Field Methods

PROCRASTINATION

Justification of Research

Despite the numerous theoretical attention to the concept of procrastination and

exploration of this said phenomenon, may it be in laboratory settings, there still remain few

empirical studies into the practice of procrastination in the real world context specifically in the

field of workplace.In a study entitled; Procrastination, Deadlines, and Performance: Self-Control

by Precommitment (Dan & Wertenbroch, 2002), they focused on three questions mainly; (a)

Are people willing to self-impose meaningful (i.e., costly) deadlines to overcome

procrastination? (b) Are self-imposed deadlines effective in improving task performance? (c)

When self-imposing deadlines, do people set them optimally, for maximum performance

enhancement? The study also utilized two (2) different pilot studies to help demonstrate the

performance of the students given a long deadline to submit papers. Study (1) was: The Free-

Choice/No-Choice Study. Basically, the students were then given the chance to freely choose the

date when to submit the 3 papers. By setting their deadlines as late as possible, the students

would have the most time to work on the papers, the highest flexibility in arranging their

workload, and the opportunity to learn the most about the topic before submitting the papers.

(Ariely and Wertenbroch, 2002). The mean deadlines were significantly earlier than the last

possible deadline—41.78 days before the end of the course for the first paper, t(44) 8.41,
p .001; 26.07 days before the end for the second paper, t(44) 8.10, p .001; and 9.84 days before

the end for the third paper, t(44) 4.97, p .001. It shows that only 43 deadlines (32%) were set for

the final week of class. The majority of the deadlines were set prior to the last lecture. (Ariely

and Wertenbroch, 2002). These findings demonstrate individuals' readiness to set self-imposed

deadlines as a strategy to combat procrastination, even when such deadlines come with

associated costs (addressing our initial inquiry). Despite having the option to select less stringent

private deadlines, the students opted for deadlines that demanded greater commitment and

carried the potential cost of a grade penalty for tardiness. This suggests a willingness to take the

risk of losing grade points in order to employ the self-control mechanism of precommitment. On

the other hand, Study (2) was entitled as; The Proofreading Study. With this study, they created

three passages with a length of about 10 pages each and inserted about a total of 100

grammatical and spelling errors. In each condition, we clearly explained to the participants that

their payoffs would depend on how many errors they detected and on the time of submission of

each proofread text. Participants were told that submitting their tasks early was permitted

(without increasing their compensation), but that delay in submission would result in a penalty of

$1 for each day of delay. In the evenly-spaced-deadlines condition, participants had to submit

one of the three texts every 7 days; in the end-deadline condition, they had to submit all three

texts at the end of 3 weeks (21 days); and in the self-imposed-deadlines condition, they had to

choose their own deadline for each of the three texts within the 3-week window. The results

showed that participants in this condition chose to space out their proofreading tasks, F(2, 38)

63.28, p .001, thus showing a preference for self imposing costly deadlines. Results were similar

for participants’ delays in submitting their proofreading work (in this case, shorter delays

resulted in higher payoffs). Participants’ earnings reflected a combination of error detection and
delay and thus showed the same pattern of results. However, the study did not determine the

level of self-control of the students but only focused on their performance on meeting the

deadline and by their overall output. The possible gap in the study could be limited

generalisability of the findings and the focus was mainly on meeting specific deadlines and may

not fully represent the diversity of real-world situations of procrastination in the workplace.

Additionally, the study assumes that individuals recognize the optimal deadlines for themselves,

but this may vary based on the nature of tasks and personal characteristics and may vary person

to person. In this case, we will attempt to fill the gaps by exploring the issue of procrastination in

the context of the workplace, by assessing or to determine the self-control levels among working

professionals to help understand their capacity to regulate their behavior in the workplace setup

Research Problem:

1. How often do employees tend to procrastinate at work?

2. What is the relationship between self-control and procrastination among professionals?

3. How does procrastination impact the workplace?

4. How does procrastination impact both individual and organizational productivity?

Research Hypothesis:

Individuals with higher levels of self-control are less likely to engage in workplace

Scope and Limitations

This study about the Role of self control in workplace procrastination among working

professionals conducted in Phinma Saint Jude College focuses on one of the branches in

Dimasalang cor. Don Quijote St., Sampaloc. Metro Manila.. The researchers aim to determine
the correlation between employees' levels of self-control and their procrastination at work. To

assess or determine the self-control levels among working professionals to help understand their

capacity to regulate their behavior in the workplace set up.