A Quasi-Meta-Analytical Reveiw of Procrastination
Abstract
This paper examines the extent to which undergraduate students recognize procrastination as an impediment to successful completion of undergraduate studies, and subsequent predisposition to economic beneficial wellbeing. The author of this paper asked a group of undergraduate students to take an individual introspection and identify the salient factors that would negatively impact success and enhanced livelihood in their respective individual lives. Paradoxically, 92 percent of a sample of 60 undergraduate students indicated that procrastination was one factor that would impede successful completion of the program. Thus, the author of this paper was motivated to examine the phenomena of procrastination in an effort to generate reasonable curiosity toward strategies that would be deployed to address the potential negative impact of procrastination. Aristotle’s account of akrasia, which is acting against one’s better judgment provides the classical framework of procrastination [1]. Procrastinators know what they ought to do yet fail to act, illustrating the gap between knowledge and action. This contradicts Socrates’ claim that no one knowingly does wrong [2].Existential philosophers see procrastination as avoidance of human finitude. argues that authentic existence requires confronting our limited time; delay becomes a flight from this reality [3]. describes procrastination as bad faith, a self-deception that denies our radical freedom [4]. Interprets chronic postponement as despair, which implies failing to become one’s true self [5].
Modern debates on temporal discounting ask whether caring less about the future is rational. Examine conflicts between present and future selves, showing how procrastination illustrates a breakdown of diachronic rationality [6,7]. Further, from a virtue-ethics view, procrastination signals a lack of prudence and fortitude (Aristotle,4th century BCE). Kantian ethics treats persistent delay in duties as a failure of the will to act from moral law [8]. Questions of moral culpability arise when procrastination is driven by anxiety or structural pressures [9]. Eudaimonic traditions emphasize living in accordance with reason. Chronic procrastination obstructs eudaimonia, which is human flourishing, while Stoic philosophy would frame it as misalignment with rational nature [2].