Fascinating Statistics on Procrastination (Based on Research and Surveys)
A lot of research has been done on procrastination, and it has been a major topic of study in the field of psychology.
Most of the statistics in this article about procrastination come from scientific studies, surveys, and research.
There are a lot of statistics about procrastination, and some of them show results that are at odds with each other.
I chose to provide the most fascinating and relevant statistics that will help you better understand this complex phenomenon.
This will mainly take the form of questions and answers.
Prevalence of Procrastination
1. How Common Is Procrastination in the General Population?
Procrastination is fairly common in adults.
Research suggests that 20–25% of adults are considered chronic procrastinators, and about 50% of adults admit they procrastinate from time to time.
2. How Common is Procrastination Among Students?
3. How Much Time Does the Average Person Spend Procrastinating?
A survey in 2015 found that, on average, a person wastes around 218 minutes (three hours and a half) every day procrastinating. This is about 55 days per year.
This means that the average person wastes about 22 percent of his time (excluding sleep time) on unimportant things.
4. What Age Group Procrastinates the Most?
Younger adults tend to procrastinate more than older adults.
A 2016 German study on a sample of 2 527 adults found that procrastination was highest in the 14 to 29 years old.
5. How Many People Admit to Procrastinating?
People admit that they procrastinate to a varying degree; a survey done on 1,000 adults in the UK led to the following results:
- 6% claim they never procrastinate,
- 4% admit to procrastinating rarely,
- 4% do so sometimes,
- 1% do so often,
- 5% procrastinate daily.
6. Percentage of High School Students Who Procrastinate
Procrastination is very common among high school students, and studies show that over 85% of them admit to procrastinating on school assignments.
7. Has Procrastination Increased Across Time?
Yes, research is clearly showing that procrastination in the general population is increasing over time.
In the 1970s, surveys indicated that only 5% of the population admitted to being chronic procrastinators, compared to roughly 20% today. This is a 300% increase in less than four decades.
8. Procrastination in the Workplace
In a survey of 2,219 people, 80% of employees admitted to procrastinating between 1-4 hours daily, compared to 76% of entrepreneurs.
88% of those polled admitted to procrastinating at least one hour per day.
Procrastination Activities
1. Procrastination in Different Life Domains
A study (2018) examined the domains of procrastination in 430 highly educated adults and found the following results:
- 40% reported high procrastination in health behaviors,
- 5% in parenting,
- 1% reported a generalized tendency to procrastinate.
Further findings suggested that 40% of respondents report high procrastination levels in one to three life domains and 25% in four or more life domains.
Furthermore, 14% of participants reported that procrastination affects them the most in health behaviors, 12% in career and education, and 11% in romance and family life.
2. Procrastination and Distractions
A survey analyzing the study habits of 1,500 undergraduate students found that:
- 74% admitted that internet distractions fueled their procrastination,
- 64% admitted to losing their train of thought after responding to a social media alert while studying,
- 14% identified television as the cause of their distractions.
Another study (2000) found that over 90% of college computer users reported that they use email to irrationally delay.
For a more comprehensive explanation of Distractions and Procrastination, read this article.
3. What Activities Do Students Procrastinate on?
Research done on psychology students showed that:
- 46% procrastinate on writing term papers,
- 30% on reading weekly assignments,
- 28% on studying for exams,
- 23% on attendance tasks,
- 11% on administrative tasks,
- 10% on school activities in general.
Causes of Procrastination
1. What causes procrastination?
The following factors have been studied in terms of their effect on procrastination, with interesting results:
Task aversiveness: 50% of people state that their procrastination was due to some task characteristic.
Lack of energy: About 28% of students said that they procrastinated on tasks because they didn’t have enough energy.
Fear of failure: two studies found, respectively, that 16% and 7% of people gave fear of failure as the reason for their procrastination.
Self-confidence: 8% of participants who took part in the study said that they procrastinated because they didn’t have enough confidence in themselves.
Perfectionism: in a 1993 study, only 7% of people reported perfectionism as contributing to their procrastination.
Last-minute excitement: 6.4% of students indicated that they delayed assignments because they liked the excitement and challenges of doing things at the last minute.
Resentment: 5% of students indicated that resentment toward people setting deadlines for them causes them to procrastinate.
Negative Effects of Procrastination
1. How procrastination affects your well-being?
When asked how they felt after procrastinating, over 80% of students reported negative feelings.
Similarly, in an online poll (2003) based on over 7800 participants, 94% of them indicated that procrastination has some negative effect on their happiness, while 17% indicated an extremely negative effect.
2. Does procrastination affect academic performance?
There is compelling evidence that procrastination negatively affects academic performance.
A 2014 study conducted on 777 undergraduate marketing students over a five-year period found that students who submitted their assignments at the last minute received 5% fewer points than those who did so at least 24 hours in advance.
3. How procrastination Affects your finances?
A study found that a single point increase in procrastination, on a 5-point scale, was associated with an approximately $15,000 drop in salary and, on average, 322 fewer days of employment.
4. How Procrastination Affects Your Health?
A survey of over 700 people discovered that people who procrastinate have a 63% higher risk of poor heart health.
A 2016 study on college students found that the psychiatric diagnoses most commonly associated with procrastinators are :
- Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (5%),
- Malingering (5%),
- Generalized Anxiety Disorder (5%).
Procrastination and Other Factors
1. Is Procrastination Genetic?
There is strong evidence that genes have an influence on a person’s tendency to procrastinate.
The extent of genetic influences on procrastination varies across studies. A study published in SAGE Journals found that procrastination is moderately heritable, with 46% of variation attributed to inherited genetic factors. Another study, however, found the correlation to be only 22%.
2. Which Gender Procrastinates More?
A meta-analysis including 102,484 participants showed that men procrastinate slightly more than women, with an effect size of r = 0.042.
Another study discovered a similar (r =.08) correlation between gender and procrastination.
An interesting survey done on college students showed that 60% of the procrastinators were male students.
Conclusion:
These studies and surveys should be interpreted with caution because many of them investigating procrastination produced inconsistent, if not contradictory, results.
On the other hand, most of these studies were done in North America, mostly on college students. So, it should be examined whether their results may be generalized to other populations.
We need to keep an open mind about other studies in this field that may corroborate or contradict some of these results.
We will bring you the most reliable and recent studies on procrastination, so stay tuned.
By Sam David
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