By Emma Conlon ’25
Procrastination: unfortunately we’re all familiar with it, some more than others. It traps you in an inescapable chain of empty promises. “I’ll do it later,” “I’ll get to it tomorrow…” over and over and over again. For what? So you can sit on your phone for another hour, scrolling through the endless void that is social media? Or is it because you’ve subconsciously convinced yourself you work better under the pressure you force yourself in? Whatever the reason is, procrastination is plaguing schools and offices and preventing you from reaching your full potential.
Oxford Learning says that students who procrastinate experience higher levels of guilt, frustration, anxiety, and stress. Other studies suggest that around seventy to eighty percent of teenagers have dealt with procrastination at some point. When you procrastinate, you tell your brain and yourself that the task will be completed—just not then. Even though you know you eventually will have to complete the task, it doesn’t seem that you will have to finish it at all, causing a brief period of relaxation. A study suggests that procrastination has nothing to do with a lack of time management skills and everything to do with avoiding unwanted negative emotions. However, this is incredibly dangerous, because waiting until the last possible second to turn an assignment in or write an essay causes an overload of stress and anxiety.
So, is there a way out? Well for starters, instead of waiting to start an assignment or chore, working on the task for 15 minutes or less, then taking a 5 minute break can increase productivity and positive emotions. I’ve found this method to be especially helpful with studying, as you aren’t cramming an overload of information into your brain at once. Taking breaks and getting plenty of sleep have been found to be more powerful because your brain has time to remember the information. Another trick to defeat procrastination is to give yourself an external force. If you’re anything like me, sometimes a deadline is the only thing motivating me to finish an assignment, so either rewarding yourself once you finish can help prompt you to finish the task.
