I am a horrible procrastinator. In fact, my deadline for this column was yesterday.
I am only comfortable admitting this because I know I’m not the only procrastinator out there. In fact, studies show that 95 percent of people procrastinate occasionally and 15 to 20 percent of people procrastinate habitually, with college students making up 90 percent of the habitual procrastinators.
I have found every excuse for putting off this column. From checking my e-mail to getting something to eat, to playing my guitar. I have used all sorts of excuses to convince myself not to begin this article.
Why? What could possibly cause us to procrastinate so much?
I have found that we tend to procrastinate for a few reasons. The first reason for why we tend to procrastinate is because we lack confidence in finishing the job or task.
As humans, we tend to value immediate results. When we don’t feel that we can accomplish something easily, we push those tasks aside and begin other tasks that we feel we can complete more easily and quickly.
This results in the putting off of major tasks until there is almost not enough time to finish them.
If we could instead take a little time here and there to work on these things we would not be stuck cramming them into our schedule at the last minute.
My little sister is a prime example. She is notorious for putting off her big reports until the night before they are due. She stays up until the break of dawn frantically trying to fill the page with information she collected that night.
The reason she does this is because she lacks confidence in being able to finish the report to begin with.
Another reason we procrastinate is because we are bored of the task.
At work, I often find myself checking my e-mail, text-messaging, or playing solitaire just to avoid doing my usual sidework of re-stocking the shelves or organizing files just because I am dead tired of these tasks.
The final reason we procrastinate is because we just plain don’t want to do a certain task. Washing the dog, taking out the trash and doing my homework all fall into this category for me. These tasks are usually put off more than once.
Every time I have to do one of these tasks, I procrastinate and do a million other things before I actually get around to doing them. This leads to doing homework at midnight, taking the trash out after it overflows and washing my dog when his fur is a different color than what it is supposed to be.
Procrastination is a problem that leads to an unhealthy lifestyle and a decrease in the quality of the tasks we take on.
In order to overcome this problem we can write out a schedule that allows adequate time for us to complete everything we need to. Also, when you know you have a task to complete, reduce the amount of distractions around you as much as possible so you can focus and complete it.
Hopefully we procrastinators can realize our problem and fix it with this advice. For those of you who don’t procrastinate, don’t worry you just haven’t got around to it yet.
