Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength

by Roy F. Baumeister

This vice has often been blamed, by psychologists as well as ditherers, on people’s compulsion to do things perfectly. Supposedly these perfectionists are flooded with worry and anxiety whenever they try to start a project because they see it’s not living up to their ideals, so they get bogged down or just stop working. This makes sense in theory, and doubtless it’s true in some cases, but researchers have repeatedly failed to find a reliable link between procrastination and perfectionism. One reason psychologists were initially fooled into seeing a link might have been selection bias: A procrastinator with high standards would be likelier than a less ambitious ditherer to seek help for the problem, so perfectionists would show up more often in the offices of psychologists treating procrastinators. But there are plenty of other people with high standards who don’t procrastinate and do perfectly good work without pulling all-nighters. The trait that does seem to matter is impulsiveness, which shows up over and over in studies of procrastinators.