Procrastination
...hey will tell you that school is nothing more than a stress factory. A manufacturing plant dedicated to crowding their lives with unnecessary work. I don’t like doing work. I don’t know many people who do. But sooner or later, the work has to get done. Not liking work, I tend to put things off until the absolute last possible moment. For me, I have discovered that the less time I have, the more work I get done. This concept does not really make that much sense. While more time allows for more commitment and more effort, less time forces faster work and an inevitable decrease in quality. The big question is, why procrastinate? Many believe that procrastination is a bad thing that must be weeded out of society. After all, everyone does it. Almost everyone I know is willing to admit they would benefit from a How to Eliminate Procrastination 101 class. Many things cause this phenomenon. Lack of interest is a big one. If someone has no interest in a topic, they are naturally not going to want to spend a great deal of time on that topic. School is supposed to help and encourage students lives, not shadow over them. Then why do so many people view school related assignments and projects as a negative thing if it is what gets us tuned in with the real world? It is their attitudes towards the work, and life that makes them like this. When someone procrastinates, they may say “I’ll do it later”, but most often never end up doing it. But what are they actually doing? When they are putting off work, they are making room for other things they like doing that make them feel good, such things as games, food, social interaction, money spending, etc, rather than the dull redundancy of an assignment they would rather not do. Chances are you’ll recall weary -eyed students staring blankly at the screen, trying to reach the minimum word limit on a paper as a deadline approaches. Many were probably thinking “ Why did I decide to start this paper this morning, instead of two weeks ago, like I had planned?” As with many other disorders, there are different types of a procrastinator. There are the thrill-seekers: they wait until the last minute for the euphoric rush. The avoiders; these are the people who may be avoiding fear of failure, or even fear of success. In either case they are very concerned with what others think of them and they would rather have others think they lack effort than ability. And the last are the decisional procrastinators, who cannot make a decision. Not making a decision excuses them of the responsibility for the outcome of the events. There are some who have likely inherited characteristics that let them deal better with procrastination, without any type of self-regulatory assistance. Fortunately, there is help for the rest of us. There are many ways to reduce procrastination, if not effectively eliminate it. 1) Goal setting; the process requires taking some larger goal, and breaking it down into a series of smaller tasks. 2) Energy Regulation for when our “get up and go” has “got up and gone”; Too tired to work is one of the main reasons students use to explain their bad habits. It would be best to schedule your most difficult task during your energy peak, and the easiest during your down fall. For me, I have came up with a way to deal with my procrastination. I am working on this speech as a way of not doing all of my other assignments. This is the essence of what I like to call, structured procrastination, an amazing strategy I have discovered that converts procrastinators into effective human beings, respected and admired for all that they can accomplish, and the good use they make of time. All procrastinators put off...