Why the impatient get nothing done

Impatient people are terrible procrastinators, putting off jobs that they would never allow others to postpone, research has found.

Although impatience and procrastination seem like opposite traits, scientists say they are different aspects of the same condition.



Psychologists hope the research could help them develop therapies to assist people who procrastinate.

Ernesto Reuben, who led the research at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, Illinois, said: "Procrastination seriously affects our productivity at work and can cost people considerable amounts of money as they postpone paperwork indefinitely.

"People do not want to procrastinate - it is just that their impatience gets in the way. A procrastinator might work better with weekly deadlines which force him to keep up to speed, as opposed to a big deadline far in the future."