Procrastination Essay, Research Paper

Procrastination was my topic of choice for this research project. I have chosen this topic because my life style is based on the definition of procrastination. Procrastinate means “to defer action; delay: to procrastinate until an opportunity is lost”(Merriam Webster Dictionary, pg. 1147). Procrastination is almost everybody’s non-favorite verb. As you read, you will notice spelling errors and comma splicing along with other common grammar errors within this report. This is to show you that procrastination is very dangerous in the college world and the real world too. So you will read a research paper written and constructed by a true procrastinator (also, a hacker in training). So the time and date is 9:00 am on November 6th, 2000. I will discuss a brief history, one of the underlying causes, strategic solutions, and my own history of procrastination.

In the 17th century, some church members thought procrastination as a sin. Revererned Walker had preference his sermon on procrastination and wrote, “I enquired of the most Learned, Grave, Conscientious and Experienced Ministers for direction; and one query I propound was, what subjects, or what texts they had found most useful and most successful to awaken, convince and convert their hears. To which a very holy, learned, aged and experienced minister replied by naming a text against procrastination; adding he never found his ministry so successful upon any, as upon that subject, upon which very text I have preached many sermons since.” So Walker states that he was not alone in believing that procrastination was “certainly evil and sin”.

Some psychologists also know procrastination as “maladaptive behavior”(Human biology pg. 149) with regard to a universal, essential cognitive and executive process. It is a life pattern that is characterized by inefficient behavior in decision-making, setting of priorities, scheduling, and adherence to schedule in one or more life areas and is a source of personal distress.

There are many underlying causes of procrastination. The fear of failure is the most common cause, and involves putting off personal rejection or failure. The lack of discipline involves having no systems of rules or obligations that are set up to help you to determine what to do. There is also the perfection paralysis when being overly concerned about perfection and thus being indecisive. The un-pleasantness of tasks which means dreading the distasteful of the work. These are just a small percentage in the world, I could go for hours telling of other causes.

The fear of failure is putting off personal rejection or failure. “Behavioral procrastination is demonstrated by the tendency to delay a task to avoid threats to self-esteem, threat of failure, and a disregard for aversive tasks (Ferrari & Emmons, 1995).” Herny Murry states “people have a drive to master their environment – a perfectly normal and quiet desirable drive.” But he also noted that people would increase this drive and they would soon become a perfectionist. Alfred Alder had also commented that people would rarely increase this drive by turning it into some type of quest. Karen Koreny, Adler’s contemporary, noted that they would then create a self-image and try to live by that image. Albert Ellis has defined this state as a dire need “to be thoroughly competent, intelligent, and achieving in all possible aspects.” Soon, this drive had become a psychological requirement into one’s own aspect of mind. They would then try to obtain the impossible dream of perfection’s. People who deny this of being a impossible dream are the perfectionists.

Now when this happens, the person sets up some type of rules that are rigid, so he/she could live by. These rules will be so high, that he/she cannot achieve them because they are not realistic. So in reality, they cannot reach these rules, and they know they can’t. But in their mind, they believe they can and thus start procrastinating. So they are practically giving them selves a reason to fail instead of facing reality itself by knowing they cannot do the task itself. But as they continue to perform less then perfectly, they may become cynical an defeatist and begin to characterize themselves as total failures.

This basically shows that the fear of failure is linked to fear of failure. Many people fear failing because of the painful feelings of anxiety: and depression the typically experience when their perfectionist ideas are not attained. But they don’t change the outlook to conform reality; they will instead desperately cling to their belief in perfectionism and mange to temporarily avoid the bad feelings attached to failure by procrastinating.

Another clover tactic that sterns form a fear of failure and that covers one anxious/depressed feelings is waiting until the eleventh hour to begin something that portend possible imperfection. Now the imperfect work can be explained, “I started to late; next time I’ll do it right!” But despite the self-con, a dim awareness exists that the time was available to do a better job, but that the time was mismanaged. Even so, the con helps the maintain a false sense of well-being.

When success is conceived of a s a solution for resolving inner doubts, chances are that if you procrastinate, some of your procrastinating can be linked to a fear of failing. The person who believes in this contingency solution believes that success is essential for creating a sense of self-worth an for making life meaningful. Not only is this belief enormous, but is abets a type of self-focused concern that drains available energies. And the procrastination that results from this self-preoccupation increase chances for more failure.

When success is the prerequisite for resolving inner doubts and for making life meaningful, we once again , a condition is establish that seems on the surface to be reasonable: “be perfect and you problems will go away” (Dr. Knaus pg. 47). Noble though striving for perfectionism as it may sound, it is still the equivalent of trying to inspire yourself to swim up-stream when you want to go down-steam.

But there are solutions to this perfectionism conflict.

From the book “Do it Now, How to Stop Procrastination, pg. 49″

+ Carry out a dialogue with yourself on the topic of how people grow and learn though both mistakes and success.

+ Pretend you’re a research scientist assigned the task of understanding and explaining why people can’t be perfect. Write a one-page report summarizing your findings.

+ Pretend you are an investigative reporter assigned to write an article on what constitutes success and fulfillment to you. Outline the article.

+ List normally occurring impediments that could slow you down from doing the best you can at any one time.

My history with procrastination is a long road and still s continues today. It all started in 3rd grade. I was given many assignments everyday. I had to work with word problems in the math section. In my writing, I had to write a essay every night and turn it in the next day for credit. Then I also had to do reports in my geography class on countries I have never heard of. So I started working real hard for a while. But I got very tired of it, so I put it off until an hour before bedtime. Soon, my grades were dropping very fast. When my family and me moved here to Modesto. I was attending elementary school and had no friends. So I started to do my work for those three years. But when I entered Jr. High. I started to put my work off because it was pretty easy. My math class was easy because I could do the math problems in my head. My English class was all mostly in class assignments and no homework. So this practically continues for two whole years. But when high school came, it was different. In my freshman year, I was pretty smart in the first semester because I knew all of the material in my math and science classes, which in turn thrust me back in to the world of procrastination. Because I already knew the material in these two classes. In my science class, I manage to pass with a high B+ average every semester. My math class was a straight C+ average. I manage the C average because I didn’t do any of the homework assignments, and I also got a near one hundred percent on all of the tests (many claim I cheated). But my English class came along, I had to read and write essays on stupid topics that never interested me. So this increased my level of procrastination. My sophomore year was a bit different. Instead, I had average a C+ average in almost all of my classes in of my classes. The two exemptions would be my drafting class because we worked with computers, and my social science class since we talked about cool revolutions, wars, and technology (I had to correct the teacher in physics and in technology a lot). When my junior year came along, my level of procrastination started to drop a little. It was hell of funny in my math class because I didn’t pay attention at all. Once my teacher called on me to answer a question (because I was not paying attention) that required a polynomial to be solved. I stared at the question for a couple of seconds, and then he says, “See what happens if you don’t pay attention class!” Then I turn to him and say “X^2+8X+16″. He was shocked to see that I gave him the correct answer. Everybody in class was saying I was wrong and that it’s impossible to do in your head. But in a few minutes, everybody had to accept the fact that I was correct. They were even more shocked to find out that I was reading “Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity” in the class (I do this in your class too).

So as you can see, procrastination can complicate the lives of young and old and the hectic lives or parents, consequently, its important for all those chronically procrastinating individuals to get their acts together. But with the age information upon us, people can just log on the Internet and download their homework or papers. But there is downside to it, just hope the teach or professor doesn t know any of the websites that will search the essay on the net. As the author Young says, “Procrastination is the thief of time,” and though we rarely recognize it, on one of us have any time to spare.