Top Highlights

• Steel ultimately identified four main issues that make procrastination more likely—low confidence in succeeding, task aversiveness, distractibility and impulsiveness, and having goals and rewards be too far off in the future.
• We believe this is crucial, for when we accept ourselves as we really are, rather than as we wish to be, we are most able to act in our best interest and not live at the mercy of procrastination.
• people who fear failure may be living with a set of assumptions that turn striving for accomplishment into a frightening risk. These assumptions are: (1) what I produce is a direct reflection of how much ability I have, and (2) my level of ability determines how worthwhile I am as a person—that is, the higher my ability, the higher my sense of self...
• Procrastination allows people to take comfort in believing that their ability is greater than their performance indicates, perhaps even maintaining the belief that they are brilliant or unlimited in their potential to do well. As long as you procrastinate, you never have to confront the real limits of your ability, whatever those limits are.
• Are you setting standards for yourself that enable you to make progress, or do your standards lead you to become discouraged, frustrated, and stuck?