procrastinators are surprisingly more perfectionists than non-procrastinators. They are also less interested in their studies which they consider to be of low value.

Several models have been proposed to explain the psychological mechanisms of procrastination.

The researcher Sirois and his team proposed a hypothesis based on the cognitive leak. Procrastinators’ cognitive control systems are said to be failing, which is why they tend to prioritize immediate emotions. Researchers have shown that the activity of the prefrontal cortex is inversely correlated with procrastination, while the limbic system, involved in responses to emotional stimuli, is positively correlated with such behavior.

pessimism and anticipation of the future. Procrastinating behavior is also linked to the parahippocampal cortex, which has already been shown to be involved in episodic memory and emotional stimuli. This discovery made it possible to consider the hypothesis that procrastinators tend to negatively anticipate future events, which pushes them to choose the immediate rewards through behaviors rooted in the present.

Decision making. Procrastinator behavior has been associated with the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which is a key region for exploring possibilities before decision making. Perhaps this would explain why procrastinators are often people with difficulty making decisions.

Recently several authors have highlighted the inability of procrastinators to estimate the future consequences of their actions in general. Like people with episodic amnesia, their ability to imagine anticipatory scenarios in the future greatly influences their decision in the present. This ability is in fact essential to facilitate the links between the setting of objectives, the means implemented to achieve them and the value of these objectives once achieved.

Impulsivity and sensitivity to the passage of time. Numerous studies have shown the link between procrastination and impulsiveness. More recently, it has been argued by several authors (Ferrari, Diaz-Morales, Sirois) that procrastinators suffer from increased sensitivity to time and deadlines. This peculiarity anchors them more in the present and leads them to adopt behaviors that harm their future interests. Like impulsiveness, this trait would be written in the genes.