Longitudinal study finds procrastination declines with age but still shapes major life outcomes over nearly two decades

An 18-year-long study published in Journal of Personality & Social Psychology finds that people tend to procrastinate less as they move through young adulthood.

Research on procrastination has mostly focused on short-term behavior, largely in academic settings and over relatively brief periods. These studies have been useful for identifying what leads people to delay tasks and the immediate consequences for performance and well-being, but they don’t say much about whether procrastination changes across longer stretches of life, or whether it stays fairly constant as people grow older.

It is unclear, then, whether procrastination should be understood primarily as a context-dependent behavior or as a more enduring individual difference.

Lisa Bäulke and colleagues addressed this gap by examining procrastination across the transition from late adolescence into adulthood. They sought to determine whether procrastination shows both stability and change over time, and how it develops alongside broader personality traits. The study was also motivated by the possibility that major life transitions, particularly the shift from education to the workforce, may shape patterns of procrastination. By following individuals over an extended period, the authors sought to clarify whether procrastination decreases with age and whether it has lasting implications for key life outcomes.

The researchers tracked 3,023 individuals in Germany across late adolescence into adulthood over an 18-year period, beginning in their final year of high school. Participants were originally recruited from 149 schools and surveyed repeatedly across eight waves, spaced every two to four years. At each wave, they reported on their procrastination tendencies using a 12-item questionnaire designed to capture delays in task initiation despite knowing action is needed.

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Participants also completed personality assessments assessing conscientiousness and neuroticism at multiple timepoints, and reported on their life circumstances: whether they were studying, working, or transitioning between the two. A wide range of later outcomes was also collected, including university completion, grades, income, job promotions, relationship status, parenthood, life satisfaction, health, and even technology use and mental health during COVID-19.

This design allowed the researchers to connect early tendencies to outcomes nearly two decades later, track both average changes in procrastination and individual variation in those trajectories, and account for missing data so that participants with partial data could still contribute.

Bäulke and colleagues found that procrastination showed both stability and change. People’s relative standing held fairly steady, such that those who procrastinated more early on still tended to procrastinate more later, but overall levels dropped over time. So procrastination isn’t fixed; people generally do get better at not putting things off as they age. At the same time, there was meaningful variation in how much individuals changed, suggesting that some people improved more than others.

People who became more conscientious or less neurotic over time tended to show more favorable changes in procrastination. The transition from university into the workforce also played a notable role in these changes. Individuals who entered the workforce after studying tended to show additional decreases in procrastination, suggesting that more structured environments and increased responsibilities may help reduce delaying behaviors. Conversely, higher levels of procrastination were linked to a lower likelihood of making this transition and to delays in entering the workforce, pointing to a reciprocal relationship between life circumstances and self-regulation.

Finally, procrastination was strongly connected to long-term life outcomes. Higher initial levels and less favorable trajectories of procrastination predicted a range of negative consequences years later, including lower academic achievement, less favorable career outcomes such as reduced income or fewer promotions, and differences in relationship and health indicators. These associations extended even to experiences during the pandemic, such as mental health and technology use.

This study reveals that procrastination is not only a short-term habit but a meaningful predictor of how people perform across multiple domains of life over nearly two decades.

Of note is that the study relied on self-report, which can introduce bias. Further, the sample was recruited from one region in Germany, which may limit the generalizability of findings.

The research “Once a Procrastinator, Always a Procrastinator? Examining Stability, Change, and Long-Term Correlates of Procrastination During Young Adulthood” was authored by Lisa Bäulke, Brent W. Roberts, Benjamin Nagengast, and Ulrich Trautwein.