The Procrastination Equation: How to Stop Putting Things Off and Start Getting Stuff Done

By Piers Steel, PhD

“The Procrastination Equation will teach you how to bust the excuses that are preventing you from doing your best work and living your best life….So don’t put it off any longer. Read this book. Today.”
 —Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive and A Whole New Mind

“Illuminating….Piers Steel shows us the secrets of procrastination, how it affects us and how we will, one day, be able to prevail.”
—Dan Ariely, author of The Upside of Irrationality and Predictably Irrational

Using a mix of psychology, evolutionary biology, self-help, and more than a decade of research, Dr. Piers Steel, the world’s foremost authority on procrastination, offers a tried and true method helping us to identify, understand, and break free of our self-destructive bad habits and create more positive lives for ourselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Dec 28, 2010
• ISBN: 9780062035257

Piers Steel, PhD

Piers Steel, PhD, one of the world’s foremost researchers and speakers on the science of motivation and procrastination, is the winner of the Killam Emerging Research Leader Award. Dr. Steel’s research has appeared in numerous outlets around the world, ranging from Psychology Today and New Scientist to Good Housekeeping and The New Yorker. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, with his wife and two sons.

Reviews for The Procrastination Equation

[lente_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In my opinion the best book on procrastination.

[sueincyprus · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The subtitle is ‘How to stop putting things off and start getting things done’. The author has done research on the field, and acknowledges that he is as prone to putting things off as anyone. In the first chapter he defines procrastination in a helpful way, saying what it is not as well as what it is. The second chapter has a short questionnaire to determine what kind of procrastination the reader is prone to, if any. The rest of the book looks into what makes people procrastinate, relating to value, expectancy and time. It also looks at the physical makeup of our brains, and why people (particularly children) are prone to putting off important things even when they know they may regret it. Towards the end it gives suggestions for helping people to overcome procrastinating tendencies. Overall I thought it very readable, written for non-academics but without any hint of talking down to lay people. I would recommend it highly to anyone interested in the topic... even though, rather ironically, it has taken me four days to get around to reviewing this after finishing it!