Dear Fellow Procrastinator,
Chances are, if you’re reading this, you’re no stranger to putting yourself in stressful situations. We’ve all been there before, especially during midterms: we have an assignment or obligation that seems blissfully distant on the horizon, we ignore it until all of a sudden, it hits us like a ton of bricks. Everyone procrastinates now and then, but chances are, if you’re reading this, procrastination has become more of a lifestyle for you than you’d like to admit and has impaired your ability to function in some way.
Even if you have the best intentions, you always end up overestimating your ability to manage your time and avoid distractions. You tell yourself you’ll do it later until later becomes too late. You tell yourself you work best under pressure, and when you’re faced with this pressure, it can sometimes work. But at what cost? You sacrifice a bit of your sanity during cram-sessions when your panic, regret and self-loathing is at its peak. It doesn’t matter how many times this happens–you seem to never learn. You also don’t seem to be able to stop; your life is a cycle of procrastinating and recuperating from your procrastination. Sound familiar?
According to research, procrastinators have “higher levels of stress and lower levels of well-being.” I can vouch for this — when I have a task looming ahead, I am filled with a sense of anxiety until it has been completed. Sometimes, this anxiety about the momentous task is what prevents me from starting it in the first place. I lose sleep, my eating patterns become erratic, my appearance becomes more and more disheveled, and I become increasingly more on edge. I remind myself of this when I feel myself falling into the hole of procrastination. Yet time and time again, I succumb to time itself. Why?
It turns out that chronic procrastinators have issues with executive functioning and emotional regulation; procrastination is merely a side-effect of these problems that further exacerbates them. “The future self becomes the beast of burden for procrastination,” says Fuschia Sirois, a researcher from Bishop University in Canada. “We’re trying to regulate our current mood and thinking our future self will be in a better state. They’ll be better able to handle feelings of insecurity or frustration with the task. That somehow we’ll develop these miraculous coping skills to deal with these emotions that we just can’t deal with right now.” The way I see it, people who procrastinate on physical obligations are probably procrastinating on dealing with mental and emotional baggage as well. The next time you find yourself procrastinating, ask yourself why. Try to find a deeper understanding beyond “Because I don’t want to right now,” or “I just don’t have the energy,” so you can tackle what’s really going on.
To beat procrastination, we must start at the source, by making an effort to manage our emotions and overall well-beings beforehand. Seeking therapy and practicing self-care can also help. If you’re stressed, shut off all your electronics, take a hot shower, read a book, or go for a walk. I find that the more I live in the moment, the less I procrastinate, because time doesn’t seem to be a blur. During my last procrastinating episode, I told myself I had worked for so long, I deserved to hang out with my friends for a bit. I sat with them while staring at my essay, and I found that I was neither engaging with them nor my paper; I was truly wasting time. A friend saw me, closed my laptop and said, “If you’re going to hang out with us, hang out with us. Put the essay away for thirty minutes and then go back to it.” I followed her advice and was shocked about how much easier it was to finish. For us chronic procrastinators, multitasking is a no-go.
Another thing I’ve learned to stop doing is beat myself up about procrastination. Instead of wasting my energy berating myself over my mistakes, I try to channel this energy into the motivation to improve next time. The better I’m taking care of myself, the more I care about avoiding that panicked, high-anxiety state of cramming. You’ve probably heard it countless times before before, but it’s worth repeating: to beat procrastination, break up an assignment into small, manageable chunks. Hold yourself accountable to this. Set reminders on your phone, put sticky notes on your desk, write it in a planner-whatever you have to do to make the obligation seem more real. know, I know, it’s easier said than done, but it becomes easier with time, and it helps to think about how relieved you’ll feel when the assignment is complete. And on the bright side, if procrastination has become a bad habit for you, maybe you can make time management a good habit. Don’t be afraid to ask for help or try something new. Procrastination obviously isn’t ideal, but maybe you can learn from it and become a better version of yourself as a whole. Remember: it’s never too late to change, pun intended.