I won't lie, I'm writing this after procrastinating for about the last week. Yes, upon writing this I have had work and other priorities to take care of, and despite having a story to write I found other less important things to do and leave this for the absolute last.
Procrastination: (N) The action of delaying or postponing something.
What has inspired me to write this has a little bit of history as well as present experiences, obviously. Being a college student comes with assignments, test and other school related activities. And what also comes with is a little bit of procrastination, or in major cases a lot of bit. So with inspiration being sparked, I've decided to further look into procrastination and why we do it.
According to a study done by Oxford Royale Academy, there are five reasons for why humans tend to procrastinate when it comes to anything from writing a simple essay to washing your car.
Those reasons include:
1. We don't know where to begin.
2. A task feels to big or hard.
3. We are big fat liars.
4. A task feels unimportant.
5. Distractions.
Although there are specific definitions for each reasoning, I would first like to say with full honesty that I absolutely agree with each one, but I would like to kind of break it down into my own words.
So, of course we don't know where to begin. The hardest part for me at least is always figuring out where to start. If it's an article or a paper for example, if I don't know the topic I want to write on I will simply put it to the side and wait and wait and wait some more until I'm sure I have a solid topic to discuss.
A few ways I feel like this could be achieved is to make a list. If you don't know where to start, write down a few ideas that pop into your head, or something you might see that influences you and pick on a few days or even weeks before what you're trying to do needs to be finished.
On to the next. Everything is hard at first and if you disagree, well then kudos to your natural skills and talents, but for the rest of us starting something new is intimidating and we tend to get stuck and neglect the project or assignment that we should be doing.
This one cracks me up. It cracks me up because we tend to lie not only to others but to ourselves, too. We tell ourselves "maybe when I'm not busy" or "It's not due for a few days when actually it's due the next day." But in reality we're just trying to blow it all off until the very last minute.
When it comes to a lot of things we tend to feel that it is unimportant or maybe it is not important enough, but we most likely fee that way because at the moment of having to do it you could be out hanging with your friends or taking nap, and all of that seems a little bit more important.
Distractions is definitely a key to procrastination and that goes back to feeling like something is unimportant because when we are distracted we are making other things and activities over what is actually the priority and it affects the way that we work.
