By Andrea Hargraves 
Against the scourge of procrastination, New Zealand researchers recommend sticking to deadlines…
You have an arm-sized to-do list, ten tasks to do, plenty of appointments to set…but you say to yourself “Can you wait until tomorrow”? Of course: I fell into the abyss of procrastination. The problem: When you put off work “until later” you end up feeling overwhelmed.
How do you overcome procrastination? This is the question that researchers at the University of Otago (New Zealand) tried to answer through a study published in the specialized journal. Economic Survey.
Deadlines increase procrastination
The researchers worked with a group of volunteers who answered an online questionnaire. For some participants, researchers gave one week off; For others, the deadline was one month; For the other volunteers, there was no deadline.
Al-Qaeda? The scientists found that the highest response rate came from people who did not have a fixed deadline. On the contrary, the response rate was lower in the group of volunteers who had one month to participate in the questionnaire.
How do we explain these results? for researchersThe long run allows for procrastination and forgetfulness: the concept of urgency no longer exists. On the other hand, when no deadline is set, participants are more likely to imagine that there is an implicit deadline about which they don’t know, resulting in the task not being pushed back to a later time.Advice to apply on a daily basis!
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