Habitual procrastination could be sign of serious health problems, study warns

Habit may have some associations with a diverse set of different health outcomes

Habitual procrastination is a sign of deeper health problems like depression, anxiety, disabling pain, and poor sleep quality as well as physical inactivity, according to a new study.

The research, published earlier this month in JAMA Network Open, assessed if students who procrastinate have a greater risk of suffering from poor mental and physical health.

Researchers, including those from Uppsala University in Sweden, recruited 3,525 student participants from eight universities in and around Stockholm and asked them to complete questionnaires every three months for a year between August 19, 2019, and December 15, 2021.

In the study, researchers assessed the students’ self-reported procrastination which was measured using 5 items from the Swedish version of the Pure Procrastination Scale rated on a Likert scale from 1 – very rarely or does not represent me – to 5 – very often or always represents me.

The numbers were then summed to give a total procrastination score ranging from 5 to 25.

Data from the students were then assessed to determine whether procrastination was linked to worse health outcomes 9 months later.

At the follow-up after nine months, 16 self-reported health outcomes of the participants were assessed.

These included mental health problems such as symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress, and disabling pain, including that of the neck and/or upper back, lower back, upper extremities, and lower extremities.

Health outcomes reported by the participants also included unhealthy lifestyle behaviors like poor sleep quality, physical inactivity, tobacco use, cannabis use, alcohol use, and breakfast skipping as well as psychosocial health factors such as loneliness, economic difficulties, and also general health.

The findings suggest higher levels of procrastination are associated with significantly higher symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress about nine months later.

Participants who self-reported higher levels of procrastination were also more likely to report that they had disabling pain in the shoulders or arms, more loneliness and financial difficulties, and worse sleep quality.

The association remained even after considering other factors such as age, gender, previous physical and psychiatric state, as well as parents’ level of education, researchers say.

Citing a limitation of the study, they say the research sample is “not fully representative” of the overall Swedish student population, and so it remains uncertain whether the estimates can be generalised to other populations.

“Furthermore, our measures were collected during the Covid-19 pandemic, which could affect generalizability to other time periods,” the study noted.

Since procrastination is prevalent among university students, researchers say the findings highlight the importance of the habit to enhance the understanding of students’ health.

“Although it seems that intervening in procrastination is unlikely to produce large associations with any specific health outcome, it could possibly produce small associations with a diverse set of different health outcomes,” they wrote in the study.