Jiacong Wu

Julie Johnson

Writing 2 WP2

30 May 2021

Procrastination Literature Review

Have you ever started a large project right before the deadline? Procrastination has

become one of the most severe problems faced by a large population. According to Roman Perm,

a psychology doctor, “Procrastination is a form of self-regulation failure characterized by the

irrational delay of tasks despite potentially negative consequences” (Prem et al.). Many people

suffer from the guilt and anxiety caused by procrastination, but they cannot eliminate it, and they

procrastinate to solve procrastination. Many articles and web pages discuss how procrastinators

think and how to minimize the adverse effects caused by procrastination. Every source explains

their perspectives, but the only way to know a concept the best is to read through as many stands

as possible to have a general and relatively unbiased view about procrastination. By combining

five sources and analyzes how the sources deliver the essential information to their intended

audiences, this literature review provides a holistic view of the topic, procrastination, so that

people can choose what to believe among all the sources.

Jayson Moran expressed his idea about how procrastinators think in his own blog, “6

Types of Procrastinators and how they think.” He divided all procrastinators into six groups and

described all types independently. In his blog, the “warrior,” “perfectionist,” and “overdoers” are

all afraid of a particular bad result that the difficult task will bring them like “perfectionists”

think that they fail if they fail to do this difficult task perfectly(Moran). There are also types of

procrastinators, in Moran’s definition, motivated by boredom and frustration. They either think
the task is boring or mundane, so they cannot see the meaning of doing the job they do not like.

Therefore they prefer to do the tedious tasks as late as possible. One last type is the “crisis

makers,” who think they will perform better in the task if there is pressure on time, pushing them

forward. This blog is on a self-established website, which means that it only describes the

author’s own opinion about procrastination. The author, Jayson Moran, is a coaching

psychologist helping professionals and entrepreneurs increase their impact by helping them

understand themselves better. Hence, the audience of this blog is only the professionals and

entrepreneurs who are interested in improving themselves. Even if Moran is a professional

psychologist, his article can still be inadequate or biased because it can only represent his own

point of view. Also, his article can only represent his own opinion about procrastination, as he

wrote this article entirely himself, and he did not cite any sources in this blog.

While a blog may be biased or inaccurate, a peer-reviewed article can provide the

academic audience with a more credible and profound research result about procrastination. Ted

O’Donoghue and Matthew Rabin wrote a research paper, “Choice and Procrastination,” and their

peer-reviewed article scientifically proved that “providing a nonprocrastinator additional options

can induce procrastination, and a person may procrastinate worse pursuing important goals than

unimportant ones”(O'Donoghue and Rabin 121). The authors built a new model explaining the

reasoning and logic behind their research, the relationship between choices and procrastination,

scientifically. In the latter part of the article, there are mathematical proofs of all the hypotheses

they mentioned. They also used many academic terminologies and formulas, like “perception-

perfect strategy” and “bata-worthwhile,” making the article more credible(O'Donoghue and

Rabin 130). Scholars in the field of psychology are the target audience for the paper, as they can

fully understand the content, and they may use the result for other research topics. However, this
paper is hardly understandable for the general audience, and the topic is too narrow and specific

to help procrastinators solve problems caused by procrastination.

The academic peer-reviewed article is designed only for researchers in the psychology

field to understand, but TED talk provides the general audience a chance to know and understand

procrastination. Tim urban, one of the Internet’s most popular writers, gave the audience a vivid

speech on TED talk in February 2016 about procrastination, named “Inside the mind of a master

procrastinator.” Urban used his own anecdote to illustrate how procrastination ruined his life. He

also mentioned a humorous analogy of a procrastinator’s brain. He says that there is a “rational

decision-maker” in both procrastinator and nonprocrastinator’s brains, but procrastinator also has

an “instant gratification monkey” in the brain who only knows about ease and fun. The “instant

gratification monkey” usually makes procrastinators’ decisions. However, when it approaches

the deadline, a “panic monster” will come and let the “rational decision-maker” take the

lead(Urban). As a speech, it has conventions like fun jokes to interact with the audience, and

elaborated PowerPoint with vivid, impressive graphs help to illustrate his thesis. This source is

friendly to the general audience. Unlike a tedious and demanding research paper, the TED talk is

much more fun to watch, providing a more extensive audience population with information about

procrastination. Psychological scholars are not the only ones who suffer from procrastination, so

it is good to have such a fun TED talk to let people know more about how procrastinators think.

