Causes and Effects of Procrastination

Many of us can recognize that leaving things to the very last minute is not very wise and can cause an abundance of unnecessary stress. Procrastination is self-sabotage whether it’s to pay a credit card bill, fill up gas in your car, or complete your homework. Procrastination ranges from the most miniscule task to the most significant ones so the question is why do people procrastinate? For myself I rationalize this behavior by saying I work best under pressure but through my recent discoveries I found this isn’t true at all, it was just an excuse. The heavy pressure we feel when an important deadline is approaching physically forces us to complete our work but that doesn’t always mean that our work is good. Starting a project weeks before it is due guarantees that we had time to think and process your ideas therefore our work is our work is generally well-prepared. Starting an assignment the night before it’s due forces us to rush through it just to get it done it does not ensure that our best abilities are being put to use and usually ensures that our best abilities are being put to use and usually ensures that it’s satisfactory at its best from a psychological standpoint procrastinators can adapt

The two articles, 'The Procrastination Doom Loop- And How to Break It' and 'This Was Supposed To Be My Column For New Years' both provide much information about procrastination. One example is that it has more to do with emotion than time. In the article, written by Derek Thompson, he talks about how each of us recognizes it is important to go to the dentist, but still put it off. We look away from this because the pain is too upfront and the rewards are too small. Another example is having nothing to distract you and everything ready to go, but not writing an email back because you don't feel like it. Procrastination can be an effective tool for getting things done.

The research article titled “Procrastination, Deadlines and Performance: Self-Control by Precomittment,” authored by psychologists Dan Ariely and Klaus Wertenbroch, aimed to figure out the reasoning behind procrastination. A study was conducted to answer three questions all posed from the central thesis of procrastination. The first question the studies sought to answer was whether people are willing to impose deadlines, with substantial consequences if they are not met, on themselves. The second question whether these self-imposed deadlines were actually helpful in improving overall performance. Lastly, the third question aimed to determine if the deadlines people imposed on themselves, were done so to achieve their best results. It was

Procrastination is ignoring your responsibilities and avoiding them for no good reason. Experiencing procrastination can have a positive or negative reaction according to the amount of the behavior. The person that is procrastinating must first realize that they have a problem in order to find ways to overcome procrastination because they are putting their health, family and job at risk. Twenty percent of people realize they are procrastinators which in the end becomes a lifestyle. There are various reasons why people procrastinate.

Attention Getter: A famous author by the name of Wayne Dyer once said, “Procrastination is one of the most common and deadliest of diseases and its toll on success and happiness is incredibly heavy.”(1) In todays society it seems as if procrastination has become a normal and acceptable thing to do. It is often joked about amongst schoolmates and co-workers around the world. Nothing seems to get done until it absolutely needs to get done, then everyone runs around getting things done quickly and often times inaccurately. The trouble with this mentality however is that some things will never get done because something will come up tomorrow or the next day and what you are putting off now gets pushed even further back. Today I will persuade you to stop this habit from continuing. I will be explaining the problems we face when dealing with procrastination as well as how to deal with it and actions you can take to prevent it in the future.

Attention Getter: So I’m pretty sure everyone here has had an important assignment to complete before like a project or essay. And most of us usually plan it out where we do a portion of it every day. For example, something like this chart here. But then the next thing you know, the deadline is fast approaching and you still haven’t come close to completing your assignment. And we end up somewhere like this. Well, I believe that we can all relate to this and we have all done this to ourselves before. I’m talking about procrastination.

The problem of procrastination starts when a student waits until minutes before a class to study for a class. This may seem like a solution for students who are pressed for time; however, this doesn’t allow time for the information to be solidified and vital information can be lost. These behaviors form because students have found that in the past they were able to successfully pass the class by doing their homework literally hours before the projects deadline. This reckless learning may help pass the class, but doesn’t give the information the time needed to be solidified into memory. This reckless learning also produces effects within projects that are often below the students’ academic level and can cause

Procrastination is a tendency to postpone, put off, delay, reschedule, take a rain check on, put on ice, hold off, or to defer what is necessary to reach a particular goal.(Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus, Third Edition. Philip Lief Group 2009.) While attending College some students find it hard to juggle work, family, and friends. Leading most students down a dangerous path to procrastination; that negative impact affect students from their physical health, mental health, and social health.

Procrastination is the act or habit of putting tasks on hold. It is the unnecessary postponement of starting or finishing an undertaking, which eventually leads to distress (Solomon & Rothblum, 1984). The intentional delay of due tasks is very common among students and lately, it has become prevalent in college settings (Rabin, Fogel & Nutter-Upham, 2011).

“A Dictionary of the English Language” written by Dr. Samuel Johnson, defined procrastination as “delay.” This common issue mostly around everyone. Many people struggle with deadlines every day. It is one of the largest problems seen in college counseling centers. (Grohol, Psy.D.)

Attention Getter: We all have been there when we wait until the last minute to write a paper or study for an exam. We struggle to get these things done and this struggle is called procrastination.

“I’ll stop procrastinating…Tomorrow.” This is a mindset that is possessed by a majority of students today. Although putting off writing that English paper until the night before it is due may not seem like a big deal, it has many harmful effects. In fact, what better topic is there for that English paper? Very few are spared from the epidemic known as procrastination. Even less overcome this issue. In order to successfully defeat procrastination, we must first understand it.

Have you ever had an essay due in three weeks and thought to yourself, “I’ve got time. I’ll just do it later”? Does staying up studying for an exam until 3 am in the morning sound familiar? How about running to class because you were working on a project until the very last second? If any of these unfortunate situations sound relatively familiar, you have endured the horrendous event of procrastination at some point of your jam-packed life. The one secret that nobody is enforcing on your young life is the extreme power of time management. In Chapter 5, the topics we address are as follows:

Every student sets goals and deadlines to get their work done on time, but some wait until the last minute. As the grade level increases, the work load and difficulty increases, leading to more procrastination. Most students in high school procrastinate, and the question is, why? Is the work too hard? Do their teacher’s leniency cause them to? Do students not have enough time? Do extra-curricular activities take up too much of their time? There has been many other research studies on this topic, but I wanted to see if the students in my survey and interviews had any different correlations.

There are all always two types of students in this small world, first, the students that come ready to class with a three to five-page essay all proofread, nice and stapled with three transition sentences highlighted turned. Second, there are those students who come to class with not even half of a paper written out, unstapled, not a single transitional sentence highlighted and may have plenty of errors due to not proofreading the essay. Those second group of students are procrastinators, which are people who delay an assignment to do the task right before the deadline. Now, why do most of all 99.99% of school boys and girls procrastinate? Well, most people might have problems with lack of focus, or the person might be lazy and decide to