What The Hell is Procrastination Anyway?

The Thief of Time

Procrastination is familiar and interesting but also puzzling. Although it is generally perceived as harmful and irrational, recent studies suggest that most of us procrastinate occasionally and many of us procrastinate persistently. Not even saints are immune:

Saint Augustine records in his Confessions how, after years of sexual hedonism, he vowed to return to Christianity and prayed for chastity and continence—“only not yet.”

Although he “abhorred” his current way of living and “earnestly” wanted to change his course, he kept deferring any change until “tomorrow.”2


What, exactly, is procrastination?

According to one simple and familiar characterization, procrastination involves simply putting things off until the last minute. But some people do this intentionally, maintaining that they do their best work under pressure.

Taking the simple, familiar characterization of procrastination as their starting point, some psychologists have explored the question of whether procrastination improves or reduces quality of work and quality of life. Prominent studies suggest that, in general, the strategy of leaving things until the last minute is not a good one—the agent pays a steep price in the form of reduced well-being and shoddy work.3

But does this really get to the core of the problem of procrastination? In a unique classic essay on procrastination, psychologists Maury Silver and John Sabini suggest that the answer is no.4 According to their view, we do not discover that procrastination is a problem by discovering that it has bad consequences. Rather, proper analysis of the concept reveals that delay does not count as procrastination unless it is “irrational.”

Taking this as their starting point, they then look into the factors that prompt or support irrational delaying.

Here, philosophical distinctions and debate concerning reason and rationality become relevant. Presumably, a person does not count as a procrastinator simply because she performs an action later than it should have been performed. For instance, given the information available, she may have had very good reason to believe that she should act later rather than sooner. In this case, she need not count as irrational, even if she failed to do what she had most reason to do.

Drawing on a common philosophical conception of irrationality, one might characterize procrastination as acting later than one thinks one should. Before accepting this characterization, one must carefully think through the following questions:

Is there room for a subtle form of procrastination that works precisely by influencing one’s thinking about when something ought to be done?

For example, can procrastination take the form of discouraging one from forming any clear judgment about the need to act promptly, perhaps by distracting one’s attention away from certain inconvenient truths (or possibilities), such as that one will be even more tired tonight than one is now?

What if one is not only distracted from inconvenient truths but also develops a rationalization for delaying (for example, “I really must watch this DVD so that I can return it to Maria promptly”)?
Can this still count as procrastinating?
If so, must the rationalization be interpreted as self-deception?
Otherwise put, must it be true that, on some level, one thinks delaying is uncalled for?

Another thing to consider in relation to the idea that procrastination involves acting later than one thinks one should is the possibility of procrastinating with respect to an action that one commits to against one’s better judgment. Suppose someone forms the intention to tell a lie even though he believes he should not do so. He can, it seems, procrastinate with respect to his akratic intention, but it is not clear that procrastination of this sort can be squared with the idea that procrastination involves acting later than one thinks one should.



Perhaps more promising is the idea, taken for granted by some psychologists, that procrastination involves irresoluteness, which is possible even with respect to an akratic intention. In being irresolute, one violates a prior intention. But this alternative characterization of procrastination might also be too restrictive. For it seems that there could be a form of procrastination that works precisely by discouraging one from forming any specific intention about when to act.5

Evasiveness of this sort is particularly easy to get drawn into when vagueness concerning when one must get started on goal-directed actions makes it possible to interpret oneself as having a goal (such as retiring with enough funds to live comfortably), though one has not acted on the goal or even yet formed any plan for realizing it.

The possibility of vague goals raises questions concerning the connection between procrastination and hypocrisy, as well as questions concerning procrastination and self-management problems associated with the fact that our choices are spread out over time.

Based on the idea that actions speak louder than words, it might be suggested that procrastination is nothing but hypocrisy, understood as mere lip service to a goal one does not genuinely have. Traditional economic models of choice suggest that preferences (broadly construed so as to capture all of the agent’s values) are revealed in (informed) choice. This suggests that when an agent puts off an action too long relative to her proclaimed preferences, this betrays a mismatch between her proclaimed preferences and her true preferences.

Recent quasi-economic models have made room for genuine procrastination by showing that there are ways in which global preferences (preferences over extended courses of action) can fail to be revealed in choice. If, for example, an agent experiences preference reversals as a result of discounting, or has intransitive preferences, her preferences concerning her current options can lead her to follow a course of action that she finds unacceptable and invariably ranks below another available course of action that she finds acceptable.

Consider an agent who values saving for a comfortable retirement but also values the goods she can get from current spending. At every point in time, the agent may rank never saving below saving every week and rank saving every week below spending this week and saving next week. Given these preferences, the agent can be led to constantly put off saving and so end up having never saved, which she invariably ranks below having saved every week.6


The introduction of preference reversals and intransitive preferencesraises issues concerning the challenges associated with effective self-management in the face of fragmented and temporally extended agency. As such, a deep understanding of procrastination will require some reflection on personal identity and on what it takes to be a functional enduring agent.

