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Procrastination Test

Your procrastination profile

The Distraction Hunter

You have a plan, usually the appetite too - and still the day falls apart into pieces, because there is always something more interesting around.

In short

  • When you put things off, it is mostly distraction.
  • Elevated procrastination: putting things off is more of a habit.
  • Boredom holds you back least: you can get dull tasks done.

Your numbers

  • Impulsivity & distraction71
  • Worry & perfectionism52
  • Boredom & aversion38
  • Overall score54
Where to start
The phone in another room
Chapter 6: Tips tailored to your triggerWeakest trigger
Boredom & aversion 38
Chapter 7: Weakest trigger
Chapter 1 of 7 Your procrastination profile

Report contents

The three sources of procrastination

How strongly each of the three sources of putting things off shows in you, from strongest to weakest.

  • Impulsivity & distractionmain source71Starting is not the problem for you - staying with it is, the moment anything more interesting turns up.
  • Worry & perfectionism52You put things off because the outcome matters to you - until you are sure it will be good, you would rather not start.
  • Boredom & aversion38You put off whatever is dull, annoying or simply uninteresting - until a deadline drives you to it.

The score describes the strength of a trigger in your behavior, not your willpower or your ability. The comparison is approximate.

How sharp your profile is

Whether you have one clear trigger or your putting things off changes with the situation.

33spread between sources

One clear trigger

One source leads by a clear margin, so you have an obvious trigger - and that is good news. Your putting things off is not set going by something different every time, so it pays to dig in at one spot. The tips below aim straight at it.

top source's lead
19

What your profile means

One of ten procrastination profiles and how putting things off typically shows up for you.

Elevated procrastination

The Distraction Hunter

You have a plan, usually the appetite too - and still the day falls apart into pieces, because there is always something more interesting around. One message or one new idea and you are elsewhere; getting back to the unfinished work then costs more energy than the work itself. What helps you most is changing the environment, not yourself - what is not within reach cannot pull you out of your work.

Putting things off is not the exception for you but a habit you factor in ahead of time - and what usually saves the day is the deadline. You get the work done, only at the cost of nerves and the time spent thinking about what you have not done yet. The good news is that your scores show fairly precisely where it comes from, so you know where to aim.

Your main trigger

How your strongest source works, how to spot it on an ordinary day and what a deadline does to it.

Dominant source

Impulsivity and distraction

71 of 100

Starting is not the problem for you - staying with it is, the moment anything more interesting turns up.

How it works

It is not that you do not want to - the intention is there, it just gets reliably drowned out by whatever is within reach. A phone, a notification or a new idea offers a reward right now, whereas a finished task only pays off in a few hours. Between "in a while" and "right now", "right now" wins, and in the evening you find the plan untouched.

How it shows

At work you have five things on the go at once and you come back to the main one feeling like you are starting from scratch. In studying you last with a text until the first notification, then comes a "quick look" and a quarter of an hour somewhere else with it. You can spot it in the evening tally too - the day was full of movement, but the thing that mattered fell out of it.

Under pressure

As the deadline closes in your attention splinters even more, because the task is big and the mind runs off to everything smaller. You manage to dig in only in the final hours, when the world around you finally stops being interesting.

Tips tailored to your trigger

Five techniques picked straight for your main source.

Do not try them all at once - pick one and give it two weeks.

  1. The phone in another room

    The most effective step is not more willpower but more distance - the phone in another room, notifications off, distracting sites closed before the work even starts. A distraction you have to physically get up for wins once in a while at most. One switched-on device within reach can kill even a well-started hour.

  2. Short focused blocks

    Work in stretches of around 25 minutes with a short break in between, and after three or four stretches take a longer one. A shorter stretch can be sat through even when you do not feel like it, because its end is in sight. Inside a block you do nothing else - whatever comes to mind goes on paper and you get back to it in the break.

  3. One thing at a time

    Leave open only the thing you are working on: one document, one tab, one task. Hopping between things looks like productivity, but every return costs several minutes before you pick up the thread again. When something occurs to you along the way, it belongs on a list, not into the work.

  4. A when-then plan

    Set a specific trigger and response in advance: "when I finish my coffee, I open the spreadsheet", "when I get back from lunch, I write for ten minutes and nothing else". The decision is made up front, so at the moment you do not feel like it there is nothing left to weigh up. The more specific the time and place, the better the chance it actually happens.

  5. One next step

    Keep a single next step written in front of you, not the whole list - a long roll call tempts you to pick the easiest item off it. When you come back from a distraction you do not have to look for where you left off, and the return takes seconds instead of minutes. Cross the finished step out and write the next one - never keep more than that in front of you.

Weakest trigger

The source that holds you back the least, and how to work with it.

Boredom & aversion

38 of 100

Boredom does not throw you - you can clear a dull thing without circling it for long, and this ability is worth deploying first thing in the morning as a run-up into the day.

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This test is for self-discovery purposes and does not replace professional psychological assessment.

The procrastination test is a tool for self-discovery, not diagnostics. It draws on procrastination research, describes tendencies in behavior and measures neither ability nor character; the comparison is approximate. If putting things off keeps interfering with your work, studies or relationships, talk it over with a professional rather than with the result of an online test.

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