Procrastination examples are the delays that happen while you still intend to do the work — answering email instead of writing the report, tidying the desk before opening the file, waiting for a better mood that does not arrive. They rarely look like doing nothing. The tell is an intended action sitting unfinished while a more comfortable one takes its place.
Key takeaways
- Piers Steel’s 2007 meta-analysis defines procrastination as voluntarily delaying an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay — so a real example always includes that intended action, not just unused time.
- In Solomon and Rothblum’s 1984 student sample, 46% said they nearly always or always procrastinated on writing a term paper, which is why “I’ll start the paper after one more tidy” is one of the most documented academic examples.
- Tice and Baumeister’s 1997 longitudinal study found early-term procrastinators reported less stress and illness at first, then more stress, more illness, and lower grades later — the comfortable example is cheap on Tuesday and expensive in week twelve.
- Sirois and Pychyl (2013) frame the pattern as short-term mood repair: the next action is chosen because it feels better now, which is why everyday examples look busy rather than idle.
- Pychyl, Lee, Thibodeau and Blunt (2000) found that during intended work time, people who were procrastinating were doing more pleasant activities — cleaning, socialising, easy admin — not staring at a wall.
What are procrastination examples, actually?
A procrastination example is a specific moment where an intended task is delayed on purpose, even though the person expects the delay to make things worse. That is Steel’s 2007 definition turned into a picture you can point at: there is a decided-upon action, there is a delay, and there is a forecast that waiting will cost something — quality, time, reputation, sleep, or peace of mind.
The everyday picture people search for is a person on a sofa doing nothing. That picture is rare. The examples that show up in diaries, classrooms, and offices look occupied. Someone is answering mail, resetting a desk, opening “just one more” tab, or helping a colleague with a small request. The intended task is still there. It is simply not the thing happening.
This page is a recognition page, not a second copy of how to overcome procrastination. The parent owns the system. The job here is to name what the delay looks like when it is wearing ordinary clothes, so the parent article has something concrete to attach to. For the opposite posture — starting, finishing, and following through — see what is the opposite of procrastination.
What is the difference between procrastination and waiting?
Waiting is a delay you cannot usefully close; procrastination is a delay you could close and still do not. If the file has not arrived, the client has not replied, or the tool is down, the gap is a constraint. Steel’s definition does not cover that gap, because the intended action is not available to take.
The same is true of rest after a finished block, and of a ranking choice that parks low-leverage work on purpose. Rory Vaden’s Procrastinate on Purpose is about that second case: delaying work that should not have been on the list, so higher-significance work can run. That is a calendar decision. It is not the mood-repair delay this page is collecting examples of. If you want the wider map of summaries and articles, it lives on the productivity hub.
What do real-life procrastination examples look like?
Real-life procrastination examples look like a full morning spent on work-shaped activity while the one intended task never opens. The person is not hiding. They can usually name the task if asked. They can also name the thing they did instead, and they can usually admit, if pressed, that the swap will cost them later.
The academic record is blunt about where this shows up first. Solomon and Rothblum asked students how often they procrastinated on specific tasks. Writing a term paper was the standout: 46% said they nearly always or always delayed it. Studying for exams (27.6%) and weekly reading (30.1%) were common too. Those are not personality labels. They are named tasks with a delay attached — the same shape as a report, a sales call, or a tax form at work.
Pychyl, Lee, Thibodeau and Blunt then watched the delay in the wild. Across five days of experience sampling, undergraduates who were procrastinating during intended work time were doing more pleasant activities than when they were working. The activities were ordinary: socialising, cleaning, easy errands. Guilt was higher in those moments. Pleasure was also higher. That pair is the everyday tell. The example does not feel like failure while it is running. It feels like relief.
| What it looks like | The intended task sitting still | The tell that it is an example |
|---|---|---|
| Email-first morning | The report, the proposal, the one hard call | Inbox is cleared or “warmed up” and the file is still closed |
| Tidy-then-start | Opening the draft or the spreadsheet | The desk, kitchen, or downloads folder is reset; the document is not |
| One more tab | A first ugly paragraph or a rough outline | Notes and sources pile up; no sentence exists that a stranger could read |
| Helpful-other-people detour | Your own block of deep work | A colleague’s small ask is handled immediately; yours is not |
| Small-task binge | The large, aversive item at the top of the list | Six easy boxes get ticked; the seventh never starts |
| Deadline-eve sprint | The same task, days earlier, when it was still cheap | The work looks intense at 11pm; the start was what was delayed |
| Mood-wait | Any task you already decided to do today | You are waiting to “feel ready” with no new information arriving |
| Home-errand loop | The evening task you named at lunch | Laundry, dishes, and a “quick shop” fill the window |
The four shapes that hide in ordinary days
Most examples collapse into four shapes: inbox-first, tidy-then-start, extra research, and the late sprint. They are not types you diagnose. They are costumes the same delay wears.
