Narrative Clinical Review. This page provides the verified citation, abstract, and full-text PDF for the journal article.
Clinical boundary: Procrastination is not itself a diagnosis. Persistent impairment may reflect depression, anxiety, ADHD, OCD, sleep or substance problems, illness, unsafe conditions, or practical constraints that require assessment rather than productivity advice alone.
Publication Details
- Author: Christian Jonathan Haverkampf
- Journal: The Journal of Psychiatry Psychotherapy and Communication
- Publication date: 2025-09-30
- Volume, issue, pages: 14(3), 71–80
- Article type: Narrative Clinical Review
Recommended citation: Haverkampf, C. J. (2025). Overcoming Procrastination: From Short-Term Relief to Values-Consistent Action. The Journal of Psychiatry Psychotherapy and Communication, 14(3), 71–80.
Abstract
Procrastination is voluntary delay of an intended action despite expecting later harm. It is not laziness, every delay, poor time management, or a diagnosis; delay may be strategic when it protects priorities or permits useful information. This narrative clinical review integrates self-regulation, temporal motivation, emotion-regulation, cognitive-behavioral, and communication-oriented accounts. Aversive, ambiguous, distant, or evaluative tasks invite immediate mood repair, while perfectionistic meanings, shame, and accumulated consequences make re-entry harder. Assessment should define the delayed behavior, triggers, substitute activity, function, consequences, and context, and consider anxiety, depression, ADHD, OCD, sleep disturbance, substance use, illness, and environmental constraints. Psychological treatment evidence is promising but heterogeneous, with the clearest support for cognitive-behavioral approaches. Useful components include choosing the next complete action, reducing friction, time-limited starting, implementation intentions, stimulus control, exposure to evaluation or uncertainty, precommitment, compassionate error correction, and review of reward and values. Strategies should match mechanism: a calendar cannot treat major depression or create childcare and safe working conditions. Communication-focused formulation is presented as an author-developed adjunct for translating diffuse resistance, shame, and competing commitments into clearer internal and interpersonal messages. The aim is not ceaseless productivity, but freedom to start, continue, stop, or decline deliberately, with less control by immediate avoidance and more by chosen priorities.
Keywords
procrastination; self-regulation; avoidance; emotion regulation; implementation intentions; psychotherapy; action
Full Text
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Website copy first made available on 28 August 2026. The journal citation retains the article’s issue date.