Students: Overcoming Procrastination Addiction - Essay Sample

Introduction

Procrastination is a voluntary delaying of tasks by students despite them foreseeing the negative consequences associated with it. It can also be termed as poor time management among the students. Procrastination in students is a severe addiction that needs to be combated in the best manner. Procrastination can grow in that it becomes difficult to prevent or manage it where its severity is said to be a chronic problem. When it reaches this point of addiction, the issue has now become a generalized habitual self-destruction pattern (Klingsieck 2013 p. 26). The effects that student will get when the procrastination reach this point is a psychological disability, and they may end up dysfunction in the various dimension of life. Severe procrastination, together with the desire to escape from this problem, can bring other addictive behavior such as being an internet addict (Odaci & Hatice 2011 p. 36). Through addiction, students can have psychological disorders where there will be a tendency to allocate time to only one task at a time. It becomes difficult for them to multitask or allocate time segments for different functions as it would be required.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Causes of Procrastination in Students

There are various reasons why students procrastinate. Lack of clarity and understanding for a particular task is one of the reasons (Pychyl 2012, p. 74). When a student doesn't understand what is expected of him in a specific assignment, they will put off the assignment in the hope that they will understand it later. Unfortunately, when they check the assignment, then they still find that the information they have about the task is always the same. When a teacher is lenient with the deadline and does not enforce them, students will get the perception that the timeframe is not meaningful where they will cease to take them seriously. Students are also optimistic time estimators (Solomon & Rothblum, 1984. Students are optimistic about the time they will take to complete a particular assignment, which can create a big problem if they overestimate it. The consequences of this are that they fail to leave enough time for them to complete the task. Distraction can cause procrastination among the students where they set aside time having the intention of completing the required task, but they end up been distracted with other things. These distractions include all social media platform such as Facebook, Twitter, Skype, and others which takes the attention of students.

How Student Can Combat Procrastination

The first way for students to combat procrastination is by recognizing its existence in the beginning. When they acknowledge, they need to find the reason or the root cause of the problem. Being organized with their work is one way to assist students in dealing with procrastination (Mazur, James 1998 p. 69). One thing is that it is difficult to do a particular assignment if one doesn't know and understand the content within. Students can improve their self -management and organizing skills through breaking the task down into small parts, which would, in turn, decrease the relative difficulties of the assignment (Ganesan, 2014 p. 51). If, for example, the student is given an essay to complete, instead of seeing it as one big task, they should break it into smaller pieces, which will be manageable. An introduction might be considered as one piece while the body and conclusion another piece, respectively. These little bits of work will motivate the student in boosting their confidence in tackling the whole task. This would reduce the likelihood of intimidating the student to procrastinate. The more skilled the student is in handling a given job, the easier the assignment will be. When students are self-organized, it will assist them in mastering the task provided as it is said that nobody plan to fail, but people fail due to lack of a plan.

Making learning more meaningful can help the student to overcome procrastination since it id not easy for one to do the thing which is irrelevant. This can be done by providing activities that connect learning to the interest of the student, such as real-life scenarios (Duru, Erdinc & Balkis 2017 p. 97) Murat. Project-based learning where students centered learning approach is encouraged will challenge the student to investigate their work and straightforwardly solve the problem. Students can create an artificial deadline for their given task. This can help, especially where the due date is far away, which would trigger them to procrastinate. If a paper is to be submitted within a month, students can have a perception that a month is long for the task hence procrastinate until they find the deadline is almost over. In this situation, it is essential for a student to create an artificial deadline, such as giving themselves a deadline of fifteen days for the completion of the assignment.

Poor environment causes procrastination among the students. There are various environmental distractors that make students not concentrate on their work (Fiore 2006, p. 5). Students managing their environment will help them to combat the problem of procrastinating. If, for example, a student is having a phone while on the other hand is doing his/her assignment, chances are very high that the mere presence of the cell phone will distract them in completing their required assignment.

Conclusion on Student Combat With Procrastination

Procrastination can be a mental illness and asymptomatic of psychological disorder. There is a need for students to fight it in the best possible ways available before it turns to be an addiction that is difficult to manage. If students don't make an attempt to combating it, they are likely to be faced with adverse effects such as depression, low self-esteem, guilty, and stress. Procrastination is considerably more widespread in students than the general public, and this trend can end if several measures are put in place to fight the problem. Various counseling to students on the negatives effects of procrastination can help the student to deal away with this problem. Furthermore, multiple studies have proven that students who procrastinate receive worst grades compared with non-procrastinators.

References

Duru, Erdinc, Balkis & Murat., 2017. "Procrastination, Self-Esteem, Academic Performance, and Well-Being: A Moderated Mediation Model." International Journal of Educational Psychology. 6 (2): 97-119. DOI:10.17583/ijep.2017.2584 - via ed.gov.

Fiore, J.P., 2006. The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play. New York: Penguin Group. p. 5. ISBN 978-1-58542-552-5.

Ganesan, R., 2014. "Procrastination and the 2 x 2 achievement goal framework in Malaysian undergraduate students" (PDF). Psychology in the Schools. 51 (5): 506-516. DOI:10.1002/pits.21760.

Hillary, R., 2011. The 7 Secrets of the Prolific: The Definitive Guide to Overcoming Procrastination, Perfectionism, and Writer's Block

Jackson, T., 2003. "Procrastination and Perceptions of Past, Present, and Future." Individual Differences Research. 1: 17-28.

Klingsieck, K.B., 2013. "Procrastination." European Psychologist. 18 (1): 24-34. DOI:10.1027/1016-9040/a000138. ISSN 1016-9040.

Lay, C.H., 1993. "Trait procrastination, time management, and academic behavior." Trait Procrastination, Time Management, and Academic Behavior. 8 (4): 647-62.

Mazur, James, 1998. "Procrastination by Pigeons with Fixed-Interval Response Requirements." Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. 69 (2): 185-197. DOI:10.1901/jeab.1998.69-185. PMC 1284653. PMID 9540230.

Norman, A., June 1988. "The Procrastination of Everyday Life." Journal of Research in Personality. 22 (2): 197-212. DOI: 10.1016/0092-6566(88)90015-3.

Odaci & Hatice., 2011. "Academic Self-Efficacy and Academic Procrastination as Predictors of Problematic Internet Use in University Students."

Pychyl, T., 2012. "The real reasons you procrastinate - and how to stop." The Washington Post. Retrieved February 20, 2012.

Pychyl, T.A., 2000. "Five Days of Emotion: An Experience Sampling Study of Undergraduate Student Procrastination (special issue)." Journal of Social Behavior and Personality. 15: 239-54.

Schraw, Gregory; Wadkins, Theresa; Olafson, Lori, 2007. "Doing the Things, We Do A Grounded Theory of Academic Procrastination." Journal of Educational Psychology. 99: 12-25. DOI:10.1037/0022-0663.99.1.12.

Solomon, L.J., Rothblum, 1984. "Academic Procrastination: Frequency and Cognitive-Behavioural Correlates" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2016-07-29.

Steel, P., Brothen, T., Wambach, C., 2001. "Procrastination and Personality, Performance, and Mood." Personality and Individual Differences. 30: 95-106. DOI: 10.1016/S0191-8869(00)00013-1.