You give any group of people a perfectionism or fear of failure test along with almost any procrastination scale and you get pretty much anywhere from a negative to at best a very weak positive correlation. And if you control for self-efficacy or self-confidence, that weak correlation disappears. Science does not back you up.
The above made me think of a paragraph that caught my eye while I was skimming through Robert Boice’s Procrastination and Blocking: A Novel, Practical Approach:
Second, [Procrastination and Blocking] seems hard to define and study. Its practical understanding will require direct observation of PBers acting as problematically dilatory and self-conscious individuals. As a rule, psychologists avoid the time and inconvenience of lengthy field studies. Instead, they prefer to draw occasional conclusions about PBing based on quick personality tests administered to college freshmen. In that way, they can feel like scientists, testing students in laboratory conditions and linking the results, statistically, to other test outcomes such as the seeming inclination of PBers to admit perfectionism or demanding parents (Ferrari and Olivette, 1994). A problem is that researchers lose sight of PBing as a real, costly, and treatable problem.
(Note: This was just an association I made. I haven’t read your book and I don’t mean to imply that you belong to the category of researchers described by Boice.)
Robert Boice’s Procrastination and Blocking: A Novel, Practical Approach
Interesting. I skimmed the introduction and it sounds like he’s writing about the kind of procrastination I mean when I say “procrastination”. Looks potentially worth a read; thanks for the tip.
The above made me think of a paragraph that caught my eye while I was skimming through Robert Boice’s Procrastination and Blocking: A Novel, Practical Approach:
(Note: This was just an association I made. I haven’t read your book and I don’t mean to imply that you belong to the category of researchers described by Boice.)
Interesting. I skimmed the introduction and it sounds like he’s writing about the kind of procrastination I mean when I say “procrastination”. Looks potentially worth a read; thanks for the tip.