Mood & Wellbeing · 11 questions

Procrastination

The gap between intending to start and actually starting. Delay on purpose is a different creature.

About this test

Piers Steel's temporal motivation theory treats procrastination as a gap between intention and action, pulled by expectancy, value, impulsiveness, and time. The Pure Procrastination Scale and related work separate delay from the distress of knowing you meant to begin. Procrastination is not the same as rest, and it is not laziness as a moral category. These items are original. A high score means the gap was familiar.

Question 1 of 11

What this test asks
  1. I sincerely plan to start, and then the start moves to 'later' without a new reason.
  2. I do smaller, easier tasks while the one I intended sits untouched.
  3. I miss deadlines I cared about because I started too late, not because the deadline was a surprise.
  4. When I say I will do it tonight, I usually do.
  5. The closer a task comes to feeling like a judgment of me, the more I postpone it.
  6. I wait for a feeling of readiness that rarely arrives on its own.
  7. I can begin a dull task while I still do not feel like it.
  8. I tell myself there will be a better window, and the better window is how the delay continues.
  9. After I postpone, I feel worse about the task than I did before.
  10. I underestimate how long a start will hurt, and overestimate how long it will take.
  11. Rest, for me, is chosen. It is not what happens because I fled a task.