Willpower

missed the deadline could turn in a paper in class on the following Tuesday, and that if they missed that second deadline, they could bring it to her office the following Friday—a full week past the original deadline. Later she discovered that some of the students who scored high on the procrastination questionnaire hadn’t even bothered to write down the first two deadlines. As far as they were concerned, the doubleextended due date was the only one that counted.
    The papers were graded by instructors who didn’t know when the work had been submitted, but Tice and Baumeister kept track of that information so that they could compare the students’ performance. The procrastinators—as measured both on the questionnaire and by how late they turned in their papers—did worse by every academic measure: lower grades on their papers, lower scores on their midterm and final exams. But might they have benefited in other ways? As a separate project in this health psychology class, the students kept records of their own health, including all the symptoms and illnesses they had and how often they went to the campus clinic or other health-care provider. When Tice reviewed the findings from the first semester’s study, she found a stunning result: The procrastinators were healthier! They reported fewer symptoms and fewer physician visits. It looked as if there were a trade-off: Sure, the early birds had gotten their work in on time and had gotten better grades than the procrastinators, but the latter had enjoyed better health. Exercising self-control ahead of the deadline seemed to take some sort of toll, perhaps by diverting glucose from the immune system. But as Baumeister and Tice pondered this result, they remembered that the students’ assignment to keep health records had ended before the final week of the semester—just when the procrastinators were doing their last-minute papers. They might have been healthier when they were not working, but what happened to them at the end of the term, when the deadlines came due?
    So the experiment was repeated another semester with another class, and this time the students continued to keep track of illnesses, symptoms, and physician visits right up through final exams. Once again the procrastinators got lower grades and enjoyed better health early in the semester, when some of the early birds in the class were sniffling with colds as they worked on their papers. The procrastinators may have been out playing Frisbee, relaxing at parties, getting plenty of sleep. For a procrastinator whose deadlines are far off, life is pretty good. But eventually the bill comes due. At the end of the semester, the procrastinators suffered considerably more stress than the others. Now they had to pull themselves together to do the overdue work, and they reported a sharp rise in symptoms and illnesses. In fact, the procrastinators were so much sicker than other students at the end of the semester that it more than canceled out their better health from the early weeks. Their all-nighters took a toll, and they had more health problems overall.
    The worst procrastinators didn’t even manage to meet the third and final deadline. They fell back on the sop that many universities offer procrastinating students, which is to take an “Incomplete” grade, thus postponing the work until the next semester. The university allowed incomplete grades but had a firm policy that all work had to be made up and handed in so that grades could be turned in to the registrar by 5:00 P.M. on a particular Friday late in the following semester. This Friday, then, was a hard-and-fast deadline, with no wiggle room, for the students of Tice who took an Incomplete—a group that included, inevitably, the female student who had scored highest on the procrastination questionnaire at the start of the term. According to university policy, it was up to her to work out a schedule with her teacher for completing the work so that there was time for it to be read and graded. Weeks went by, but there was no word from her. Finally, on the afternoon of that fatal Friday, barely two hours before the grade was due at the registrar’s office, the student telephoned.
    “Hi, Dr. Tice,” she said, sounding nonchalant. “Can you remind me, what was this about a term paper for your class last semester?”
    As you might have guessed, she didn’t get the paper done in time. There comes a point when no amount of willpower will save you.