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Procrastination Bad for Health
April 20, 2015
Strength lies in differences, not in similarities.
-Stephen Covey

In his Fast Company article, "Procrastination Is Literally Killing You," Eric Jaffe reports that procrastination is bad for your health:

"It's bad enough that procrastination can ruin your work day — an earful from the boss for blowing a deadline, say, or just a later evening at the office than you planned.  But the effects of habitual delay can infect you at the physical level as well as the professional.  Procrastination has been linked with headaches, digestive trouble, and colds or the flu, and a new study adds something far worse to the mix: heart disease.

"Psychologist Fuschia Sirois of Bishop's University reports a significant connection between the trait procrastination and hypertension and cardiovascular disease among a sample of nearly 800 people in Canada and the United States.  The finding held true even controlling for factors such as age, ethnicity, and key personality traits.  One likely reason for the link, she argues, is that procrastinators cope with the stress of heart illness in especially damaging ways."

Contributed by Kirsten Haugen





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Comments (1)

Displaying 1 Comment
Rita Johnston · April 20, 2015
Early Childhood Australia
Sydney, NSW, Australia


It concerns me that when researchers find connections between two things - in this case procrastination and heart disease - others immediately describe the connection as a causal link. I work in early childhood mental health and see procrastination as more likely to be a symptom of unresolved early childhood stress or toxic stress. These children grow into adults whose bodies do not manage stress well and tend to over respond to all stresses, both large and small. Procrastination might be seen as the 'freeze' part of the flight/fight/freeze response. We also know that increased heart disease is strongly linked to early childhood stress. My hypothesis would be that people procrastinate and have heart disease as a result of too much stress in early childhood. The unfounded causal connection described in your summary of this article can lead to people trying to deal with procrastination on a surface level for better health when what is really needed is more in depth treatment for early childhood trauma and adult stress management. I imagine that trying to just 'not procrastinate' would most often end in failure leaving already vulnerable people feeling like they have yet again failed increasing stress and mental health difficulties, leading to more, not less procrastination.



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