Manage the big frustration: procrastination
Procrastination is a relatively normal activity that most people indulge in throughout their lives, but it has the potential to not only negatively affect your work but also your mental and physical health. People who continuously procrastinate are prone to experience higher levels of stress and anxiety, which can lead to low self-esteem and depression. These mental and emotional issues, in turn, can affect your physical health, reports Lizaan Snyman.
Do you sit down to start an assignment, look at the instructions, and rather than starting the task, get up to bake banana bread or watch a YouTube video? Then you might be one of the millions of people who struggle with procrastination.
Procrastination is defined by an article on the James Clear website as the act of postponing a task or assignment against your better judgement until the last minute or even past the deadline.
Prof. Johnnie Hay, director of the school of psychosocial education on the Vaal campus and practising educational psychologist, said, “90% of university students procrastinate, with 25% falling in the pathological procrastination category.”
Even though it is near impossible to categorise people into two distinct boxes, Hay said that it is important for people to understand that there are two large categories in which procrastinators can be placed, namely pathological and within-normal-limits procrastinators. Within-normal procrastinators can be equated to crisis-maker procrastination, where a person needs a high level of pressure to produce quality work even if it is at the last minute.
Pathological procrastination means that a person consistently procrastinates to the point that it negatively affects their functioning. This means that procrastination starts to negatively influence your social and academic environment because you always have to ask for an extension. This then becomes a pattern.
People who procrastinate are often seen as being lazy, but there are various reasons why people procrastinate, and, according to Hay, the issue does not have an easy answer.
Even though laziness and depression can cause people to procrastinate, Hay said that psychologists first look at the emotion and reasons behind the inaction. “In a minority of cases you can assign procrastination to laziness, but then you have to be very sure that you have analysed all the potential feelings and factors behind the lack of movement the person is experiencing,” he said.
According to Verywell Mind, the reasons people procrastinate include not knowing what or how something needs to be done, being in the habit of waiting till the last minute to do something, believing you work better under pressure, and lacking the initiative to start a task.
Hay adds three factors that play a role: your personality, your psycho-dynamics and the task, activity or choice that you procrastinate over.
The personality of a person refers to personality traits such as whether you have a positive or more negative mindset and attitude. For instance, do you see tasks as a challenge you like to overcome or just another obstacle? Other traits such as how motivated you are in terms of goals, what your level of self-discipline is, what your level of responsibility is, whether you are a dreamer or a doer, as well as how you manage your time will all have an effect on your level of procrastination.
Then there is the psycho-dynamics factor which refers to what happens in a person’s psyche when they keep postponing. To make it easy to understand, think of it as resistance towards the task, activity or choice you need to make. There are several reasons why you can have a natural feeling of resistance towards an activity, task or choice. For instance, you don’t like a specific lecturer, so you have resistance towards the assignments you have to hand in that lecturer’s specific module.
The resistance you experience can also be because the task you need to do either seems too large and above your ability, or the task can be trivial, and you would rather focus on something more important. Then, on a deeper level, there is also the fear of failure, which causes people to postpone tasks, activities and choices because they fear that the work they produce is not good enough.
Lastly, the task, activity or choice being procrastinated over is either seen by the individual as unpleasant, stressful, above their capabilities or too trivial to give much attention to.
“It’s a complex confluence of these factors that influence a person’s level of procrastination,” Hay said.
The chart below indicates the most common methods university students indulge in when they are procrastinating and was published in a report by StudyMode in 2014:
The nationwide lockdown, although now operating at lower levels, still has an impact on South Africans’ daily functioning and lifestyle.
“I think we all feel a low degree of depression due to the isolation from various groups of people and activities. The lack of variety for a big part of one’s day, like sitting in front of a computer all day, can make you less motivated and affect your mood, which has an effect on how structured your work,” Hay said.
Jana Schlechter (19), a second-year BA Communication student said that during lockdown she procrastinates more than when she was on campus and at her residence. “This is partly because I have more free time to do my work in and because lecturers constantly extend deadlines,” she said.
Schlecter added that she is not usually a last-minute person. “But as a procrastination attempt, I bake one too many banana bread loaves and time swoops away leading to my marks for the assignment that was due also swooping away,” she said.
To manage her procrastination, Schlechter forces herself to work, study unit by study unit or question by question, whichever the case may be, and then rewards herself with “an episode or four of Suits afterwards”.
Vusani Maluleke (20), a first-year BCom Chartered Accounting student on the Vaal campus, agrees with Schlechter about procrastinating more when she is at home. “When I’m in an environment where there’s a lot of other students, they motivate me to get my university work done,” Maluleke said.
“We also had a little ‘support group’ at my residence so they literally would push me to study harder, you put more effort and work ahead. But now during the lockdown, all of that is basically non-existent, and I keep leaving my work for the next day, and when the day comes, I leave it for the eleventh hour. I keep telling myself ‘I work well under pressure’, but when I’m under pressure I just have breakdowns,” she said.
When feeling demotivated and discouraged, Maluleke reads the plans, goals and affirmations she has written down in her journal, prays and rephrases her inner dialogue by asking herself questions like, “Is this the kind of life you want to live forever? Are you comfortable? Think about your family, would they want you to give up?”
Maluleke said the questions make her realise that she needs to work hard even though she doesn’t feel like it, because “what I’m working towards is greater than all the temporary laziness, discouragements and fears I have right now.”
While Erika Botha (21), an honours student in corporate communication, agrees that she procrastinates much more during the lockdown, she doesn’t feel so guilty about it. “We are in a stressful time and a pandemic, so it is fine to chill out a bit and take things slow,” she said.
Botha adds, “I know my limits. The thing is I usually do what I’m supposed to do, the quality of work is just not as good, but it is always good enough, so I’m not in trouble.”
Something must inspire her before she can start working. “It can be to make a cup of coffee or to listen to a song or to watch a YouTube video. Usually, the stress of the consequences if I don’t do the work is also a good motivation,” she said.
Wandile Mazibuko (25), is a first-year student in public administration and has already completed a diploma in sports science. He said, “I usually get things done, so I think it has been a little bit better because I’ve gotten all the things I needed to be done, done and more efficiently because I have more time.”
Mazibuko says that he normally never procrastinates, as he always tries to think of the end result. “I know while you are doing it, it’s not really nice, but at the end of the process, it is always worth it,” he said.
It is not just students struggling with getting work done on time. Hay said that he and his colleagues have to publish a book by November, but with Covid-19 and everybody having to adapt to the new way of functioning and dealing with the other demands lockdown has brought on various levels, they lost three months. “We have postponed enough, and now we have a lot less time left, and no one can hide behind the excuses like adapting to Covid-19 anymore,” Hay said.
There are numerous ways to manage procrastination; however, according to MindTools and Hay, there are three main steps:
- Recognise and admit that you are procrastinating over a task, activity or choice you have to make.
- Find out through introspection what the reasons are behind why you postpone a certain task, activity or choice that you have to make.
- Find tactics and strategies to help you break your specific habit of procrastination. These strategies can include forgiving yourself for procrastinating in the past, committing to the task, rephrasing your internal dialogue, and asking someone to check up on you.
“I think 50% of the solution for minimising procrastination can be answered by analysing the resistance you are experiencing towards the activity task or choice,” Hay said.
Even though procrastination is mostly seen and experienced as having a negative effect on various aspects of a person’s life, Psychology Today says that when procrastination is used effectively, it can be used as an advantage. Active procrastination can help you get more things done; unnecessary tasks can disappear, what is important to you is highlighted, and help you make better decisions.