Inbox-first is the workday version of Solomon and Rothblum’s term-paper delay. The intended task is writing, calling, or deciding. The action that runs is processing other people’s words. It looks responsible. It produces a clean unread count. It does not produce the thing you sat down to make.
Tidy-then-start is the Pychyl sampling study in household form. Cleaning and arranging are pleasant relative to an aversive draft. They also create a story that you are “preparing to begin.” Preparation that never reaches a first ugly sentence is the example.
Extra research is delay wearing a scholar’s coat. Another tab, another PDF, another summary. McCrea, Liberman, Trope and Sherman (2008) showed that thinking about a task in abstract terms — why it matters, what it means — made people more likely to postpone it than thinking about the concrete next action. A pile of open tabs is often that abstract layer, made visible.
The late sprint is the Tice and Baumeister arc compressed into one week. Early days feel calmer because the aversive task is not being touched. The night before the deadline looks like hard work. The example is not the sprint. The example is the untouched calendar that made the sprint necessary.
A fifth picture, often requested and often confused with this list, is the freeze before any action starts. That stall has its own page at task paralysis. Freeze is “I cannot pick a first move.” A procrastination example is “I picked a different move.”
Why do these examples keep getting missed?
These examples keep getting missed because they produce a short-term mood upgrade, so they feel like work or rest rather than delay. Sirois and Pychyl’s 2013 review is the cleanest statement of that mechanism: when a task is aversive, people give priority to repairing how they feel now. The next action is selected for its emotional payoff, not for its place on the list.
That is why “I was busy all day” and “I procrastinated all day” can both be true. Busyness is not the opposite of delay. Busyness is often the vehicle. Steel’s 2007 meta-analysis found task aversiveness among the strongest correlates of procrastination (r = .40). Aversive tasks are the ones most likely to be swapped for something that feels better to touch. Email is touchable. A blank report is not.
The miss is also social. Inbox-first and helpful-detour examples look like being a good colleague. Tidy-then-start looks like standards. Extra research looks like diligence. Nobody sends a thank-you note for an unopened draft, so the visible economy of the day rewards the substitute.
One honest limit. Experience-sampling and student-sample studies describe what delay looks like in those groups. They do not prove that every tidy desk is procrastination, and they do not measure every workplace. The Steel test still has to be run on the specific moment: was there an intended action, and did you expect the delay to make things worse?
Why do they cost more than they feel like?
A comfortable example feels free because the cost is delayed, and Tice and Baumeister showed that delay is exactly how the bill is structured. In their 1997 longitudinal study of college students, self-reported procrastinators had lower stress and fewer health symptoms early in the term. Later they had higher stress, more illness, and lower grades on the papers they had postponed. The early weeks were not evidence that the habit was harmless. They were the cheap half of the same pattern.
That is the cost structure of the deadline-eve sprint, the email-first morning, and the mood-wait. Each one spends a better-feeling hour now and buys a worse-feeling hour later. The later hour is louder — more time pressure, less room to revise, more chance the work is thinner — so it is easy to remember the sprint and forget the swap that created it.
Sirois and Pychyl add a second, quieter cost: the substitute does not actually finish the emotional job. Short-term mood repair is, by definition, short-term. The aversive task is still there, now with less time attached. Guilt in the Pychyl sampling study sat alongside the extra pleasure. The day can feel both busy and unresolved, which is why people search for examples and still do not recognise their Tuesday in the sofa picture.
Neil Fiore’s The Now Habit names the same shape from the other side of the desk: the work is not the threat; the way the work has been sized and scheduled is. This page does not retell Fiore’s system. It only needs his observation that the visible delay is usually a substitute activity, not an empty calendar.
Common mistakes when naming procrastination examples
- Hunting only for idle pictures. If the test is “was anyone on a sofa,” most real examples fail it. Use Steel’s test instead: intended action, voluntary delay, expected cost.
- Calling rest a procrastination example. A walk after a closed loop is recovery. A walk that starts the moment a feared file is opened is a candidate example. The intended task is the difference.
- Calling a blocked dependency procrastination. Waiting on a missing file, a legal review, or a person who has not replied is a constraint. Labelling it as delay adds shame and no information.
