Procrastination

Everyone puts off or delays doing things at various times in their lives and there are many reasons why people procrastinate. For example, students might procrastinate because they perceive the task as too difficult, irrelevant to their career goals, or less important than their other commitments. Procrastination is rarely about laziness and it is often associated with perfectionism. There is often an underlying cause which may or may not need to be addressed.

Need Help?

Make an appointment with a Student Services counsellor who can help you if you are having problems dealing with procrastination

Additional Resources

• The Centre for Clinical Interventions has a very useful online self-help workbook called Put off Procrastinating!
• Procrastination Self-Assessment from Oregon State University
• University of Sydney, Learn to Deal with Procrastination
• Yamauchi KT 1987, ‘Procrastination: ten ways to "do it now"' (PDF* 28KB) in P.A.Keller and S.R. Heyman (Eds), Innovations in clinical practice: a source book, Vol. 6. Professional Resource Exchange, Sarasota.
• Additionally the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota has created the Study Guides and Strategies web site that contains information on avoiding procrastination.

*This file is in Portable Document Format (PDF) which requires the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader. A free copy of Acrobat Reader may be obtained from Adobe. Users who are unable to access information in PDF should contact Student Services, telephone +61 4531 5308 to obtain this information in an alternative format.