Speech: Procrastination Is The Thief Of Time

Hi, my names Sarah and I would like to inform you on something myself you and many Americans have problems with. I chose to do this speech on something I do on a regular basis and I know I’m not completely alone. Whether you’re a person who puts things off to the last minute or you’d love to get things done with right away, I have to assume that all of us at some point has become a victim to procrastination.

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.

     To procrastinate is to put off doing something out of casual carelessness or common laziness. It often needlessly postpones or delays events or objectives in your life which can effect others. Procrastination is almost like a drug in your life, because once you start doing it a little bit, it slowly adds up to a dependency that you will find to be common habit. Although this is what we all perceive procrastination to be bad, there are some benefits to it. It can have beneficial impact on how you take pressure, or how well you can act when time is limited.

“There is a bad side to procrastination, though, the bacteria kind, the one that if you don't clean up quickly, it will spread and fast. It gets to a point where you start seeing it in your dreams, piles upon piles of paper gliding across the room. You start to feel a shiver down your back, while you hear your teacher's voice in the background. Next thing you know, you have twenty-four piles touching the ceiling. It also may be contagious for whoever you may be around for an extended period of

Specific Purpose: When we procrastinate and put things off, it reflects how inefficient we are in every aspect of our lives.

VIRGINIE: Yea you're right. Procrastination is an unhealthy habit, and it makes us unable to meet deadlines and reach our goals. In fact everyone has procrastinate at least once, which lead them to be

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.

Thesis Statement: Today, I will tell you about what exactly procrastination is, the causes, and the effects.

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.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, to procrastinate is “to put off intentionally the doing of something that should be done.” Another way of putting it is “to wait until the last minute.” Procrastination is a very bad habit. Even though

“Procrastination is a common form of self-regulatory failure with substantive connections” where the tendency is to put off tasks. (Steel, Farrari, 2013)

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:

In my study, laziness is the most common reason student procrastinate. Timothy A Pychyl, a professor who specializes in the study of procrastination says “procrastinators often remark that they lack the motivation necessary to act. They have an intention to act, but they fail to act in a timely fashion even though they recognize

An equally important cause for procrastinating could be the laziness one might have. For a college student, several amounts of homework could be assigned within the first week of school, but the professor might state that those specific assignments to that class will be due at the end of the semester. So, one would say to themselves that there is plenty of time not to worry, so the student kicks back and worries about other things. Once, the end of the semester comes the person could have forgotten about the assignment that was given in the beginning of their school year. Now, there is little time to get the tasks finished and turned in, while other teachers in other classes might have assigned homework for the same due date as the other professor. Of course, at this point, the student regrets the decision that he or she might have made to procrastinate until a couple of days before the due date, now the