- Treating every late night as proof of a lazy week. Some sprints are scoped late on purpose. The example is the week where the task was available and untouched, then crushed in one sitting.
- Confusing strategic delay with mood-repair delay. Parking low-significance work so a higher-significance block can run is the move in Procrastinate on Purpose. Parking the significant work so a nicer task can run is the pattern on this page.
- Using the example as a diagnosis. A list of Tuesday swaps is a work-and-habits picture. Persistent, cross-context delay sits next to other articles on this site and is not something a list of examples can settle. See is procrastination a sign of ADHD for that question, not this one.
- Collecting examples and never naming the intended task. “I procrastinated” is a fog. “I intended to draft section two and spent the hour on Slack” is an example. The second sentence is the one the parent how-to can use.
The evidence behind this
The pictures above are tied to a small set of studies that measured delay, mood, or later cost — not to a vibe about lazy people. Here is what each source actually supports, and where it stops.
| Study | Design & size | What it found | Used here for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steel (2007), Psychological Bulletin | Meta-analysis of procrastination correlates and causes | Defines procrastination as voluntary delay of an intended action despite expecting to be worse off; task aversiveness r = .40 | The definition of an example, and why aversive tasks attract substitutes |
| Solomon & Rothblum (1984), Journal of Counseling Psychology | Survey of 342 university students | 46% nearly always or always procrastinated on term papers; 30.1% on weekly reading; 27.6% on exam study | The most documented academic examples |
| Tice & Baumeister (1997), Psychological Science | Longitudinal study of students across a semester | Procrastinators had lower stress and fewer symptoms early, then higher stress, more illness, and lower grades later | Why a comfortable example is cheap now and expensive later |
| Sirois & Pychyl (2013), Social and Personality Psychology Compass | Narrative review of mood and temporal self-regulation | Procrastination functions as short-term mood repair: present affect is prioritised over the future self | Why examples look busy and feel like relief |
| Pychyl, Lee, Thibodeau & Blunt (2000), Journal of Social Behavior and Personality | Five-day experience sampling of undergraduates | During intended work, procrastination coincided with more pleasant activities and higher guilt | The “not idle” picture: cleaning, socialising, easy admin |
| McCrea, Liberman, Trope & Sherman (2008), Psychological Science | Lab experiments on construal level and delay | Abstract representations of a task increased procrastination relative to concrete, how-to representations | The extra-research / “one more tab” example |
| Choi & Moran (2009), Journal of Social Psychology | Scale development for “active procrastination” | Some people report delaying on purpose and still meeting deadlines; that self-report is not the same as mood-repair delay | The boundary with strategic or claimed “active” delay |
Frequently asked questions
What are some everyday procrastination examples?
Everyday procrastination examples include opening email before the one hard task, resetting a desk or kitchen before starting a draft, collecting extra tabs instead of writing a first sentence, handling a colleague’s small ask immediately, knocking off easy list items while the aversive one sits, waiting to “feel ready” with no new information, and doing the whole job in a late sprint after days of not touching it. Each example has an intended task, a voluntary delay, and an expected later cost — Steel’s 2007 test — rather than a person doing nothing on a sofa.
Is cleaning a form of procrastination?
Cleaning is a form of procrastination only when it replaces an intended task you could have started and expected to be worse off for delaying. Pychyl, Lee, Thibodeau and Blunt (2000) found that people who were procrastinating during intended work time often chose more pleasant activities, including household tasks. Cleaning after a finished block, or cleaning as the intended task itself, is not an example. The tell is the unopened file sitting next to the suddenly spotless counter.
What is the difference between procrastination and laziness?
Laziness, in ordinary speech, means not intending to do the work. A procrastination example requires the opposite: the work is intended, then delayed, with a forecast that waiting will cost something (Steel, 2007). That is why the usual examples look busy. The person is spending energy. They are spending it on a substitute that repairs mood now (Sirois and Pychyl, 2013). Calling the pattern laziness hides the intended task, which is the only part of the picture you can work with later.
Is waiting for more information procrastination?
Waiting for information you do not have is not a procrastination example. Steel’s definition needs a voluntary delay of an action that is available to take. If a decision is blocked on a missing number, a legal review, or a person who has not replied, the gap is a constraint. It becomes a candidate example only when the information is already sufficient to take the next concrete step and you still open a nicer task instead. “I need one more article” is often that second case wearing the first case’s clothes.
What is productive procrastination?
