Graphic by Sonia Bajorek
What is procrastination?
Have you ever been in a situation when you had so many things to do that you just did not want to do any of them and simply lay in bed or scrolled through social media? Afterwards you most probably figured out how much work you could have done during this time, and later felt guilty or mad at yourself for postponing your tasks. This is one of the consequences of procrastination.
But what exactly is procrastination? Procrastination happens when instead of doing our tasks we decide to postpone them for an hour or a day because we have something more entertaining to do, such as texting our friends or watching videos on TikTok. Sometimes we do not have other activities or duties, but are simply not motivated enough to perform those tasks. However, most often when we tell ourselves “just ten more minutes” or “it is just a day, it does not matter anyway”, we end up having tons of work to do just before the deadline.
Why do we procrastinate?
A lot of people associate procrastination with laziness, as they believe that procrastinators do not want to work only because they are slobs. This statement could not be any further from the truth. Usually, the more we have on our plate, the more we procrastinate, meaning that we are so overwhelmed by the amount of things we have to do that we have no idea where to start and would rather do something that would help with mitigating our overwhelm. That is when we turn our attention towards our phones and focus on the entertainment they provide us with.
Why is it important not to procrastinate?
Not much good comes from procrastination. When you start putting everything away for later, you are left with so much work that it is almost impossible to complete it on time and do it in a satisfactory way. You start to stress that you will not be able to meet the deadlines or that you will not be able to prepare yourself for a test or exam. All of this not only has a bad impact on your grades, but also on your mental health, since in this situation you are constantly subject to great stress.
Sure, some people work better under time pressure, but time pressure only works properly when you have one or two tasks to achieve, not twenty of them.
How to turn in your assignments on time?
There is no clear answer to that question, as all of us are unique, and different methods are going to help us more or less, but usually a good start is to set up a calendar in which you are going to write all of your assignments, deadlines, tests, etc. You do not have to start your work right after it has been assigned, however it is always good to start it with some time to spare, as it may suddenly turn out that it is way harder than you thought. When that is the case, you start to panic, as you think that you will never be able to finish it on time.
Some people need to have a specific timeline in which they divide their tasks into smaller subsections, motivating them to do their job because they subconsciously think that the task they are taking upon themselves is easier and will take them less time. Others also like to plan their day hour by hour and stick to it to complete their goals. My personal favorite, however, is creating a to-do list on which I put even the most trivial tasks, such as walking the dog or reading, to keep myself motivated throughout the day to complete this list.
Good luck with fighting procrastination and completing your assignments!
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