Daniel Yuruk / Staff reporter
As a student who suffers from the guilt of procrastination, transitioning from a rambunctious and addictive habit to a more disciplined mindset has always been a huge challenge. The desire to hesitate before beginning assignments, studying, or completing other daily tasks have been serving as a negative impact on my life to the point where mountains of stress pile up right in front of my eyes and I don’t even seem to care until the latest possible moment.
A person who ignores and shoves problems onto their future self is a terrible way to build a relationship with themselves and a great way to lose self-respect. It may seem easy to push things to a later date and worry about them then, but procrastination creates an inconsistent schedule with completing tasks and therefore, isn’t a reliable habit to pursue, especially in the midst of the hardest years of a person’s education.
According to University Affairs, an astonishing 95% of people allow procrastination to dictate their lives and become responsible for stress they suffer from hours before a deadline, and according to a survey by Magoosh.com, 86% of students that attend a secondary level of education say that they procrastinate on assignments. These numbers are daunting due to the fact that high school contributes largely to a person’s life because the grades they earn in those grades are factors that aid them in becoming accepted into a post-secondary education. Not only that, but it’s likely that procrastination can stick with a person for a long time, carrying the habit onto the next big thing.
So how can someone take back their life and exterminate procrastination for good? The simple answer is just to do it, but that rarely works, so here are some reliable and actually useful tips to get back on track:
1. Create your own deadline. The absolute main reason why people are so okay with putting off tasks is because knowing that something isn’t due until a much later date doesn’t create any sense of urgency and doesn’t give any valuable reason to get it done earlier. However, there is a way around this. Tricking your brain into setting an earlier deadline for yourself creates a sense of urgency which in return adds a reason to complete it now.
Purely just telling yourself that an assignment is due earlier isn’t (most of the time) going to magically make yourself start doing it, especially not over a longer period of time. Another aspect is needed in order to fully push you to do it now. A great way to do this is by having something that depends on the completion of the tasks. For example, telling a friend that if a picture of all three pages of the study material finished isn’t sent to them by 11:59pm on Monday, they are owed $10. It’s simple why this works. Overall, it creates a sense of urgency and a punishment for not completing it by the self-set deadline.
2. Mark due dates on a calendar. A great way to lose track of tasks is not adding them to an organized calendar. Procrastination makes it easy to forget about tasks or assignments due to the process of putting things off to a later date. This overall encourages the buildup of many activities, which in turn makes it harder to keep track of the number of responsibilities a person has to accomplish due to the overwhelming amount of stress that has built up to cram so many tasks into a short amount of time. By adding thoughts and upcoming events to a calendar, it encourages the planning and time management, however, it still relies on the person to plan out and make sure the amount of material needed to complete is distributed evenly, without having the burden of stress come back to bite.
3. Stop planning how you’re not going to procrastinate. It may seem productive to sit and learn about the habit of procrastination and how to remove it from daily habits, but the reality is that doing this is actually actively procrastinating. It’s understandable to find help and learn tricks to prevent this through online resources, however, starting is inevitable, and eventually, a good intention will become an addiction instead of actually doing what is needed. According to Instructure.com, they state the difference between skills-based and knowledge-based learning in which the ability to apply teachings into real-world scenarios is a significant and important factor in developing skills.
“You do not write your life with words…You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do.”
Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls
Personal Choice
After implementing all of the above tips, I personally have found that creating a deadline for myself and including a punishment attached to it gave me a reason to study earlier for a test, which in the bigger picture, gave me extra time to refresh myself and ask any questions before the test. With having a motive to complete something instead of doing it naturally encourages the completion of it sooner. However, motivation shouldn’t always be depended on all the time, discipline is required in order to stick to the habit fully and make sure relapsing doesn’t occur.
Procrastination haunts pretty much everyone, however, many don’t see the habit as a problem. In the long run, procrastination can drastically affect a person’s life depending on their commitments and choice of workplace.
Especially in later student years, its crucial that procrastination is left behind before any serious damage is done to their grades. Even after high school, students who procrastinate may show success, but will end up dealing with a larger amount of stress that is preventing them from accomplishing tasks. Once the skill of knowing how to not procrastinate is acquired, free time will finally be able to enter a person’s life without having to constantly worry all the time. Now, get to studying that physics test you have next week, it’s a big one.
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