Toward a Holistic Approach to Reducing Academic Procrastination With Classroom Interventions

Abstract

Although academic procrastination is prevalent, few interventions targeting it have been rigorously tested. We propose a novel approach to developing effective classroom interventions for academic procrastination, based on the ideas that changing complex behaviors requires a holistic, multipronged approach and that intervention research must embrace objective measures of procrastination behavior. We illustrate what such intervention efforts may look like by deriving some easily implementable techniques from a simple process model of self-control, which characterizes procrastination as a goal-management failure resulting from a need to repair negative emotion triggered by impending academic tasks.