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upstart writes:

Procrastination may harm your health. Here's what you can do:

The worst procrastinators probably won't be able to read this story. It'll remind them of what they're trying to avoid, psychologist Piers Steel says.

[...] In a study of thousands of university students, scientists linked procrastination to a panoply of poor outcomes, including depression, anxiety and even disabling arm pain. "I was surprised when I saw that one," says Fred Johansson, a clinical psychologist at Sophiahemmet University in Stockholm. His team reported the results January 4 in JAMA Network Open.

The study is one of the largest yet to tackle procrastination's ties to health. Its results echo findings from earlier studies that have gone largely ignored, says Fuschia Sirois, a behavioral scientist at Durham University in England, who was not involved with the new research.

For years, scientists didn't seem to view procrastination as something serious, she says. The new study could change that. "It's that kind of big splash that's ... going to get attention," Sirois says. "I'm hoping that it will raise awareness of the physical health consequences of procrastination."

It can be hard to tell if certain health problems make people more likely to procrastinate — or the other way around, Johansson says. (It may be a bit of both.) And controlled experiments on procrastination aren't easy to do: You can't just tell a study participant to become a procrastinator and wait and see if their health changes, he says.

In a new study, researchers have tied procrastination to a range of potential health issues and other negative outcomes, including:

• Depression
• Anxiety
• Stress
• Disabling arm pain
• Poor sleep quality
• Physical inactivity
• Loneliness
• Economic difficulties

[...] The study was observational, so the team can't say for sure that procrastination causes poor health. But results from other researchers also seem to point in this direction. A 2021 study tied procrastinating at bedtime to depression. And a 2015 study from Sirois' lab linked procrastinating to poor heart health.

Journal Reference:
Johansson F, Rozental A, Edlund K, et al. Associations Between Procrastination and Subsequent Health Outcomes Among University Students in Sweden. JAMA Netw Open. 2023;6(1):e2249346. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.49346

Original Submission

1. "upstart" - https://soylentnews.org/~upstart/
2. "Procrastination may harm your health. Here's what you can do" - https://www.sciencenews.org/article/procrastination-harm-fix-resolution
3. "linked procrastination to a panoply of poor outcomes" - https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2800006
4. "procrastinating at bedtime to depression" - https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-021-03451-4
5. " procrastinating to poor heart health" - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10865-015-9629-2
6. "10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.49346" - https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.49346
7. "Original Submission" - https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=58341

printed from SoylentNews, Procrastination May Harm Your Health on 2024-04-25 07:00:08