Is procrastination the product of compromised agency, involving a breakdown of will?
Does it betray a lack of identification with one’s future self?

If the latter, does the assumption that procrastination is irrational involve a commitment to the normative force of the dictates of prudence and a rejection of pure instrumentalism about practical reason?
Is procrastination just a manifestation of the vice of imprudence?
Are there dimensions of procrastination that can be illuminated by (or that can illuminate) ethical theory, particularly virtue theory?


Like questions about the nature of procrastination, questions about coping with the problem are both interesting and important. Consider the following:
If procrastination involves a breakdown of will, is the solution the building of greater willpower or, instead, less reliance on the will in achieving one’s long-term goals?
Are social and legal pressures aimed at reducing procrastination unacceptably paternalistic?
Do we have a right to access legally enforceable precommitment devices that can keep us on course, and do those in power have the right to provide or impose upon us these devices at our expense and for our own good?



The first part is primarily concerned with analyzing procrastination or uncovering its sources.
Understanding the Impulse to Procrastinate
We present procrastination as the purest illustration of our propensity to disproportionately value the immediate future. Given our definition of impulses as temporary preferences for smaller, sooner rewards over larger, later rewards, procrastination figures as the most basic impulse.

“Economic Models of Procrastination” relates the leading psychological account of procrastination, to economic models of procrastination and other self-control lapses. Economic modeling illuminates features of self-control lapses that would otherwise remain obscure.

“Is Procrastination Weakness of Will?” considers the hypothesis that procrastination is a species of weakness of will—a practical failing that has received a great deal of philosophical attention. While there are important affinities, procrastination does not fit seamlessly with either the classic or the revisionist account of weakness of will but, instead, is distinctive enough to require an analysis of its own.

“Intransitive Preferences, Vagueness, and the Structure of Procrastination,” resists the idea, mentioned above, that procrastination can be fostered by intransitive preferences and argues that procrastination is more closely tied to familiar explanations of weakness of will.

“Bad Timing,” embarks on the task of cataloging the causes of irrational delay; covers a range of mechanisms that can generate procrastinating behavior, including
- perfectionism,
- wishful thinking, and
- self-deception.


The second part explores the connection between procrastination and imprudence or vice.

“Prudence, Procrastination, and Rationality,” picks up on the idea, mentioned above, that procrastination is tied to preference reversals that result from discounting the value of future well-being and argues that recognizing external reasons is the key to a solid defense of the idea that rationality precludes discounting-induced preference reversals.

“Procrastination and Personal Identity” ties procrastination to a lack of concern for one’s future self and suggests that, so understood, the phenomenon of procrastination undermines certain objections to psychological continuity accounts of personal identity, since many of the objections assume that we invariably have a special concern for our future selves.

“The Vice of Procrastination” casts procrastination as a failure of instrumental rationality and, more specifically, as the “vice of deficiency” corresponding to the virtue of “practical judgment,” which allows for the successful implementation of long-terms plans and policies. Based on this reasoning, it questions the influential view that a purely instrumental conception of rationality is incoherent.


“Virtue for Procrastinators,” connects procrastination with the fact that the value of many important human goods is not simply the sum of the goods they provide at each moment. It sketches a picture of the “fallback virtue” procrastinators sometimes use to overcome their problem and, building on this picture, challenges the Humean idea that instrumental reasoning is all there is to figuring out what to do.

“Procrastination as Vice” suggests that procrastination cannot be understood independently of a rich ethical theory concerning virtue and vice and that ethical theorists can benefit from exploring the complexities of procrastination, which are often papered over for the sake of clean analysis.


The third part is concerned primarily with strategies for coping with procrastination.

“Overcoming Procrastination through Planning,” recommends forming detailed implementation intentions (plans concerning when, where, and how one will perform goal-directed actions) as an easily applicable planning strategy that can help automate goal-directed behavior.

“Coping with Procrastination” focuses on a puzzling but familiar coping strategy that has not yet been analyzed in the literature on procrastination. The strategy involves leveraging control, and, in employing the strategy, we take advantage of the possibility that poor self-control can be alocal trait rather than a robust character trait.

“Resisting Procrastination: Kantian Autonomy and the Role of the Will” explores procrastination in the context o

Hello Henry,

I read your interesting post. The text shows some numbers which I think are notes, but I miss their explanations/reference. Could you please add them?

Thanks in advance,

Frits van Zanten
The Netherlands

Hey Frits,

Just added the references.

If you need anything else let me know.


Just added another Procrastination essay here:
Understanding the Impulse to Procrastinate

Thanks a lot, Henry.

That was a quick response. No procrastination here ;-)

Frits