Procrastinators--Keep Track Of Your Time: It's All About Perception

How much or little we'll get done may partly depend on our perception of time, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Consumer Research.

"The key step in getting things done is getting started. If you never get started, you can't possibly finish," said researcher Yanping Tu, a doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, in a news release. "But that urgency, that need to actually work on a task, happens when that task is seen as part of a person's present."

For the most recent findings, researchers from the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business found that we're more likely to view starting a task as part of the present instead of the future.

The study authors examined 100 college students who were told that they had five days to complete a four-hour data entry assignment. Then, that assignment was made at either April 24th or April 25th or at April 28th. Participants assigned the task on April 24th or 25th and had to finish by the 29th or 30th and those assigned to the 28th were asked to finish in the first few days of May.

Overall, the findings revealed that participants assigned to a task earlier were more likely to finish it than those who started it later.

These results may help advice students working on deadline projects as well as provide new insight and knowledge for certain behavioral disorders that involve focusing, such as attention-deficit disorder (ADD).