Procrastination in society is getting worse and scientists are finally getting around to figuring out how and why, reports the AP.
After 10 years of research on a project that was only supposed to take five years, a Canadian industrial psychologist found in a giant study that not only is procrastination on the rise, it makes people poorer, fatter and unhappier.
… In 1978, only about 5 percent of the American public thought of themselves as chronic procrastinators. Now it’s 26 percent, Steel said.
And why not? There are so many fun ways to kill time — TVs in every room, online video, Web-surfing, cell phones, video games, iPods and Blackberries.
At work, e-mail, the Internet and games are just a click away, making procrastination effortless, Steel said.
Psychologist William Knaus, who has written several self-help books on fighting procrastination, said he found it harder to wean chronic procrastinators from the habit of delaying than to wean alcoholics from booze. Knaus mentioned one businessman who spent 40 hours of delay time to avoid five minutes of work.
Comments
@ 13:17
“not only is procrastination on the rise, it makes people poorer, fatter and unhappier.”
Perhaps, it is the work that is being avoided that is making people unhappy. If the work one has to do is enjoyable then why procrastinate? Perhaps procrastination will disappear as soon as we move away from a wage labor lifestyle.
@ 10:41
It is natural for any system to remain at its lowest energy level There must be motivators (values) to drive into energy spend mode.
@ 12:45
These finding are not surprising.
As rats in a deviously designed rat race, people are merely performing in the manner in which they have been programmed to perform over the past 50 years. It’s no accident that TV earned its moniker ‘The Boob Tube’ back in the 60′s. Electronics offer feedback that makes participation in ‘ the loop’ addictive and virtually unavoidable in a culture of herds.
Haven’t we evolved into a race of pseudo workers anyway?
Most of what passes for office work these days is merely glorified and bloated bureaucracy .
Electronics in most offices are simply an extension of pseudo work- allowing us to mask the waste of time with procedural machinations .
The experience is so mind and body numbing by day it’s hardly surprising that so many feel the urge to ‘relax’ from it all with a nice three hour stretch of TV or Internet surfing by night !
So the only real workers in society may be the folks soldering those electronic gadgets for us to use and abuse. And for that, they earn a bowl of rice a day.
Modern Westerners are all merely killing time between their first day at work and when they retire- at which point they can put their feet up and rest from all the non-work they’ve done
Modern electronic based procrastination is simply another way to secure one’s job- as the early finishers often end up picking up the slack for the procrastinators.
I speak from personal experience on both sides of the equation.
So what’s the solution?
Why don’t thought leaders and industrialists of today deliver on the promise that the technologists at the turn of the 20th Century made to society in the first place? Efficiency through electronics should result in more leisure time for all, and not what it has resulted in- more pseudo-work that leads to more procrastination for all.
Lest we place too much blame on electronics- procrastination has always been a favored trick of the sly office worker. Electronics have simply made this waste – more efficient.