Procrastination, Its Consequences, and How to Focus More on Ending the Bad Habit

I have a confession to make. Are you ready? The truth is, I didn’t write my speech until last night. I know, I know. It’s bad. Don’t get me wrong, I had good reasons to not write my speech, well, maybe not good, more like mediocre. Or maybe they‘re just excuses, I don’t know First, I had to call my grandma to ask how she was doing, very Important. Then, I had to change the wallpaper on my phone.

Finally, I had to vacuum my room even though it was just done the night before You could say I’m an addict. Not to drugs, but, to something even more deadly. Procrastination. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word procrastinate means “to put off intentionally and habitually”. People procrastinate for a variety of reasons — whether it‘s they just don’t want to do their work, don’t know how, or they’re like me and are addicted.

Today we are going to push all of our work aside to talk about what procrastination is, then we’re going to pull an all»nighter to talk about why people procrastinate. After panicking for 30 minutes, we will then figure out how we can stop procrastinating. Similarly stated above, procrastination is making room for tiny, useless tasks so that we can do larger, more important ones later.

If you still haven’t caught on to this concept let me break it down for you Say you have a book report due on Friday Monday through Wednesday you do absolutely nothing to get your report done.

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Nothing at all. Then, Thursday night comes around and you tell yourself you need to write your speech! Instead of following up on what you told yourself you were going to do, you watch cat videos on YouTube Or in my case, text Zoe about what iPhone I want to upgrade to. Really, you just squeeze in time for tiny matters and get rid of time for the important things like your book reportt You wake up and it‘s 2:28 AM, and being the real trooper you are, you jot away all the details of your book. Restless, you arrive at school, project in hand. This causes problems for students everywhere, because they did not get the desired amount of rest they should have The issues do not stop at sleep. According to a PsychologyToday article last updated November 20th, 2015, people who procrastinate are more likely to consume more alcohol, get sick more often, and are at risk for depression, They also find ways to distract themselves — offsetting the balance between work and play After looking at some of the negative effects of procrastination, it’s time to pose the question.

Why do people choose to procrastinate? While everyone does it for different reasons, there are a few big ones that stand out and are more popular Perhaps one reason is the task that you are taking on is too overwhelming, According to a March 26th, 2015, Forbes article, people tend to respond to things that won’t cause them to think a lot, even if it takes a lot of time So an example of this would be walking your dog instead of packing for your trip that you leave on in five hours, Possibly another reason for procrastination is that people aren‘t challenged In the aforementioned Forbes article, it states the importance of noting when someone is not doing their work Employers should especially look for signs of this, because they can rearrange the employee in the company, or fire them all together. Finally, a loss of sleep could play into why procrastinators are struggling to get their work done In a September 18th, 2015, Huffington Post article, if you have a hard time focusing on your job, it’s time for you to get more sleep.

When you’re tired you will not only be unsuccessful in doing the project you want but you will not be able to do any of your other tasks, In fact in another Huffington Post article, from December 12th, 2013, almost half of the American population gets less sleep than the recommended average of seven to nine hours per night, Let’s take a look at how we can put an end to procrastination, One thing that my help is putting a change of pace into your work life. A September 8th, 2015, Huffington Post article recommends that you find a place you can work welli You don‘t have to be stuck at a desk to get your work done. Go to the park, a local coffee shop, or even just the kitchen table. You‘ll feel a lot better in the long run Another step you can take to end procrastination is to become organized.

The same article states that when you are more organized, you are less likely to look for other things to do, because everything will already be cleaned up and ready to go. Use a planner to manage your events, and sticky notes for your tasks to complete, Also, doesn’t everyone love that feeling when crossing something off their to-do list? Finally, maybe we should decrease social media usage, In an August 9th, 2014 Mashable article, the author talks about her social media detox. When she deactivated all of her accounts she was able to get more work done and spend more time with family, The average person spends 100 minutes a day on social media, but this varies, Today, we learned what procrastination even is, and some of it‘s drawbacks. Then, we learned why people procrastinate instead ofjust doing their work on time. Finally, we learned how we can focus better. With all of this knowledge, hopefully we will be able to get more rest as well as perform tasks better.