Procrastination Issues - Research Paper Example

Procrastination of affiliation Procrastination Introduction Procrastinate is a verb denoting postponement of an action, putting off accountability over something, or deferring a deed. Basically, procrastination could mean avoiding today, current, or now. Procrastination could be a behavior in anyone especially those subjected to pressure to meet deadlines for assignments like college students. For most college students globally, procrastination is very high. However, most of the affected students never find procrastination as a tinge, but a continuous occurrence that goes beyond habit. Mostly, procrastination affects unpleasant tasks which the students wishes would be done sooner (Loewenstein, Read, & Baumeister, 2003). Other factors that increase the likelihood of procrastination include naivety brought by fear of the outcome, helplessness during complex situations, laziness and rebellion, lack of motivation and focus, and perfectionism amongst others. Loewenstein, Read, & Baumeister (2003) bring out fear or uncertainty on outcomes as factors contributing to higher chances of procrastination especially when the goals being pursued are important compared to less important goals. However, ambitious persons give priority to more important goals regardless of how burdensome they may be and resolve to carry out those tasks first while less important tasks are accomplished later. The implication here is that more ambitious people have higher procrastination chances especially on less important tasks compared to less ambitious persons. Ambition involves clear distinction between less important and more important tasks thereby increasing the chances of procrastination of tasks deemed to be less important. Less important tasks are mostly less urgent compared to more important tasks. Categorization of tasks as urgent or less urgent is the work of a person’s brain in response to fears. To some extent, each person has fear of facing reality or challenges like hard work and frustrations in life. However, the only two ways dealing with reality is either facing it or just running away from it. In addition, during complex situations, the feeling of helplessness or incapacitation elevates the chances of avoiding such tasks until the skills to achieve such a task are achieved or indefinitely. Incapacitation closely resembles rebellion and laziness. However, procrastination resulting from rebellion results from assertion of control by choosing whether or not to do the task. Perfectionism introduces the idea that taking up a task now would mean working it out when not fully prepared while doing it later would mean doing it better. At this point, the procrastinator only hopes that during that future time, their current skill level will have improved but does nothing about it. This goes on until when one has no option but to have work done and submit it. This paper is an application of behavior modification designed to change Liz, one of my friends who has a procrastination behavior with her college work and other small tasks in the house or within her daily schedule. It is possible that Liz’s attitude propels acts of procrastination by considering that the gain acquired from timely completion of her college work is not worth the pain of having to work through boring or distasteful assignments. Some of her comments include “Since the teacher is very strict and I hate her, I will not do anymore than what I am expected to do”. On other occasions, I have heard her say “I only work well under pressure.” With this notion, progress is made to complete the task only since she has no other alternative left or her back is against the wall and no options are left for her to explore. Finally, she has also severally admitted to me that “I barely completed my work in time but the assignment essentially earned a good grade.” At this point, what she feels is not pride in her accomplishment but guilt for acquiring an undeserved grade. She has also felt contempt towards the professor who could not recognize that her work was substandard but then she does not forget to add that “It was luck with that professor”. Despite all the guilt and ridicule for the professor, the result is that she gets more into procrastination since the positive grade rewarded her poor conduct hence propagating counterproductive behavior. All she says is that “After all, I got a good grade. What else would a student want?” Intervention According to Ferrari, Johnson, & McCown (1995), there are five cognitive distortions which promote and maintain the avoidance of tasks especially amongst students resulting to academic procrastination. These distortions include overrating of time left for tasks’ performance; underrating time needed for completion of tasks; overestimation of future states of motivational states; conviction that working when one is not in the mood is sub-optional; and misplaced dependability on the essence of emotional correspondence to thrive at task. According to Ferrari, students need to develop initiatives that they use to deal with cognitive distortions involving self-efficacy and avoidance. In this section, Liz is presented with different situations that have previously resulted to procrastination and provided with best options on how to deal with situation other than procrastination. The aim is to build self-efficacy in her such that she can adapt an “I Can” attitude while eliminating the “I cannot” attitude. The experiment involves subjecting Liz to several interventions then observing her response overtime. For successful procrastination management, Liz has to make use of cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and physical coping strategies (Wong, 2014). On several instances, Liz is subjected to complex assignments that require revising four chapters and within two days submit her assignment. Instead of allowing her to feel incapacitated, Liz is expected to break down the assignment into smaller tasks or chapters and resolve it. Additionally, Liz was subjected to tasks that previously made her feel afraid of either dealing with disruption that comes with success or handling rejection or appealing like a fool, and tasks that made her lose motivation. Liz was observed to see how she managed to acknowledge her fear, connect with it and progressively addressing it which required her to reframe her thinking and deal with her resulting feelings of fear and lack of motivation. In this case, Liz’s behavioral coping strategies are observed in terms of how she changes her behavior to address this complex tasks, fear and lack of motivation on tasks issued to her within a month. In order to observe Liz’s ability to deal with procrastination cognitively, she was subjected to simple tricky tasks that previously instilled the perfectionism into her. On several previous occasions, Liz had handled simple tasks through assumed codependence instead of cultivating the attitude that it just did not matter what she knew or did not know to handle her assignments. In this experiment, Liz is expected to go through her assignments, assess her skill set, practice the required skills and with the improved skill level, proceed to complete her assignments. Liz is also subjected with assignments that she previously procrastinated