J. Roth Study Skills 94—Marking a Textbook

MAIN CAUSES OF PROCRASTINATION Marked Example

According to Albert Ellis and William Knaus, the three main causes of procrastination are "self-downing," low frustration tolerance, and hostility.*

Self-downing refers to putting yourself down-telling yourself you can't do it or you're not smart enough. When you don't complete tasks successfully or on time, you may begin to doubt your ability to succeed. If you set unrealistic goals such as planning to study the entire weekend or getting an A in every class, you may begin to worry about whether you can really achieve them. This can result in procrastination or avoidance caused by self-downing.

A second cause of procrastination is low frustration tolerance. If you're easily frustrated and tend to give up or have trouble starting on a task when it appears to be difficult or too time consuming, you may be experiencing low frustration tolerance. You may be thinking, "It's too hard." Writing a 20-page term paper for your Political Science class, for example, may be extremely difficult for you. The task may appear to be too difficult or require too much of your time, and just thinking about it may become a very unpleasant experience. Your low tolerance for frustration may lead you to put off this difficult task and do something else instead. The next time you decide to work on the paper, you may experience even more feelings of anxiety and panic because you have even less time available to complete the paper. If this pattern persists, you eventually may feel that you can't possibly complete the paper on time and decide not to do it at all.

Ellis and Knaus's third cause of procrastination is hostility toward others. You may put off doing that term paper because of your anger toward your professor. Comments like "He just expects too much of our class" or "She didn't even assign us that paper until 2 weeks before the end of the semester" or "That assignment is so unfair" are indicative of angry feelings toward your instructors. If you're angry at one of your instructors for giving you a difficult assignment, because you received a poor test grade, or for embarrassing you in class, you may find it unpleasant to work on the assignment for that class. Your angry feelings can in fact increase your feelings of frustration about the task. Together, these feelings lead to procrastination.

* Albert Ellis and William J. Knaus, Overcoming Procrastination (New York: Signet, 1977), p. 16.

Van Blerkom, Dianna L. Orientation to College Learning. Belmont: Thomson, 2004: 69-70.