People use “productive procrastination” to mean getting useful secondary tasks done while avoiding the intended one — the tidy desk, the inbox, the helpful Slack reply. Those outputs can be real. They do not stop the moment from being an example if the intended task was available and expected to suffer. Choi and Moran’s “active procrastination” scale describes a different self-report: delaying on purpose and still hitting the deadline. That claim is not the same as mood-repair delay, and it is not a free pass for a week of untouched work.
Are bedtime scrolling and “just one more episode” procrastination examples?
They can be, when the intended action is going to sleep or finishing a next-day task and the delay is chosen even though you expect to be worse off in the morning. They are a poor match for this page when they are the only picture you have of delay. Most searched examples happen at a desk in daylight: email, chores, extra tabs, a late sprint. Bedtime delay is a sibling pattern with its own timing, not the master example that explains the rest of the list.
How is strategic delay different from procrastination?
Strategic delay parks low-significance work so higher-significance work can run. That is the move in Rory Vaden’s Procrastinate on Purpose, and it is a ranking choice, not mood repair. A procrastination example parks the significant work so a nicer task can run, while you still expect the delay to cost you. If the intended task was the report and the thing that ran was colour-coding a low-stakes folder, the Steel test fails the “strategy” story. If the intended task was the report and you parked a low-stakes folder on purpose to protect the report, that is not an example on this page.
When is a pattern of examples more than a habit?
A list of Tuesday swaps is a work-and-habits picture. If the same delay shows up across most days, most contexts, and most kinds of task — not only on aversive reports with a phone nearby — you are looking at a broader pattern than this page can settle. This article does not diagnose or treat anything. It points, for that separate question, to the site’s existing ADHD and delay pieces, and it keeps the examples here in the language of intended tasks and substitutes, not symptoms.
Sources
- Steel, P. (2007). The nature of procrastination: A meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure. Psychological Bulletin, 133(1), 65–94. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.133.1.65
- Solomon, L. J., & Rothblum, E. D. (1984). Academic procrastination: Frequency and cognitive-behavioral correlates. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 31(4), 503–509. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.31.4.503
- Tice, D. M., & Baumeister, R. F. (1997). Longitudinal study of procrastination, performance, stress, and health: The costs and benefits of dawdling. Psychological Science, 8(6), 454–458. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1997.tb00460.x
- Sirois, F., & Pychyl, T. (2013). Procrastination and the priority of short-term mood regulation: Consequences for future self. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 7(2), 115–127. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12050
- Pychyl, T. A., Lee, J. M., Thibodeau, R., & Blunt, A. (2000). Five days of emotion: An experience sampling study of undergraduate student procrastination. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 15(5), 239–254.
- McCrea, S. M., Liberman, N., Trope, Y., & Sherman, S. J. (2008). Construal level and procrastination. Psychological Science, 19(12), 1308–1314. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02240.x
- Choi, J. N., & Moran, S. V. (2009). Why not procrastinate? Development and validation of a new active procrastination scale. The Journal of Social Psychology, 149(2), 195–211. https://doi.org/10.3200/SOCP.149.2.195-212
Related reading on The Growth Reads
The books behind this
- Procrastinate on Purpose summary & review — the strategic-delay contrast: parking low-leverage work on purpose is not the mood-repair example on this page
- The Now Habit summary & review — the substitute-activity picture of delay, from the other side of the desk
Related articles
- How to overcome procrastination — the parent system this recognition page hangs from
- What is the opposite of procrastination — the sister page for starting, finishing, and follow-through
- Procrastination quotes — the lines people use when they cannot yet name the example
- Task paralysis — the freeze before a first move, which is a different stall from a substitute task
- The two-minute rule — the smallest startable action when the example is “I never opened the file”
Go deeper
How this article was researched
The Growth Reads editorial team writes from primary sources: the books themselves and the peer-reviewed literature behind the claims. Steel’s definition and aversiveness correlate, Solomon and Rothblum’s task frequencies, Tice and Baumeister’s longitudinal cost pattern, Sirois and Pychyl’s mood-repair frame, the Pychyl experience-sampling picture, McCrea’s construal-level delay finding, and Choi and Moran’s active-procrastination boundary were checked against the original papers or their published abstracts and are quoted with study design and, where the source supports it, a specific figure.
This article is a recognition page for work-and-habits delay. It is not a how-to system, not medical advice, and not a diagnostic tool. Nothing above is intended to identify or rule out ADHD or any other condition.
How we work: every article on The Growth Reads is built from the books in our library plus the research they rest on, and is reviewed and date-stamped when the evidence changes. Read our full methodology.