Procrastination and you

School was never a favorite place for students, at least that is what many people claim. Imagine getting home, thinking about that “Angry Birds” level you haven’t finished, and yet the first thing you have to do is your homework. In high school, it sometimes becomes the last thing you do before bed. Even the thought of doing homework hurts your head, so naturally, people start to procrastinate. Yet what people discover is an endless pit that drags you on with suffering, where they waste hours and hours of time every day, until they look back to themselves 20 years later with countless opportunities missed and left behind. This is the hell of procrastination.

Procrastination has been a problem since ancient times. Words pass down from generation to generation saying that the key to preventing it is to control ourselves and organize our daily lives to get our work done. Lots of people still believe in this even in the present day, my family included. But if this is true, why are there still people procrastinating with the proper education over these topics? The truth is, In reality, procrastination is a much heavier problem than simple time management and self-control. 

Before getting any further, it is important to know what procrastination is. In one article from the “The New York Times,” Dr. Fuschia Sirois, professor of psychology at the University of Sheffield, says, “People engage in this irrational cycle of chronic procrastination because of an inability to manage negative moods around a task.” Dr. Fuschia Sirois’ study in 2013 shows that procrastination is a method of short-term mood repair, which means that it is a way the mind finds to “effectively” fix our bad moods. Yet, every time our body does find relaxation in procrastination, it tends to do it again, and again, and again. The process turns into a vicious cycle of trying to “entertain” itself subconsciously, but what it ends up doing is getting nothing done and worsening the situation even more. 

Unfortunately, procrastination is not only a mental health issue. If someone does procrastinate, they will likely experience time loss, anxiety, low self-esteem, and etc. The effect will last long into people’s lives, like an addiction. Your body will get used to procrastination, and, even if you do realize it, it would be hard to turn back to normal. Procrastination is an unwanted habit, but we can only sit there and watch ourselves wasting time on things more interesting than our work. 

A lot of people say that procrastination will not affect the final result of their work, and that the only negative about it is maybe losing some sleep and entertainment. What they do not realize is that losing sleep often means dragging down people’s working attitude, causing them to be tired, which decreases the overall working efficiency. Entertainment, on the other hand, will affect procrastination rates. Sometimes not having enough fun gives the mind reason to procrastinate, which comes back to the problem of losing efficiency. 

While procrastination is a huge problem in society, there are ways to keep it away from us, which is not easy. The best way to do it to set your mind to a time limit. If there is one thing that procrastinators are afraid of, it’s not having enough time to complete anything before the deadline. Once the panic starts to take over before the deadline, your body will try to destress itself by doing work as fast as possible, and the problem is solved. You may not be able to accomplish this on the first try, but one day, you will discover that the monkey who controls your brain to waste time will be gone.