Ah, procrastination. It is the destination for most people. This is where we end up when we think things are too hard or avoid things that may take too much of our precious time. Whether you're putting off studying for finals, doing that last research project, or calling your grandmother, procrastination takes the minds of almost all of us at some point. As I am writing this, I am also watching a pointless cable television action movie from the eighties. Seriously... any other time rather than the week before finals I would NOT be watching this movie... but today, when I have a list of things to wrap up and study for, today is the day that I will find time to watch this movie. Why? Why do we do this?
- Dr. Elliot Berkman makes us feel better about this, not that we should justify it. “Getting something done is a delayed reward, so its value in the present is reduced: the further away the deadline is, the less attractive it seems to work on the project right now.”
Sometimes when we see that the value of doing a task is is less than the value of doing anything else, we feel the need to put that task off for a later time (basically the definition for procrastination). Dr. Berkman suggests that finding value in your task list can greatly reduce procrastination. This is easier said than done, but in the past, (and definitely not right now) I have found that if you connect the values of your tasks with the values of long-term life goals, this will greatly increase your motivation to do those tasks.
Now, if you're like me, you have a hard time making time to study for tests. I have a new job, amongst another job that I've carried for four years. I am a very busy college student, and making money kind of has to be a priority in the adult life. So when it comes time to study, I am usually tired and it is nearing night-fall. This usually leads to me falling asleep and I find myself "cramming" for the test. Here's the thing, cramming doesn't work guys!
- David Earnest, PhD, explains. "When we try to learn information quickly, we're only enabling short-term memory," Earnest said. "This memory type extinguishes rapidly. If you don't 're-use' information, it disappears within a period of a few minutes to a few hours. Cramming doesn't allow information to assimilate from short-term to long-term memory, which is important for performing well on a project or exam."
All in all, our hopes are rising. Researchers have found that "pre-crastinating" or better defined as the motivation to finish something as soon as possible, happens a lot more often than not. When conducting a research experiment, David Rosenbaum found that college students would rather check things off of their mental to-do lists than work harder physically. He conducted an experiment on college students in which they had two choices: 1) pick up the bucket on the right and bring it to the end point and 2) pick up the bucket on the left that was closer to the endpoint and pursue that endpoint.
- "By picking up the near bucket, they could check that task off their mental to-do lists more quickly than if they picked up the far bucket," Rosenbaum explains. "Their desire to lighten their mental load was so strong that they were willing to expend quite a bit of extra physical effort to do so."
This means that students would rather get things done. So here is my last push, motivate yourself to get things done! You will feel better, and your grades will show it.
Citations:
Texas A&M University. (2016, September 19). Studying: Is it bad for your health to pull an all-nighter?. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 19, 2017 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160919162837.html
University of Calgary. (2007, January 10). We're Sorry This Is Late ... We Really Meant To Post It Sooner: Research Into Procrastination Shows Surprising Findings. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 18, 2017 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070110090851.html
