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http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=63klkx6drw34y6cqfktwkfd7c3ns9t6jJoseph R. Ferrari has a name for people who dillydally all the time. Sometimes, he spits out the term as if it were stale gum or a polysyllabic cuss word. When he dubs you a "chronic procrastinator," however, he does not mean to insult you. He is just using the psychological definition for someone who habitually puts things off until tomorrow, or next week, or whenever. The afflicted need not feel lonely: Research suggests that the planet is crawling with dawdlers.
Procrastinators vex Mr. Ferrari, a psychology professor at DePaul University, yet he owes much to the dilatorily inclined. Without them he could not have helped blaze a trail of inquiry into procrastination (the word comes from the Latin verb procrastinare — "to defer until morning"). The professor is as prompt as the sports car that shares his name, but he sees the symptoms of compulsive stalling everywhere.
Mr. Ferrari and other scholars from around the world are finding that procrastination is more complex — and pervasive — than armchair analysts might assume. And helping people climb out of their pits of postponement is not as simple as giving them a pill or a pep talk.
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