There’s no more elegant example of the cyclical self-torture of procrastination than the lyrics to a song from the musical You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. 

Ring a bell? It’s a monologue we all experience in some form, an agonizing internal conversation that fells the best of us. And that’s where things start to get interesting: Procrastination is so relatable, so universal, because the human brain, it turns out, is wired for it. Science explains Charlie Brown’s seesaw sensibility as a fight that is sparked between two parts of the mind when it’s faced with a distasteful activity: a battle of the limbic system (the unconscious zone that includes the pleasure center) and the prefrontal cortex (the internal “planner”). When the limbic system wins, and that’s pretty often, the result is putting off for tomorrow what could (and should) be done today.

http://www.realsimple.com/work-life/life-strategies/time-management/procrastination

Procrastination means postponing what one is suppose to do now to another time, I think it is definitely in the nature of human to procrastinate.

Procrastination is the avoidance of doing a task which needs to be accomplished. It is the practice of doing more pleasurable things in place of less pleasurable ones, or carrying out less urgent tasks instead of more urgent ones, thus putting off impending tasks to a later time. Sometimes, procrastination takes place until the "last minute" before a deadline.

People may procrastinate personal issues (raising a stressful issue with a partner), health issues (seeing a doctor or dentist), home care issues (patching a leak in a roof), or academic/work obligations (completing a report). Procrastination can lead to feelings of guilt, inadequacy, depression and self-doubt.

There are several emotion-oriented strategies, similar to Freudian defense mechanisms, coping styles and self-handicapping.

Coping responses of procrastinators include the following:

Avoidance: Avoiding the location or situation where the task takes place (e.g. a graduate student avoiding driving into the university).

Denial and trivialization: Pretending that procrastinatory behavior is not actually procrastinating, but rather a task which is more important than the avoided one, or that the essential task that should be done is not of immediate importance.

Distraction: Engaging or immersing in other behaviors or actions to prevent awareness of the task (e.g. intensive video game playing or web browsing)

Descending counterfactuality: Comparing a life situation with others who have it worse (e.g. "Yes, I procrastinated and got a B− in the course, but I didn't fail like one other student did.")

Valorisation: Pointing in satisfaction to what one achieved in the meantime while one should have been doing something else.

Blaming: Delusional attributions to external factors, such as rationalizing that the procrastination is due to external forces beyond one's control (e.g. "I'm not procrastinating, but this assignment is tough.")

Mocking: Using humor to validate one's procrastination. The person uses slapstick or slipshod methods to criticize others' striving towards the goal as funny.

Laziness: Procrastinating simply because one is too lazy to focus on her or his desired task.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrastination

Dear Subhash

I always read your very informative and elaborate answers. All the perspective are dealt with in the answers. thanks

Regards

Vibha 

We all procrastinate at one point or the other. Avoiding a conflicting situation and so on... 

When students keep putting off things then coping mechanisms are required. The stress builds up - exam stress and so on.  

        There’s no more elegant example of the cyclical self-torture of procrastination than the lyrics to a song from the musical You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. 

Ring a bell? It’s a monologue we all experience in some form, an agonizing internal conversation that fells the best of us. And that’s where things start to get interesting: Procrastination is so relatable, so universal, because the human brain, it turns out, is wired for it. Science explains Charlie Brown’s seesaw sensibility as a fight that is sparked between two parts of the mind when it’s faced with a distasteful activity: a battle of the limbic system (the unconscious zone that includes the pleasure center) and the prefrontal cortex (the internal “planner”). When the limbic system wins, and that’s pretty often, the result is putting off for tomorrow what could (and should) be done today.

http://www.realsimple.com/work-life/life-strategies/time-management/procrastination

It's not a bug, it's a feature! Please see this (attached link to a) wonderful overview of the complexities of human coordination with temporal structure.

Best wishes,

Damian

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10407413.2013.810483?journalCode=heco20#.Vr4cdNCwiJc

Of the most important duties of the relationship between people in their communities is a good deal, meet, and not to procrastination rights and interpolation.

" “Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.”

― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield 

Dear Fikrat Hassan

Simply superb way to deal with procrastination by D. Copperfield

Regards

Vibha

Why not? What's the hurry??? 

But not everybody procrastinates, thus procrastination might be a relative term. How long would the slowness to do things must take so we can describe it as procrastination? In my case, procrastination is willful. I know I am doing it. But procrastination is bad only when you have a cut-off date to finish something. Otherwise, I would describe it as wayward contemplation of the way of the world. :-)

What is procrastination? Is it human nature to procrastinate?

To me procrastination is giving excuse to buy time / delaying to complete something in a negative connotation.  Think human nature to procrastinate depending on few factors e.g. learning from others that procrastinate as a way to defend him or herself, what ethical moral philosophy s/he is subscribing e.g. Utilitarianism, Kantianism etc., quick excuse for assigned work not completed, simply s/he has ample time in the world that s/he can take his / her own sweet time & no need to rush etc.  However, we should do our best to avoid procrastination, because it brings us no good as stated in scripture:

Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring. - Proverbs 27:1 

Dear Colleagues,

Good Day,

See, how does "Edward Young" describe "Procrastination":

                       "Procrastination is the thief of time."

Dear Colleagues,

Good Day,

"Six Reasons People Procrastinate

• "But I Don't Know How".  -Lack of interest  
• "This Stuff Is Just Plain Boring" - Lack of motivation
• "I Don't Feel Like Doing It" - Lack of motivation
• "But What If I Can't Cut It?" - Fear of failure
• "How Can I Top This?" - "Fear of success"
• "You Can't Make Me", ".....
• Please, see the link for detail...

http://success.oregonstate.edu/six-reasons-people-procrastinate

Dear Colleagues,

Good Day,

"Procrastination is the bad habit of putting of until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday."

                                                              ------   Napoleon Hill

Dear Brenda 

I have also observed the same. Sometimes inner feelings/gut feelings make you delay a decision which ultimately benefits. 

Regards

Vibha

Procrastination cannot be confused with " a desire to do work with higher quality". Some people intentionally postpone thing to give their best instead of landing in tasks which are not satisfactory to one's own standards. Whilst thriving for quality output sometimes, ambiguity may exist between procrastination and highest satisfaction point of work.

"There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others." quoth Machiavelli.

By this he means, if your enemy is growing stronger and/or you are growing weaker, it is better to fight them now, even at a disadvantage, than it is to wait until later when the disadvantage is worse.

Dear Colleagues,

Good Day,

Please, see this very interesting quote:

It is in human nature to procrastinate. Procrastination is when you keep postponing what is meant to be done now.

“Everyone who is taken by death asks for more time, while everyone who still has makes excuses for procrastination.” Ali Ibn Abi Talib

Dear Vibha Sharma,

Human nature -  a term which does not have an acceptable definition. It identifies all known factors and is now becoming a human quality (biological, social, personal, spiritual). Often the term is used in the sense of an apology for the inhuman behavior

Regards, Shafagat

Dear Colleagues,

Good Day,

"What is Procrastination? 

Definition of Procrastinating- Procrastination is the practice of carrying out less urgent tasks in preference to more urgent ones, or doing more pleasurable things in place of less pleasurable ones, and thus putting off impending tasks to a later time. In order for a behavior to be classified as procrastination: it must be counterproductive, needless, and delaying. Similarly, it is “to voluntarily delay an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay.”

Effects of Procrastinating

People experience the effects of wasting time and not meeting deadlines is devastating at both the business and personal levels. Procrastination may result in stress, a sense of guilt and crisis, severe loss of personal productivity, as well as business and social disapproval for not meeting responsibilities or commitments. These feelings can combine and may create further procrastination.

For some the anxiety and stress caused by procrastinating does, end up being a motivating force to initiate action for various tasks – however this is usually followed by attempts to justify the delay which further reinforces the same type of behavior from the individual. While it is regarded as normal for people to procrastinate to some degree, for those wanting to stop procrastinating need to raise themselves above any attempts to justify or minimize procrastination being acceptable in any form.".....

