My Bad Habit of Procrastination: An Analysis

To begin with, there are many factors that contribute to my procrastination. The first reason that I blame my procrastination on is being lazy. As stated in the article, Procrastination: Is Your Future Self Getting a Bad Deal, in the third paragraph, Timothy Pychyl says, “In a sense we’re passing the buck to our future self.” This quote shows that you are being lazy and giving your future self the burden of whatever task was assigned to you, instead of being proactive and completing the job. As an example of myself being lazy, if I have homework or projects due at a later date in time, such as in a week or two, I would choose not to do it. Eventually, I end up being piled on with other schoolwork that is due in more recent dates, and I end

I found I’m not alone according to two leading experts on procrastination, Joseph Ferrari, professor of psychology at DePaul University and Timothy Phikul, professor of psychology at Carleton University 20% of people identify themselves as chronic procrastinators and up to 70 percent of students in one study said that they procrastinate. This habit affects so many and it one of the most difficult tendencies to kick but fortunately there are ways to go about solving the issue so today I would like to inform you all about why people procrastinate and the effects it can have and also ways to overcome it.

I like to think there are four levels of procrastination. The first is false security, the “I still have plenty of time, I can finish this later.” The second is laziness, the thoughts like,“I should probably get this started. Nah.” Next comes denial and excuses such as, “I would start this, but I’m doing something else right now.” and, “I’m just taking a little break.” Then finally the crisis stage, the stage during which you stay up all night long in order to finish the homework assignment you had all day to do. Because of this, the hardest part of my daily routine was the time when I knew I needed to start my homework, but I truly wanted to keep watching shows on Netflix. This wouldn't be as difficult if it weren't

Procrastination was such a terrible habit for myself. It happens to be extremely difficult to prevent procrastinating as soon as a person has gotten into the habit of doing it. Being the procrastinator that I am, I usually postponed until the last minute to

     Procrastination is something that you don’t naturally have an innate ability to do. It is often brought on by finding ways

Besides this omission by Kalat, he still provided an accurate and detailed account of the research article written by Ariely and Wertenbroch. This article is essential in understanding procrastination and answered throughly the three questions it posed. 1.) Are people willing to impose deadlines, with substantial consequences if they are not met, on themselves: yes. 2.) Are these self-imposed deadlines actually helpful in improving overall performance:

People procrastinate because they are afraid to fail, they have poor time management, they avoid things that seem difficult or they feel depressed or they feel guilty. Some people believe that other procrastinate out of laziness or lack of discipline, but I know there are perfectionists that often procrastinate as well. For example, a perfectionist may put off writing a paper until the night before it is due and then they will have an excuse saying, “I restarted because I didn’t like what I had written.”. Another example is that some philosophers and scientists, such that Aristotle questioned if time even exists, and Einstein believed that time was a muddle in which the past, present and future were only illusions.

There is a certain irony with procrastination, things we put off doing accumulate to the point of in manageability and feelings of anxiety increase which, is why we procrastinate anyway.

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.

One of the biggest problems in modern day society is procrastination. Procrastination is delaying a task until the very last minute to try to avoid doing it. In the passage “Structured Procrastination,” the author describes how to harmlessly procrastinate. In the passage “A Stitch in Time,” the author describes how horrible procrastination is. These are the different takes on the habit.

Procrastination is a common tendency that we all give in to and all of us have at least a little experience with.

Another factor that causes procrastination is fear. Fear is a very powerful emotion. Whenever someone is faced with a difficult task, they can become overran by the fear of not being able to complete it. People who succumb to this are setting themselves up for failure. Whenever someone feels as if they are going to fail, they tend to postpone the task for as long as possible. This means that they often try to avoid the task all together until completion is absolutely necessary. In doing so, the number of tasks that need to be done increases. However, the time required to complete them does not.

Many people believe that procrastination is derived completely from laziness but the culprit could be multiple things, including perfectionism. This can become a huge problem for perfectionists, especially perfectionist students. They most likely will overthink projects and put off getting started because they’re afraid they won’t be able to make them as perfect as they want them to be. Luckily this is a common issue among students and there are many different techniques to cope with it. Students can overcome procrastination due to perfectionism by setting S.M.A.R.T goals, creating detailed to-do lists, and by just getting started.

The questionnaire was posted online for psyc121 students of Victoria University of Wellington. “Please read each statement, and select the option that best describes how much you agree or disagree with each one” was the instruction given to the participants when completing a Pure Procrastination Scale (PPS) which was developed by Steel (2010). It had 12 items and on a one to five scale where one is strongly disagree and 5 is strongly agree. A statement “I generally delay before starting on work I have to do”. Higher scores meant higher levels of procrastination.

Upon reading the article on Stress Management, I realized that procrastination can definitely cause stress in my life, unwanted and unnecessary stress.For years I have been in a fight with procrastination. I am ashamed to say that I have identified this issue a long time ago and have done nothing to get rid of it. I am even more ashamed to say that about 90% of time procrastination wins. Whether it be a simple wash the bathroom now or no more movies, not to mention take out the garbage now, I allow procrastination to win. I will always say, I can do it later or I have time. This is a negative factor that affects Time and Stress Management.