Procrastination, busyness and bingeing

Abstract

The first inquiry employed repeated surveys and direct observations of procrastinators to question two traditional assumptions about procrastinators—that they are reliable reporters of how they spend workweeks, and that they are not easily observed in the act of procrastinating. The second inquiry tested an intervention for procrastination (helping new faculty find brief, daily sessions in which to write) that proved effective and relatively unaversive. The effectiveness of the intervention helped to confirm the notion that procrastination of a relatively unstructured activity like scholarly writing has at least two central components, bingeing and busyness.