None of us is immune. Procrastination sneaks up on us all, some worse than others.
There is a wide misconception that students procrastinate because they are lazy, have poor time management skills or just do not care enough about their assignments. Procrastination is a common and serious problem. Students procrastinate for all kinds of reasons and for every different reason there is a different solution. The aim of this article is to make students self‐aware and give them a solution.
Procrastination is so common among students that the tendency to procrastinate on tasks until right before they are due is sometimes referred to as ‘student syndrome.’
Procrastination affects students’ academic performances as well as their emotional and mental health. More specifically in terms of their academic performance, students often have to face bad grades, failure in courses and dissatisfaction with their marks. Students fail to manage their time and even if they did ever submit precisely at 11:58 they believe that they can always make it because they work better “under pressure” (and I pledge guilty of the same)
In terms of emotional and mental health, procrastination causes an increase in stress and worry when things or tasks are getting done at the last moment and even if they submit it and receive a bad grade, they feel anxious and guilty and often dwell upon thoughts like ‘if I started earlier, I would have done a better job’ but unless they do not find a solution, this statement just plays on a loop after every deadline.
Students rely mostly on self‐control to get the task done and self‐control is connected directly to motivation which further helps in completing the tasks on time. Often students suffer from many demotivating factors that interrupt their flow of work like anxiety, peer pressure etc. And these factors overshadow their self‐control and motivation which leads them to procrastinate or just wait until they reach a point where both are balanced, and that time does not always come in the favour of the student.
There are multiple reasons why students procrastinate like having the fear of failure and not starting just because they are afraid that they will not be able to meet their own expectations or perfectionism where the need to perfect often has a negative impact rather than a positive one and lastly anxiety which is postponing work just to avoid having to deal with any negative thoughts or emotions that come with it. To stop procrastinating we need to first break down the steps. With any task that you need to do, whether it is studying or completing an assignment, break it down into smaller steps, as smaller tasks seem much easier to accomplish than larger projects. The smaller steps that you set must also be achievable. Starting a task is where most students seem stuck but to start all you must do is find the smallest entry point, if you are trying to study then you should focus on sitting at the desk and opening your laptop. This makes the tasks so small that your brain is not intimidated.
You can also try using the Pomodoro technique where you work in 25‐minute blocks, each separated by a 5‐minute break and during each block, you focus on just one small task. This way you have a proper schedule of study and rest And if all resorts fail you can always give yourself a pep talk and make yourself believe that you can indeed complete this task and talking to yourself is not crazy if you can tell yourself that “I’ll do it tomorrow” then you can definitely tell yourself that “I need to finish this and I need to do it now.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Maryam Al Baloushi Student, BA (Hons) Business Studies
