Why a night dedicated to procrastination??
Why We Procrastinate |
What is it about procrastination that conjures long, dark nights of the soul? Students are intimately familiar with the anxiety of the "deferred chore." But most of us don't spend a lot of time trying to understand why we put off the inevitable. Most of the time, we assume we're just lazy, or the task is so unpleasant, we'd rather avoid it.
I always assumed this about my own procrastination, until I asked students to talk about their reasons for it. One particularly frank student explained that she was a perfectionist who would avoid tasks that she felt she wouldn't be able to perform to her own satisfaction. Instead of beginning, she put it off. She admitted that this just caused her more anxiety, and in fact had lead to her failing some assignments. It's interesting and true that sometimes our avoidance of a task is so powerful, we'd rather accept failure. If we fail without attempting the task, we can blame it on procrastination, rather than on some short-coming in our ability. After hearing this student's experience, I recognized this pattern in my own procrastination. I had been putting off writing a Call for Papers for a journal I was guest-editing. I had never guest-edited a journal, and I finally realized that I was putting it off because I had no idea how to write it. That realization prodded me to send an email to the journal editor, asking for some clarification. I also looked at some models that helped me understand the task better. According to Piers Steel, a procrastination researcher at University of Calgary, there are three main reasons why students procrastinate: 1) impulsiveness (aka temptation--more fun things to do) 2) fear of failure 3) evaluation anxiety To me, it's helpful to try and understand why I put things off, and that the reasons aren't as simple as I'd assumed. We hope you'll join in this conversation to discover reasons and solutions for one of students' most persistent challenges. If you'd like to join in, please submit a blog post. (see Blog page) |
Links |
Here are some links you can follow endlessly to better understand your procrastination and avoid doing whatever it is you're actually supposed to be doing.
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