What's your procrastination personality?
It turns out that we're a nation of procrastinators with over half of the UK admitting to procrastinating with putting off tasks affecting their life one way or another.
If you took our quiz, we've got some helpful content to encourage you to be more focussed and efficient with tasks, and even tips on how to relax if you're hyper-productive and can't sit down for more than five minutes.
Find your results below:
Action taker
So you got action taker as a result? What does this mean about your personality?
It shows that you’ll always sort things immediately as soon as they turn up in front of you. You don’t like things hanging around and like to feel completely on top of them.
Deadlines are unnecessary as you’ll usually have work done before anyone else even realised it needed doing.
Action Takers tend to work best in the mornings, unsurprisingly, and are very good at making the rest of us feel unproductive and a little guilty.
Helpful distractions for an action taker
Ten percent happier
You’re definitely on top of things, there’s no denying that, but we can’t help feeling that you might benefit from chilling out a little on occasion.
Maybe some meditation would help – you probably don’t think you have time for that, but Ten Percent Happier is designed especially for ‘fidgety sceptics’ to squeeze into their packed day.
With content from world-renowned teachers, you might even find it boosts your concentration skills even further. And it’ll all be done before you can say ‘hippy’.
Birdsong radio
As an Action Taker you’re bound to be up with the birds most mornings.
Did you know experts suggest birdsong not only physically relaxes you but also provides mental stimulation?
And with the help of the RSPB you can enjoy the relaxing and stimulating benefits of birdsong even if the local birds aren’t being very vocal with their Birdsong Radio.
You can also use their Bird Song Identifier to find out who you’re listening to.
Planner
As a planner, you probably already know what this means for your personality. But if you don't, this is what being a planner means.
You’re someone who likes to plot out your day ahead of time and have a plan in place so you can get everything done in good order.
You don’t enjoy surprises or not feeling in control of events and are quite likely to be seen as a safe pair of hands.
Productivity tips for a planner
Todoist
You appear to be the kind of person who likes to keep things in order and be able to prioritise what you want to achieve each day.
We think you might find Todoist helpful, as it helps you make just the kind of plans you like.
You can organise, delegate, diarise, see your progress and, most importantly, tick things off. Though feel free to reorder that list to suit you.
Brainsparker
As you’ve clearly got the ordered side of your mind completely in hand, perhaps it might be an idea to pay a bit more attention to your creative side every now and then.
Brainsparker is an app that provides little creative prompts each day designed to get your imagination going, take your head in a different direction and spark new ideas.
It might get both sides of your brain working together and help you gain a much wider perspective.
Easy goer
You don’t qualify as a procrastinator, just someone who’s fairly laid back about tasks, happy to let them sit for a few days until you get round to them.
And you do eventually get round to them, you just don’t see the need to get uptight about it.
You’re part of the mainstream when it comes to procrastination – the largest group of us seem to think roughly the way you do.
And, as long as it doesn’t ever make you anxious, it’s probably not a bad place to be.
Everyday tips for the easy-going
Noisli
It seems like you’ve got things pretty well balanced, but maybe you could still do with an occasional hand to maintain your focus.
Noisli allows you to create your own sound environments by blending from a choice of sounds, complete with a timer so you can manage the length of a working session and devote yourself to it.
Take a five
You can also make sure that your occasional five-minute coffee break doesn’t drift down an hour long rabbit hole of scrolling with the help of Take a Five.
This free app allows you to set the amount of time you want for a break and open a tab where you can amuse yourself in any way you like. But as soon as your time is up, that tab will be closed down and you’re straight back on the job. Simple but effective.
Procrastinator
For you, displacement activity tends to take up more of your time than what you should really be doing.
And you can easily put off tasks for up to a week before doing them.
You may well rationalise that you work best under pressure as a deadline looms, but you’re also in constant danger of crashing right into those deadlines.
Perhaps you could make life a little less stressful by getting down to things a little earlier.
Productivity tips for procrastinators
OmmWriter
We know, when you have a task to get down to, everything becomes a distraction. All those colourful, flashing panels, buttons and oh-so-tempting links. What harm could there be in one more cat video before starting the day?
Think how much faster you could get through your tasks if all those distractions were to disappear. That’s exactly what OmmWriter will do for you.
Designed for writers, it works in full screen on your computer, blocking any distraction, while providing muted colours and natural background sounds to improve your concentration.
Focus to-do
One proven way to help with procrastination is the Pomodoro technique. This breaks down your work into 25-minute chunks of total focus, and in between each chunk you take a short break.
Focus To-Do is a free app that uses Pomodoro alongside to-do lists, so you can create a list of tasks, give each one a deadline, then work your way through the tasks one-by-one in short bursts.
Chronic procrastinator
Congratulations on making it to the end of the quiz and coming to find out more about your personality type and helpful ways to increase your productivity. That in itself is an achievement, and perhaps the first step towards dealing with your chronic procrastination.
Typically, you’ll put off tasks for weeks before doing them and a deadline is something you watch pass by while you dilly-dally.
You might find it reassuring to know that our research indicates up to 10% of people are in the same
Help and advice for chronic procrastinators
Freerice
If you are spending a lot of time doing things other than what you know you should really be getting on with, you can at least reduce any guilt by doing something positive when you’re fiddling about.
For example, you could play the Freerice game, which asks you general knowledge questions and donates grains of rice to people in need via the UN World Food Programme every time you get a question right.
Lifehack
You might also find a bit of training a useful way to help you find something you're passionate about, or just a more effective way of passing the time.
Lifehack offer a free classes and they suggest that they can help you train yourself to focus to the standard of Elon Musk, which might be a slight over-promise, but it could still be a good use of 45 minutes of your time.
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