Overcoming Procrastination

Just stop. When you read that, imagine Shia LaBeouf telling you to just NOT do it. Simply do the web search “benefits of procrastination,” and you will find countless articles using science to back up their claims that procrastination has hidden benefits. It does not.

    Read The Art of Procrastination by John Perry, or Marion Fayolle’s article “Why I Learned to Procrastinate” for the New York Times. In her case, she was an overachiever during her college years and over time trained herself to hold off on projects for the sake of creativity. That does not sound like an accomplishment; instead, that sounds like taking several steps back.

    Now, some of these articles genuinely believe that taking a time out from the nonstop bombardment of tasks will be more helpful to your study time than detrimental, and that much is true, according to Psych Central News: “new findings overturn traditional theory about the nature of attention and demonstrate that even brief diversions from a task can dramatically improve one’s ability to focus on that task for prolonged periods.”

    But there is a distinct difference between punctuating dedicated study time with breaks and intentionally delaying a pressing task for a reason. The general understanding here is that college level work is incredibly stressful. Students have very real and very serious reasons they might procrastinate on a task In a study done by the University of Vermont for the American Psychological Association, they noted that “evaluation anxiety, difficulty in making decisions, rebellion against control, lack of assertion, fear of the consequences of success, perceived [difficulty] of the task, and overly perfectionistic standards about competency” were all contributing factors to the reasons that produced chronic procrastinators, specifically in college students.

    However, perpetuating the idea that procrastination has hidden benefits or actually helps students in the long run can seriously harm their future success. One such article that argues this point from Thought Catalog titled “19 Unexpected Advantages to Being a Procrastinator” lists and explains several reasons why procrastinators are just fine. According to Kovie Biakolo, one of her reasons is that “You get to delay any negative emotions or experiences with doing something you don’t like by constraining it to the least amount of time possible. And you get to do this with relatively little backlash.”

    This is understandable, and it is probably the most tangible benefit of procrastination. You do not have to experience doing the task until you absolutely have to experience doing the task.

    But does this actually help you? The Association for Psychological Science does not think so. They say “Chronic procrastinators have perpetual problems finishing tasks, while situational ones delay based on the task itself. A perfect storm of procrastination occurs when an unpleasant task meets a person who’s high in impulsivity and low in self-discipline.”

    “High in impulsivity and low in self-discipline”? That does not sound good. In fact, that sounds like something that comes around and bites you gleefully in the butt later. What the APA is saying is that procrastination messes with our rewards system. We delay unpleasantness for pleasure in the moment, and we justify it by saying, like Biakolo states, procrastinators “solve problems by not thinking about the problem…your subconscious mind works on finding a solution.”

    The APA answers that, too: “Psychological scientists have a serious problem [with the view that procrastination is a helpful tool]. They argue that it conflates beneficial, proactive behaviors like pondering (which attempts to solve a problem) or prioritizing (which organizes a series of problems) with the detrimental, self-defeating habit of genuine procrastination. If progress on a task can take many forms, procrastination is the absence of progress.”

    Those who have studied procrastination deem it a bad habit. By all means, take that study break. Exercise, snack, watch a video. But then you need to get back to work and break the cycle.