Procrastination

Looking through the abundance of blog posts swarming the site right now I can tell we are all struggling with the dreaded ‘P’ word. Something that haunts not just college students but just about everybody. The concept of procrastination intrigued me as I scrolled through all of the posts created today, the last possible day. We had an entire semester to post just ten times yet most of us waited until now, including myself. Why? With this, I decided to do some research on procrastination. 

Researching the topic I found an article titled “Why Wait? The Science Behind Procrastination” by Eric Jaffe. Jaffe explains that procrastination “goes back to ancient civilizations”. I learned that there are actually different types of procrastinators. Joseph Ferrari, a professor of psychology at DePaul University says “while everybody may procrastinate, not everyone is a procrastinator.” There 20% of people are classified as chronic procrastinators. He relates the matter to telling a person considered a chronic procrastinator “to just do their work is like telling a depressed person to just cheer up.” 

There is actually a neuropsychological factor to procrastination. Laura Rabin of Brooklyn College says that there might actually be a connection between the frontal system of the brain and procrastinating work. The frontal parts of the brain are “involved in a number of processes that overlap with self-regulation. These behaviors — problem-solving, planning, self-control, and the like — fall under the domain of executive functioning.” To test this 212 students were collected and assessed on procrastination and then on the above skills. It in fact correlated, students who tend to procrastinate also had problems with the behaviors caused by the frontal brain. Though there could be other factors link, they believe that this could be a cause of procrastination.

Procrastination is very common on the college campus, but by reading this article I can definitely look at the topic with fresh eyes. It is wired in us to procrastinate. The article also gives suggestions to people prone to procrastinate such as chopping up work in to pieces in order to efficiently get it done over time. This was also a technique that we discussed in class. Furthering my knowledge on this subject will definitely benefit me in my future work ethic. 

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