MISSING THE DEADLINE: Fighting procrastination is a race against time (YANG HONGXUN)

Zhao Yixin never thought she was actually suffering from a disease. She hadn't even come across the word—procrastination.

As a senior student at Beijing Union University, Zhao has been researching and writing her graduate essay for almost half a year but hasn't succeeded in finishing even half of it.

"I know I always put off tasks so I started earlier than other students," Zhao said. "But I still haven't managed to finish it while most of my classmates already completed the essay."

Zhao said that her habit of putting off tasks can be dated back to primary school years, when she didn't want to do her homework and always put it off to late night. "I sat at the desk all the time but my mind couldn't concentrate," Zhao said. "I kept making promises to myself that I'll do the homework in 10 minutes, but after many 10 minutes, I still couldn't start. I don't think I am the only one in my class acting like this. It seems that we are all like this when we chat about our homework."

Zhao didn't take this seriously until she joined a group called We Are All Suffering From Procrastination on Douban.com, a popular social networking website among young Chinese people. "One of my college classmates recommended this website to me and I was surprised to find it was actually a disease," she said.

A common disease

According to a survey by 163.com, one of China's leading Web portals, in 2011 more than 70 percent of Chinese people admitted that they have the symptoms of procrastination, such as always putting off tasks to the next day and surfing on the Internet or chatting online when they should be working.

"Everybody has such problems. For most people, it is just a bad habit," said He Xiefeng, a psychologist in southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. "But if you always feel guilty and deny yourself due to this, it has developed into a disease that can strongly affect people's life and work."

The online group We Are All Suffering From Procrastination was set up in May 2007 by a netizen who calls herself Fisheer, a woman who works in the marketing department of a magazine and doesn't want to reveal her real name. "I was so bored with the life we live every day. It seems we waste every day without really achieving anything," said Fisheer, who learnt the word procrastination from a friend studying psychology. The group now has more than 7,500 members.

In January 2008, another group called I've Wasted Another Day was set up on Douban.com, which had 80,000 members as of February 2012. Members share details of how they wasted another day in their lives.

Mi Meng, the penname of a well-known female columnist for the Nanfang Daily newspaper published in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, is a member of both groups. In an article, she said, "It is a normal situation for me to gather two or three articles until deadline and put them off from day time to night and even to midnight while I am still surfing on the Internet. I always drive the chief editor mad, but I feel no better myself, and actually I think I am even more miserable."