Unlike the three sources mentioned above, the web page, “10 Scientifically Proven Tips

for Beating Procrastination,” focuses on guiding people to solve and overcome the impact of

procrastination instead of informing the audience what procrastination is and how procrastinators

think(Vanessa). Like the title says, the exigence, “an occasion carries with a sense of urgency

and promise,” of this web page is to provide readers with ten useful tips for procrastinators to
overcome procrastination and manage their time wisely(National Council of Teachers of

English). Every tip is short in length and is in the format of subtitles followed by explanations.

There are tips like “start today” and “make a bet,” which are instructive imperative sentences.

This instructive tone makes it more credible, and the reader might have a sense of belief that if

they follow the instruction, they will successfully eliminate procrastination. For this article, the

audience is no longer people who want to know more about procrastination. Instead, the

audience is people who are currently suffering from procrastination and seeking help from the

internet. The article is concise, and the ten tips are very striking as subtitles, so readers looking

for help can easily find what they want.

Not all sources are criticizing procrastination. Lisa M. Zarick and Robert Stonebraker

think procrastination is a “logical behavior within a rational choice framework,” even if

sometimes it is inefficient(Zarick and Stonebraker 211). They collected data about college

students and found out that males are more likely to procrastinate than females, but there is no

significant difference in the paper quality. As a result, they think that procrastination is not

something that has to be eliminated. They believe that procrastination may not be the best

strategy for facing a large project, but procrastinating will not really affect our academic or

professional behavior. “I’ll Do It Tomorow the Logic of Procrastination” is a peer-review article

with data evidence supporting their result. The purpose of this article is to provide the public a

new idea, as the majority of people who know about procrastination regards it as a bad habit. If

this is a blog, probably no one will believe their claim because it challenges the popular

perspective. However, this is a peer-reviewed article with evidence and proofs, making

audiences believe in their statement.

 This literature review not only included knowledge about procrastination from both

academic and non-academic articles but also provides readers with a counterargument that is

different from the popular view. The five sources in different genres describe procrastination

with entirely different perspectives and with their own purposes. The ability to distinguish

trustworthy information, not only about procrastination, is more needed nowadays in this digital

era, so when we learn about a new thing, reading multiple sources and judging what we should

believe is essential. Let’s see things in various dimensions, starting tomorrow.

 Work Cited

Moran, Jayson. “Resolve Procrastination l Motivational Business Psychologist.” JAYSON

MORAN COACHING, 14 Apr. 2021, jaysonmoran.com/2021/04/12/procrastination-why-

we-do-it/.

National Council of Teachers of English. "Rhetorical Situation." College Composition and

Communication. 2010. Gauchospace.

O'Donoghue, T., and M. Rabin. “Choice and Procrastination.” The Quarterly Journal of

Economics, vol. 116, no. 1, 2001, pp. 121–160., doi:10.1162/003355301556365.

Prem, Roman, et al. “Procrastination in Daily Working Life: A Diary Study on Within-Person

Processes That Link Work Characteristics to Workplace Procrastination.” Frontiers,

Frontiers, 7 June 2018, www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01087/full.

Urban, Tim, director. Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator. TED,

www.ted.com/talks/tim_urban_inside_the_mind_of_a_master_procrastinator.

Loder, Vanessa. “10 Scientifically Proven Tips for Beating Procrastination.” Forbes, Forbes

Magazine, 26 Apr. 2016, www.forbes.com/sites/vanessaloder/2016/04/15/10-

scientifically-proven-tips-for-beating-procrastination/?sh=43826dc6296a.

Zarick, Lisa M., and Robert Stonebraker. “I'll Do It Tomorrow: The Logic of Procrastination.”

College Teaching, vol. 57, no. 4, 2009, pp. 211–215., doi:10.1080/87567550903218687.