The Power of Procrastination

We’ve all been victims of this terrible illness. It hacks away at our willpower and draws us towards the next new episode of How I Met Your Mother. It makes us feel temporarily invincible in the face of time. It can also be referred to as senioritis. You would be lying if you said you have never felt the power and pain of procrastination.

There have definitely been times when I have had to pull all-nighters doing homework that I put aside because I wanted to do something else, anything else, not related to school.  I always regret wasting my time and vow not to do this to my body ever again only to fall into the exact same situation the next time around. I’ve always wondered, why do I do this to myself? And I have come up with a few legitimate reasons.

1)    Everyone craves drama. We wait until the very last minute to finish things because we like the thrill of rushing to beat the clock. It’s like taking that last shot in a game, beating the buzzer. It makes us feel empowered, like we can conquer any task no matter how or when we get it done.

2)    I do not have a sense of time. Being teenagers, our internal clocks get spun in crazy circles. We stay up late, wake up early, and sleep all weekend (or maybe in class). I always feel like either I have more time to do an assignment/study or it won’t take me that long to finish a task.

3)    I simply don’t feel like it.Sometimes after long weeks of hard homework and test, I feel like I deserve a break to drop everything and act like a bum for just one afternoon, maybe even two afternoons.

That being said, procrastination is a viscous cycle. We always survive it but not without damaging something or temporarily going crazy from stress. But it isn’t unbreakable. There are definitely ways to counteract procrastination and avoid it in the future.

1)    Plan ahead. Yes it is kind of exciting to have to scramble to finish something that we know deep down we get done on time. But why wait until the last minute? Finish it when you get the chance so that you have free time to do things you enjoy later on.

2)    Know yourself. Understand your own work pace and don’t lie to yourself about it. We’ve all been in school for quite some time now and we all our own study habits. If you are a slow reader, then give yourself the proper amount of time to finish reading that chapter.

3)    Suck it up. Homework is not the most thrilling thing in the world. Sometimes it’s too easy. Sometimes it’s too hard. Sometimes it is just busy work. No matter how you see it, homework still has to get done. I generally like to start working on the easy homework first to give myself a confidence boost and get into a nice work flow. Once I knock out those assignments, I am usually in the zone enough to tackle the harder or longer assignments.

There are many reasons why people procrastinate. There are many ways to fix it. Ultimately, the best remedy for procrastination is not doing it at all. But if you find yourself at the crossroads, ask yourself, “Is this worth my time or could I be doing something more productive?”

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