for not knowing where to start. On several occasions, Liz had complained that she could not figure out the head or tail of an assignment and therefore put it aside. In these assignments, Liz was expected to identify the starting and end points and begin filling in the missing parts instead of considering the entire assignment as having no way through. Results All data concerning Liz was collected using observation guided by situations requiring application of cognitive, physical, emotional, and behavioral coping strategies. Liz demonstrated positive progress in her management of and overcoming stressors that previously led to procrastination. Each of the reasons provided by Liz for her procrastination is observed and relevant data recorded over time. The following is graph of observed behavior change in Liz after application of procrastination coping strategies in her academic and housework. Each week, Liz was subjected to five assignments for four weeks and observations made on her response in terms of the causes of procrastination. The assignments included both academic and household chores. Table 1: Data collected on Liz’s procrastination within 4 weeks with each week containing five assignments Figure 1: Liz’s assignment procrastinated per week and the causes of procrastination. Discussion and conclusion Prior to the application of coping strategies, Liz had not strategies to manage her time and work on her tasks. Instead, Liz wasted too much time and effort trying to catch up with urgent assignments some of which she needed to consult for their high difficulty level. Her perception was that having to deal with her assignments first would mean she had to miss out on the fun that was ongoing then yet that was not possible. As a result, Liz could focus more on other less important activities while leaving out the most important ones which are class work. However, the graph indicates that Liz during the observation period of having Liz implement several strategies in her academic and house work, her self-efficacy is above average and with time it is expected to get even better. Behavioral coping strategies that involved breaking down complex tasks into small less complex pieces worked out well for Liz within the observation period (Ferrari, Johnson, & McCown, 1995). For instance, Liz can now use task-specific goals to deal with the subtasks developed from complex tasks where each subtask is guided by a goal. Further, instead of focusing on having luck with a professor who doesn’t realize that her work was poorly done, Liz has began focusing on avoiding luck and working hard to obtain the right grade for her hard work. Through emotional coping strategies, Liz managed to gradually avoid taking the short-cut of procrastination in order to deal with feelings of fear, dislike, lack of motivation, and self-doubt (Ferrari, Johnson, & McCown, 1995). Dealing with fear and lack of motivation was not easy especially since Liz needed time to familiarize with course content to cultivate confidence, connect with important tasks, and get motivated. As a result, Liz had to surround herself with positive and motivating thoughts which she wrote down and placed on the sources of procrastination like on her desk or TV. The strategy of reframing thoughts worked well on Liz’s procrastination attitude that previously saw her: fake illness when required to submit incomplete assignments on the submission date; tending to blame situations and others for failures or unhappiness; and defining very big plans that she never implemented. In this case, Liz now understands that as much as she needs to have her assignment completed, breaking it down into manageable tasks and scheduling each task reinforces achievability unlike defining big unachievable plans, faking illness or having to blame others. Liz’s extremely demanding entertainment and recreational activities’ calendar that makes it hard to have important tasks done was also managed using goal setting strategy and connection with her fears. Liz confesses that her motivation levels have increased and that her assignments are no longer threats to be managed through recreational activities, but opportunities to develop and sustain a procrastination-free lifestyle. From observations, cognitive coping that were applied to tasks that Liz did not previously know how to start were approached by focusing on starting rather than finishing (Wong, 2014). Gradually, Liz understood that every task has a starting point and a finishing point with the starting point being the reasons behind considering procrastination. One such reason is the perception of tasks as being codependent on skills other than understanding tasks to develop skills. In this case, Liz managed to begin dealing with all her assignments immediately, accepting making mistakes and learning from the mistakes to sharpen her skills to deal with her current assignments. This way, Liz is gradually learning to adapt the attitude that “It really does not matter” whether or not she had the skills, she had to use her current skills, make mistakes and learn. In addition, proper planning in terms of urgency and understanding of all tasks at hand assures her that no pressure placed on her is unbearable. To enhance her ability to deal with tasks that cannot be figured out and perfectionism, Liz sought out to rewarding self through the use of rewards for all tasks achieved. Rewards could be coupled with breaking down large tasks into smaller components and rewarding self whenever each component is accomplished. Additionally, Liz demonstrated the ability to place all tasks that were hard to figure out to a time when she felt she was most productive or early morning. Liz understood herself as being sluggish with difficulties concentrating during early afternoon and avoided such times to deal with perfectionism or incomprehensible assignments. Conspicuous reminders were also employed making it difficult to procrastination. In for Liz to manage all her academic and life pressure, the Pareto principle or 80/20 Rule has enabled her to focus at least 20 percent of her time to school work and ensure that it accounted for 80 percent of her results at school (Tracy, 2008). Having to deal with “I cannot do” attitude and replacing it with self-talk and affirmations coupled with success visualization makes the Pareto principle relevant each day of Liz’s life. Additionally, achievable time plans has seen Liz become very active in her school work as well as activities like sports that create positive emotions and reduce emotional reaction intensity (Wong, 2014). References Boffeli, T. J. (2007). College Students Personal Epistemological Beliefs as Factors in Academic Procrastination. United States: ProQuest. Ferrari, J. R., Johnson, J., & McCown, W. G. (1995). Procrastination and task avoidance : theory, research, and treatment. New York: Plenum Press. Loewenstein, G., Read, D., & Baumeister, R. (2003). Time and decision : economic and psychological perspectives on intertemporal choice. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Tracy, B. (2008). Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time: Easyread Super Large 20pt Edition. United States: ReadHowYouWant.com. Wong, L. (2014). Essential Study Skills. New York: Cengage Learning. Read More