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Jill Provost on Mar 8, 2011 at 2:06PM
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Constantly trying to push off your work? You’re not alone. Fifteen to 20 percent of adults are chronic procrastinators. According to a 2007 study published in the journal Psychological Bulletin, procrastinators have less confidence in themselves and less faith that they can actually complete a task. It’s a habit we employ in order to avoid what’s stressing us out. The catch-22 is that avoidance prolongs anxiety and reinforces our fears surrounding the challenge, making it all the more impossible to accomplish. "The old saying is true: 'Whether you believe you can or believe you can't, you're probably right'," says the study’s lead researcher, Piers Steel, Ph.D., author of The Procrastination Equation. The only way to face our fears is by tackling them head-on. Researchers at Stanford have found that the ability to stay with a task comes down to your beliefs about willpower. If you think of it as something with an enormous reserve, you can go on forever.
