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Irrational Procrastination Scale (IPS)

Putting things off even though you know it will cost you. Nine questions on how much you procrastinate.

9 items · About 2 min

How to answerEach statement describes a work habit. Choose how true it is of you, as you usually are.

  1. I put things off so long that my well-being or efficiency unnecessarily suffers.
  2. If there is something I should do, I get to it before attending to lesser tasks.
  3. My life would be better if I did some activities or tasks earlier.
  4. When I should be doing one thing, I will do another.
  5. At the end of the day, I know I could have spent the time better.
  6. I spend my time wisely.
  7. I delay tasks beyond what is reasonable.
  8. I procrastinate.
  9. I do everything when I believe it needs to be done.
0 of 9 answered
About this scale

The IPS measures irrational procrastination: voluntarily delaying something you intended to do while expecting to be worse off for it. The score is the average across the nine items (1–5); higher means more procrastination. There are no established cut-offs, so the bands are centred on the scale midpoint of 3 ("sometimes true of me"). They are based on the scale midpoint, not on population norms.

SourceSteel, P. (2010). Arousal, avoidant and decisional procrastinators: Do they exist? Personality and Individual Differences, 48(8), 926–934. Chinese wording adapted from Shaw, A., & Zhang, J. J. (2021). A Chinese version of the Irrational Procrastination Scale (IPS). Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 768581. No usage restrictions stated by the author; the English items and Chinese translation are published under CC BY 4.0 in Shaw & Zhang (2021).