Please, see the link for detail....

http://www.mindfithypnosis.com/what-is-procrastination/

Procastination is a behavioural response of a person , which could  be defined quite differentially . It is more like a perception than a routine behaviour

Dear Colleagues,

Good Day,

“My advice is, never do to-morrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him!”

                                       ― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

Procrastination is an art! Art to wait for the water.

Water reaching your b*** to start swimming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEzFnjx8Yuk

Procrastination is a non-productive practice since it relates to postponing and delaying tasks. I usually give the following advice to my graduate students: Don’t be a perfectionist and start the harder tasks as early as possible.

The attached links have good suggestions to stopprocrastinating

http://whyamilazy.com/40-super-effective-ways-to-stop-procrastinating/

http://jamesclear.com/how-to-stop-procrastinating

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886900000349

According Fastcodesign procrastination can ruin the work day. Having systematically postpone our daily work we can also affect not only professionally but also physically. Procrastination is linked to headaches to digestive disorders and colds as well as heart disease. According to an American psychologist Fuschia Sirois, who conducted a study on a sample of nearly 1,000 people concluded that there is a significant link between procrastination, hypertension and cardiovascular disease. Some criteria were also taken into account such as age, personality traits and ethnicity

This observation proved true even when taking into account aspects such as age, ethnicity and personality traits.

Chronic procrastination can have a negative impact on the health of a person in different ways. These people do not care or their health or their diet. Given an unhealthy lifestyle that generates a stress making these people more vulnerable to various diseases as the body shots that psychological.

I believe procrastination is also linked to the work culture and work ethics of a particular country. For example, you will hardly hear of procrastination in a country like Japan which has a very strong work culture. On the other hand, i feel that procrastination also depends upon the individual and varies from person to person. 

Dear Colleagues,

Good Day,

Do we all do it?

By saying something is human nature, you assume that everyone does it, thus being part of our nature. So, if there are people who don't procrastinate it can not be part of our nature.

Thus, the real question is why do so many people procrastinate that it seems like human nature!!!!

Procrastination normally occurs when something important is delayed with something fun or less important. If the needs were dire, procrastination may be out of the question. If I needed to walk 10 miles to for water to survive, procrastination may not even cross my mind. Convenience of a local watering hole that I have to pay for will require me to find a way to make money (honest or dishonest) to survive.

Convenience and modern technology has made things easier and allows us to get more done in a less amount of time and to multi-task in ways that previous generations may not have been able to imagine but sometimes that convenience and technology distracts from the musts into the wants and thus we have consumerism.

Procrastination may be dependent on the culture.

Dear Colleagues,

Good Day,

“Procrastination usually results in sorrowful regret. Today’s duties put off until tomorrow give us a double burden to bear; the best way is to do them in their proper time.”

                                                                                 ~ Ida Scott Taylor

Maybe, if it's your students, they need to take a break from picking on a wrong vocation and switch to something that their passion called for? 

Procrastination threat to a person's future

Dear Colleagues,

Good Day,

See what "Charles Dickens" sais about "Procrastination":

"My advice is to never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time."

“If you put off everything till you’re sure of it, you’ll never get anything done.”

~ Norman Vincent Peale

Procrastination is not a matter, solely, of having poor time management skills, either, but rather can be traced to underlying and more complex psychological reasons. Procrastination can be hard on us and actually increase our chances of failing. Those that reduce anxiety and fear and emphasize the satisfaction and rewards of completing tasks work best. To avoid this situation you remember to focus on your own reasons and your goal, reflect on the reasons why you procrastinate. Think about the productive reasons for doing a task by setting positive, concrete, meaningful learning and achievement goals for you

Dear Colleagues,

Good Day,

“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.”

                                                                                    ― Mark Twain

I feel when I have to do something then why keep on procrastinating, why not get up and do so!

The only thing that will happen here is that one may not be up to the mark. So what?

Give it another try.

Dear Colleagues,

Good Day,

"Procrastination is the bad habit of putting of until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday."

                                                                  -----  Napoleon Hill