97.12 percent of Chinese college students said they suffered from procrastination, according to a recent survey conducted in 199 Chinese universities by China University Media Union.

The survey indicated that nearly 60 percent of college students attributed procrastination to laziness. 27 percent believed procrastination would lead to low efficiency, and almost 23 percent said it was a waste of time that delayed their work or academic progress.

Postgraduate student Wang Xiaohua is a victim of procrastination. She planned to finish her graduate thesis before the end of last year, but she didn't finish the paper until this February.

She said she didn’t want to start, as the thought of the task was stressful. Only one day before the deadline did she put pen to paper.

The survey suggested that 13.16 percent of students procrastinated because they found tasks too difficult.

This data coincides with the opinion of Ji Fang, a Humanities and Social Sciences teacher at the Dalian University of Technology. She said in a paper that insufficient motives are one of the primary reasons which lead to procrastination. When students do not see the joy in their tasks, or it’s hard to see their progress, they may become apathetic. Therefore, procrastination is adopted to relieve feelings of failure, Ji said.

According to the report, 94.5 percent of the respondents regretted procrastinating, and 90.19 percent said their mood had been affected by procrastination. 22.73 percent believed that procrastination would generate negative energy.

Over 60 percent of the students tried to fight procrastination by creating schedules, establishing incentive mechanisms, or resorting to external supervision, the report said.