The Art Of Procrastination

The+Art+Of+Procrastination

Do you remember that one time when your assignment was due in just one hour and you still haven’t started writing it? Or do you recall a situation where you were too lazy to finish your work and made up some bad excuses? Well, welcome to the group of procrastinators. 

By the definition, to procrastinate is to put off doing something out of casual carelessness or common laziness. It often needlessly postpones or delays events or objectives in your life which can affect others. Whether we are consciously aware of it or not, this is what we do to ourselves when we procrastinate, a behavior we seem to repeat frequently even though it causes the unpleasant feelings of fear, pressure, and discomfort. Going to school every day, we are so overwhelmed with the amount of work that when coming back home, we refuse to do anything related to it, leaving it for the last minute, and once we’re done, we continue to repeat the same process. Procrastination is almost like a drug in your life, because once you start doing it a little bit, it slowly adds up to a dependency that you will find to be a common habit. 

Here are some negative impacts of procrastination:

  • Loss of precious time: Often, you are bound to become aware that you are procrastinating and as a result, you realize that you have lost valuable time that you could have better utilized for something else altogether.
  • Loss of opportunities: As a result of procrastination, you are bound to lose out on several opportunities that come your way. 
  • Goal setting: As a result of your tendency to procrastinate often, you would not be able to accomplish most of your goals. 
  • Lowered self-esteem: Often when you procrastinate, you are bound to ask yourself why you feel that you cannot do a certain task and as a result, both desperation and lowered self-esteem sets in.

 Although it seems that procrastination is bad; it’s making you lazy, disorganized, unprofessional, etc., it also has positive effects on us. In reality, to procrastinate is to enhance the human ability to think rapidly, hence focus and provide more time for pleasant activities. Many consider delaying assignments as poor behavior; however, if a person were to find procrastination as a workout for their brain, would they reconsider? In our modern society, work ethics are malleable in which a person would work best when they are in the mental state of immense focus and critical thinking at an extraordinary pace. 

  • Procrastination is an advantageous strategy for both critical and fast-paced workloads. Imagine a scenario where a student was given a project due the following week. Most students and teachers would provide the advice of doing some parts every day for better efficiency, however, that is insufficient. If she/he were to complete the assignment sequentially, the time it would take to be attentive is impractical. In contrast to the procrastinators, the time of focus is relatively quick and viable. Therefore, limiting the time the student would have to finish an assignment creates effective pressure.
  • Procrastination is a recipe for success. Structured procrastinators often consider the allotted time that they have until they are required to begin their assignment. Having this type of mentality is beneficial when organizing time. Usually, non-procrastinators would complete the task early and start procrastinating, because they believe that they are safe. However, that is incorrect; having to complete the assignment first sets the brain to think that they have accomplished all the required objectives for a given day, whereas they might have not. Despite that, setting the task aside allows for a more clarified thought process on what to complete before the allotted time expires and to begin their assignment.
  • Procrastination also allows creative development. Visualize a situation where a man was given a difficult task that’s taking hours to complete despite previously believing that the assignment was going to be a breeze. He begins frustrated and tired of thinking, so he searches the web for solutions. While the man attends to that, he learns that there was a more straightforward solution to the issue. Here, we can see that procrastination is essentially a technique utilized to find innovative solutions to a problem.

Procrastination is a complex concept. It is useful for people to experience or practice it and decide whether it can be functional or dysfunctional for them.