A 12-week online course on their own helped adult students put things off less
Who it’s about: Students, Adults
- Helped
An online course on unhelpful thoughts, feelings and planning time cut putting things off more than waiting did.
- Action: Challenge unhelpful thoughtstested
- Action: Plan your weektested
- Rule: Through an online programmeused
Small randomised trial of 66 adult college students in Beijing, China · vs people still waiting for the course · they rated themselves · ⚠ not yet checked by other scientists; numbers unreliable
The study
Who took part
66 adults in Beijing, China, who were studying at a college or university and put things off a lot. They were about 30 on average, 39 women and 27 men, with 33 in each group.
What they did
The course group worked through an online course on their own over 12 weeks, with seven parts in order. It mixed challenging unhelpful thoughts, planning and checking your own learning, handling feelings, and managing time. The other group waited and got the course after the trial.
What happened
At 12 weeks, the course group rated themselves as putting things off less than the waiting group on two questionnaires. On one questionnaire, about 85 in 100 in the course group scored lower, against about 64 in 100 who waited. This paper has not been checked by other scientists yet, and some of its numbers don't add up.
Source
Online Self-Help Intervention for Procrastination: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial (Preprint) (2025)
DOI: 10.2196/preprints.87987 (opens in a new tab)Tools in this study
Action5
Challenge unhelpful thoughtsCognitive restructuring of beliefs such as perfectionism or catastrophising.
