Laziness is considered to be a lack of individual effort in order to perform or act as expected. So, being capable of doing something, but choosing not to, fits that criteria.

Some psychologists, however, point out that there’s another, synonymous term, procrastination, that has a fine nuance to distinguish it from laziness. With this one, it’s choosing not to do something after having had intentions of doing it. Laziness, on the other hand, is never having had intentions of doing it in the first place.

Anyway, if you were to say that procrastination is a bit of an epidemic among folks, you wouldn’t be wrong. Studies have shown that up to 20% of adults feel that they struggle with procrastination. That goes double (well, double and a half) with college students, of whom 50% have trouble with partaking in the forbidden fruit. And this applies to everyone, even the most hard-working individuals out there.

The causes of procrastination come in many shapes, flavors and sizes. One of the more surprising finds among researchers is that it can serve as a coping mechanism. Not for coping with time management issues—rather for emotion management.

For some, finishing a task of a job might bring up anxiety or even a general feeling of avoidance. Putting it off, though, helps tackle the problem. Heck, procrastination can be interpreted as a rational reaction to an unpleasant situation, hence putting it off until you’re ready.

Another reason why procrastination is a thing is, in simple terms, it’s boring and icky. The brain learns that habitual behaviors and actions can be skipped by means of procrastinating, instead going for things that would be more enjoyable.

Interestingly enough, age can be a factor too. Because we have this thing called the prefrontal cortex, which is all about planning, decision making and concentration (among other things), having one that hasn’t matured yet might lead to some more rash decisions, like skipping out on doing work now without considering the impact.

Other reasons include more run-of-the-mill explanations, like lack of energy, willpower and sleep, having learned laziness from someone, distraction and some folks might just be born with it. Yes, you can have personality characteristics, like low conscientiousness and impulsivity, that might make you more prone to putting things off. Heck, being a perfectionist can have the same effect—it kinda ties in with the whole unpleasant emotional baggage of doing a task because of the self-imposed high standard.

But, to be or not to be lazy is trivial. The key question here is whether it’s good or not. The fact that it can get you into trouble because of the habit of not doing stuff on time or at all, being unreliable as a human being and that snowballing into bigger issues is definitely not good. But does it directly affect health and well being? Science says it doesn’t know (yet), what is known is that it can prevent positive behaviors from happening. You know, like wanting to exercise and be healthy!

And because we’re human—i.e. complex beings—perception often throws a spanner in the works in understanding whether we’re truly lazy or not.

Say a person has a daily to-do list of 20 things, but only ends up going through maybe half of them by the end of the day. In that case, of course there’s going to be that view that we’re lazy—just look at all the stuff you’ve been slacking off on! In reality, however, that’s not being lazy, but rather having far too much to do trying to exceed a physical and mental limit. If anything, that’s working too hard.