Being a high school student, I feel intimately familiar with some of the processes of procrastination. Now, I say some processes because as any truly devoted procrastinator knows, there are many ways to put off doing work. First, you can just straight-up avoid the work, perhaps looking busy, or ‘forgetting’ you had to do it at all. Then of course comes the “excuse procrastination”, where you convince yourself that you don’t have what you need to begin a project. I did this one recently with a summer reading assignment, in which I needed to practice journaling about a book I was reading. My whole room is stacked with every type of notebook and journal from half done to completely empty imaginable, but in order to delay the beginning of my work, I convinced myself that none of them would do and I would need to drive an hour into a bookstore across town to find a journal. Although the requirement was obviously far-fetched, it worked, and my own stubbornness wouldn’t let me begin the project until two weeks later when the looming due date scared me into re-convincing myself that any journal would be fine. Another type of procrastination I think many other people will relate to is fear procrastination, where you build up the work you need to do in your head until the prospect of starting is virtually impossible to fathom. Many people will tell you procrastination is unhealthy and not a good system for your academic career or your life. When people tell me this, I roll my mind’s eye. With the all too common mention of what procrastination’s effects are, the causes are rarely, if ever, addressed in conversation. I have been told not to be a procrastinator all my life. I have been lectured on what procrastination leads to, and I can probably name most of the motivational speakers my public school counselors have quoted to me about the harmful effects of procrastination - yet I am still a chronic procrastinator.
Now, I may be the one exception to the rule, but seeing as many of my peers also self diagnose as chronic procrastinators, I highly doubt it. Perhaps the question everyone should be asking is not whether we should be procrastinating, but why we are procrastinating. Obviously, the simple answer is that we are all immensely lazy and lack the motivation to begin work we should be doing. However, my procrastination sometimes takes far more energy and effort than actually beginning and finishing the work. Hence, I do not believe this to be an accurate representation of a procrastinator’s mindset. So then, why is it so easy to get caught in a circle of procrastination for so many people? To answer this question, I decided to look into the brains of procrastinators and thus discover the psychology of procrastination. Particularly, the psychology of the excuse procrastinator, since I have so recently delayed beginning my summer homework assignment because of such psychological tendencies within myself.
According to the American Psychology Institution, psychology is the academic study of the human mind and behavior. In regards to excuse procrastination, studying psychology will help people answer the question of what causes their fabricated insistence on doing or getting something before they can begin their work, and why they have a propensity to create these false necessities. Later allowing them to fight those tendencies and create new behavioral patterns, hopefully leaving the procrastination cycle behind.
In the book Contemporary Educational Psychology, studies of Undergraduate Procrastinators and their other psychological tendencies were organized into interpretable data and analyzed to show relationships between academic procrastination and self-efficacy, the belief a person holds about their capabilities. The findings within the article address the causes of procrastination rather than the effects of procrastination, a topic in which every procrastinator has been lectured on far too many times. Looking at the actual causes of procrastination is far more beneficial in finding ways to avoid procrastination, since the roots of the problem can then be addressed, rather than the symptom, the procrastination, being shamed. The most significant findings within the article revolve around self-efficacy leading to a higher likelihood of procrastination. This shows that when a person’s opinion of their capabilities is lower, they are less likely to even begin. The delay in the start of the project may be due to fear that the person truly thinks they cannot do the work, or maybe they do not believe they are currently prepared to begin the work. Perhaps my false idea of needing a new notebook was not because my plethora of current notebooks was not good enough but that I felt like I could not use the notebook correctly. Thus I created the false pretense that a new notebook would magically give me the ability to understand and be capable of doing the project. When this idea is written out, it seems illogical, but humans’ ability to deceive themselves of illogical things is uncanny.
Human’s innate ability to convince themselves of false necessities is an astounding part of the human psyche. Young children exhibit the ability to convince themselves of false needs all the time. Perhaps in the form of a nine-year-old convincing themselves that they need to play five more minutes of Fortnight before they can begin their nightly math homework. More developed forms of false necessities include Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), an anxiety disorder that “features a pattern of unwanted thoughts and fears (obsessions) that lead [patients] to do repetitive behaviors (compulsions),” (MayoClinic) In severe cases of OCD, patients will express the idea of fear that if they do not perform their repetitive behaviors something bad will happen, oftentimes illogical and unrelated to the behavior. Humans’ psychological tendency to create false pretenses is an immense area of research, but understanding the human ability to do so is vital in understanding excuse procrastination. Since to be an excuse procrastinator a person needs to convince themselves of sometimes farfetched necessities they need before they can begin.
Understanding the probable thinking patterns which lead to excuse procrastination is imperative to changing future behaviors. Firstly, understanding that most procrastinators of any type have some form of low self-confidence can help us address the underlying beliefs which can cause procrastination. People with low self-efficacy can work towards greater confidence in their abilities and in the work they do before they do it by simplifying the task before they begin. If I had truly understood the summer reading assignment and made an easy to follow step by step guide to get it done, I would have felt more confident in being able to perform each step and thus would have been able to start the project before the due date was 12 hours away. Another skill that can break the brutal psychological struggle against low self-efficacy is seeking help. When a person has no confidence in their ability to do a project, they should seek out help and see if a friend, who they have confidence in, can work with them or help them out. Eventually, the smaller acts of conscious introspection lead to greater self-efficacy overall, until one day, low self-esteem does not put them in a position of procrastination.
Although low self-efficacy is one of the largest underlying struggles for procrastinators, people who struggle with excuse procrastination should also closely consider their particular habits. For example, if they have a tendency to delay the start of a project due to the belief that they do not have required tangible materials, like a particular notebook, they could seek out getting that item as fast as possible, perhaps even borrowing one from a friend if you do not need to keep it after the task. When the ‘necessary’ commodity is less tangible, like time, a person might delay the start of the task because they don’t feel like they have enough time to really begin work or do anything productive. People who are prone to beliefs like that are prone to put off work till the very last minute and when they finally get to it, not devote their full attention or do the task to their full ability. Although some things truly take more time than is available at the moment, almost everything can be broken into parts and at least started in the now. If there is a free moment and a task which you have been procrastinating due to time crosses your mind, perhaps looking at your schedule and penciling in a particular time and place to do the work will be beneficial in changing your psychological tendency. Another way to combat the struggle is to take the time to make your step by step guide to completing the project at that moment that is not long enough to do the task completely but is long enough to think of the task. Thus, you work against low self-efficacy, as well as the false prerequisite mindset at once.
Changing mental and behavioral patterns cannot be done all at once, but little by little, procrastinators can become healthier and better people through a devoted effort to changing their psychological tendencies.
For further research and knowledge, check out other articles posted on UrBetterBrain for help with understanding and applying cognitive sciences to your everyday life and health. For a more in-depth understanding of procrastination look into the TED talk by Tim Urban; Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator.
Works Cited:
Klassen, Robert M., et al. “Academic Procrastination of Undergraduates: Low Self-Efficacy to Self-Regulate Predicts Higher Levels of Procrastination.” Contemporary Educational
Psychology, Academic Press, 15 Aug. 2007,
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361476X07000264. “Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD).” Mayo Clinic, Mayo Foundation for Medical
Education and Research, 11 Mar. 2020,
www.mayoclinic.org/diseasesconditions/obsessive-compulsive-disorder/symptoms-
causes/syc-20354432.
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