Procrastination

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Dr. Piers Steel, who specializes in researching procrastination and motivation, writes that procrastination is on the rise with 80–95 percent of students in college spending time procrastinating.4 According to Steel, half of college students report that they procrastinate on a regular basis, spending as much as one-third of their time every day in activities solely related to procrastination. All this procrastination takes place even though most people, including researchers who study the negative consequences of procrastination, view procrastination as a significant problem. These numbers, plus the widespread acknowledgment of the negative effects of procrastination, provide evidence that it is a serious issue that trips up many otherwise capable people.

The good news is that, of those people who procrastinate on a regular basis, 95 percent want to change their behavior.5 As a first step toward initiating change, it is important to understand why people procrastinate. According to Steel, even people who are highly motivated often fear failure, and some people even fear success (although that might seem counterintuitive). Consequently, some students procrastinate because they are perfectionists; not doing a task might be easier than having to live up to your own very high expectations or those of your parents, teachers, or peers. Many procrastinate because they are easily distracted (a topic covered later in this chapter), they have difficulty organizing and regulating their life, they have difficulty following through on goals, the assigned task may seem too far into the future, or they find an assigned task boring or irrelevant6 or consider it “busy work,” believing they can learn the material just as effectively without doing the homework.

Many of the traits most associated with people who chronically procrastinate can make change more difficult. Fortunately, though, there is hope. With certain changes in behaviors and mind-set, you can reduce procrastination and become more effective at managing your time. In college changing how you think about and approach less enjoyable assignments is key to decreasing procrastination and increasing your success.

For instance, simply disliking an assignment is not a good reason to put it off; it’s an excuse, not a valid reason. Throughout life you’ll be faced with tasks you don’t find interesting, and in many cases you won’t have the option not to do them. Whether it is cleaning your house, filing your taxes, completing paperwork, or responding to hundreds of e-mails, tedious tasks will find you, and you will have to figure out strategies to complete these tasks. College is a good time to practice and hone your skills at finishing uninteresting tasks in a timely manner. Perhaps counterintuitively, research indicates that making easier or less interesting tasks more challenging can decrease boredom and increase your likelihood of completing the tasks on time.7

When you’re in college, procrastinating can signal that it’s time to reassess your goals and objectives; maybe you’re not ready to make a commitment to academic priorities at this point in your life. Only you can decide, but a counselor or academic adviser can help you sort it out.

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Here are some strategies for beating procrastination:

If these ideas don’t sufficiently motivate you to get to work, you might want to reexamine your purposes, values, and priorities. Keep coming back to some basic questions: Why am I in college here and now? Why am I in this course? What is really important to me? Are these values important enough to forgo some short-term fun or laziness and get down to work? Are my academic goals really my own, or were they imposed on me by family members, my employer, or societal expectations? Use the Procrastination Self-Assessment in Figure 2.1 to evaluate your own procrastination tendencies. But here is the bottom line: If you are not willing to stop procrastinating and get to work on the tasks at hand, perhaps you should reconsider why you are in college and if this is the right time to pursue higher education.

Researchers at Carleton University in Canada have found that college students who procrastinate in their studies also avoid confronting other tasks and problems and are more likely to develop unhealthy habits, such as higher levels of alcohol consumption, smoking, insomnia, a poor diet, or lack of exercise.8 If you cannot get procrastination under control, it is in your best interest to seek help at your campus counseling service before you begin to feel as though you are also losing control over other aspects of your life.

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FIGURE 2.1 Procrastination Self-Assessment Click here to download the figure.
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