From: Health, Personal By Bevans on Thursday, July 05, 2007

I found this list of 10 Things to Know About Procrastination from a well-respected psychology web site. As I was reading it, more and more I was saying "yea, this is definitely me".

To pad out this post, I'm just going to cut-and-paste some excerpts that I think are particularly relevant to me.

• They don't pay bills on time. They miss opportunities for buying tickets to concerts. They don't cash gift certificates or checks. They file income tax returns late. (Oh shit, my taxes!)
• "Telling someone who procrastinates to buy a weekly planner is like telling someone with chronic depression to just cheer up," insists Dr. Ferrari.
• Procrastinators drink more than they intend to—a manifestation of generalized problems in self-regulation. (I've always suspected that this was true, which is one of the reasons why I don't drink.)
• They distract themselves as a way of regulating their emotions such as fear of failure.
• One of the types: Avoiders, who may be avoiding fear of failure or even fear of success, but in either case are very concerned with what others think of them; they would rather have others think they lack effort than ability.
• Just over the course of a single academic term, procrastinating college students had such evidence of compromised immune systems as more colds and flu, more gastrointestinal problems. And they had insomnia. (Oh yea, I've definitely got the insomnia.)
• Procrastination has a high cost to others as well as oneself; it shifts the burden of responsibilities onto others, who become resentful. Procrastination destroys teamwork in the workplace and private relationships.

Well, that's about half the article right there. But the rest is definitely interesting too, and worth a read.

UPDATE: I just found another great article on the same site, called Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature. And if any of you out there ever visit Digg, you'll probably notice that I just get a lot of this stuff from there.