NATURE, EFFECTS AND FACTORS OF PROCRASTINATION AMONG ADOLESCENTS, YOUNG ADULTS AND MIDDLE ADULTS IN THE CITY OF MUMBAI

Procrastination is a prevalent and detrimental form of self-regulatory failure that is
not entirely understood. Procrastination is a prevalent and problematic phenomenon
that has mostly been studied in the domain of academic behaviour. The present study
is focusing on different developmental age groups i.e. adolescents, young adults and
middle adults in reasons for procrastination. Procrastination is the act of
unnecessarily postponing decisions or actions. Procrastination involves unnecessary
and unwanted delay, be it decisional, implemental, or lack of timeliness (lay, 1986;
McCown et al., 1989; Mann et al., Steel, 2010). This research aims at studying the
comparison of reasons for procrastination among adolescents, young adults and
middle adults. The purposive sampling technique was used to select 150 samples
consisting of adolescents (13-19 years), young adults (20-30 years) and middle
adults (31-55 years) from the western suburbs of Mumbai. The data collected was

analyzed. Statistical measures such as mean scores, T-test and MANOVA tests were
used to analyze data. The major findings of the study were that adolescents are
dreamers and defiers, young adults are perfectionists and crisis makers, middle
adults are perfectionists, over doers and worriers in types of procrastination. The
two major reasons which were found to be the major causes of procrastination i.e.
Fear of failure and lack of self-control. It was found adolescents fall into the category
of lack of self-control whereas young and middle adults fall into the category of fear
of failure in reasons of procrastination. Based on these findings, it can be concluded
that procrastination has been found in each developmental age group.