Intro to Procrastination: What is Procrastination?
- Filed under: Study Tips
- Date: Feb 24,2008
You hear people say it all the time. “I am a procrastinator!” But what really is a procrastinator? Is it good or bad? Some procrastinators claim that procrastinating improves their performance. They say, “I work better when I am under pressure.” Is this true? If so, everyone should be a procrastinator.
I would like to examine procrastination, the misconceptions of procrastination, and being able to recognize if you suffer from procrastination.
What is Procrastination?
According to Dictionary.com Procrastination is “to defer action or delay.” The key terms I would like to focus on are “defer” and “delay.” These terms mean one thing “inevitable.” What ever it is you are delaying, whether it’s writing your English paper or getting out of bed, it is inevitable that it will happen, you will get out of your bed.
Procrastination itself is inevitable. If your Professor assigns a paper to you, the second you walk out of the classroom and choose to not work on that paper right away, you are procrastinating. Perhaps you decided to go eat lunch instead.
If you want to defeat your habit of procrastination you first have to stop calling it procrastination, because it is inevitable and therefore you can never defeat it.
Misconceptions of Procrastination
As I said in the beginning, some say that procrastination makes them perform better. This is not true. It may seem true, I have even claimed this, but it is a false belief. With a little bit of critical thinking we can easily recognize that it does not.
The reason we believe procrastination makes us perform better is because we are under pressure. When we are under pressure we are forced to have a mindset that is focused.
When procrastinators attempt to be non procrastinators, by writing their paper a week in advance, they will do poorly on the paper because they were not focused when they wrote the paper. We can be focused without being pressured by time, but it is a skill that must be trained and attempted more than once.
If we are not going to procrastinate, when we actually do the assignment, we must force ourselves to focus. If not, our paper would have been better if we had procrastinated.
However, if we are focused and write our paper a week or two in advanced, we can write a paper that out performs our would be, procrastination paper.
Are You a Procrastinator?
You may think to yourself, I am always busy, I am always working on something, I am a productive person. Well, I hate to bust your bubble, but just because you are being productive does not mean you are not procrastinating. Procrastinating is due to inefficient use of time, Productivity is efficient use of your energy. There is a difference.
If you can learn to be Productive and Not Procrastinate, you are on your way to success!
In the upcoming weeks I will be posting on methods to correct your procrastination habits by learning to be motivated, creating schedules that will actually help you, and staying focused when you are performing the task.
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