"We all know the feeling. Staring at the cursor blinking away on a blank word document, desperately wishing you were somewhere else. But no, until the word count hits 3,000 you're staying put...Just need to make a cup of tea first. Before you know it, "a cup of tea" has turned into a Lord of the Rings marathon, and the word count remains at zero" (Knezevic). If I had to define procrastination, that would be it. Writing this essay, I have already made two cups of coffee and checked my phone at least fifteen times. Procrastination is a serious issue and is harmful for us in multiple ways. It is a lifestyle, a habit, and one that is hard to break. An American study produced results that showed over 70 percent of students fall into the hole of procrastination (Knezevic). Of the students that do procrastinate, 95% of them wish that they could stop doing so (Konnikova). While we usually think of procrastination in a school related way, the nasty habit applies to anyone in any way. Think about incompetent retirement savings, missed appointments, and how people cost themselves an unnecessary amount of money by rushing to get their income taxes done by the April 15 deadline (Jaffe). These are all examples of procrastination, just like waiting last minute to write a paper or study for an exam. Also, think about all of the stress that comes along with each and every example of procrastination. It is harmful and should be taken seriously.

Procrastination isn't some new made up term to describe college kids. It has been around since the ancient days, and even back then it was looked down upon in a negative way. In Maria Konnikova's article, she says that ancient Egyptians were having a hard time grasping the concept of time management as early as 1400 B.C. "Friend, stop putting off work and allow us to go home in good time," is what some of the hieroglyphs said that were translated by the University of Toronto Egyptologist Ronald Lepronon (Konnikova). Another example is Hesiod, who was a Greek poet that wrote to not "put your work off till tomorrow and the day after" around 800 B.C. Procrastination was even referred to as "hateful" by the Roman consul Cicero in the conduct of affairs (Jaffe). Procrastination is a human trait that most of us exhibit and cannot seem to get away from. It has always been around, always will be, and in my opinion, will get worse as time goes on and we need to take it seriously.

So we know that procrastination has been around for a very long time, but how would you define the concept? I stated previously that the first sentence in this essay is a perfect quote for the way I would define procrastination, minus Lord of the Rings and switched with another show...but you understand the point. By someone else's point of view, procrastination is considered chronic when it begins to involve itself with your days, making frequent disruptions and creates a mental and physical discomfort for you (Rothblum, Soloman and Murakami, 387). Dianne Tice and Roy Baumeister say, "procrastination appears to be a self-defeating behavior pattern marked by short term benefits and long term costs" (454). Basically, I think this is saying that procrastinators spend only a short time stressing about the task at hand, but then have to deal with the costs of not finishing on time, not receiving the good grade that you wanted, or even dealing with the long term psychological effects.

A conducted study produced results that showed a positive relationship between procrastination and clinical factors such as depression, trait anxiety, and irrational cognitions while procrastination and self-esteem had negative relationship (Rothblum, Soloman and Murakami, 387). The study also showed that as the more one procrastinated, the lower their grade point average dropped (393). This proves that procrastination should be taken seriously and acted upon, for it is affecting academic performance which ffects not only us, but the future generations as well. Tice and Baumeister said that procrastination is related to stress, negative life events, daily hassles in a positive relationship, and is even linked to mental health outcomes (454). Maria Konnikova also agreed with that statement, reporting that procrastination "leads to lower over-all well-being, worse health, and lower salaries." Health and wealth are nothing to play around with, for these factors play extreme roles in our lifestyles and should not have to be effected by such an awful habit. Some people critique procrastination as a lazy habit of "putting things off for no reason" and a habit that you got yourself into. These people see that it is not good because you only end up with less time before the deadline and putting your tasks off until the last minute is unhealthy for your physical and mental being (Tice and Baumeister, 454).

But while some people view procrastination as a lazy habit, an online article by Princeton University argues that it should not be classified as lazy because procrastinators work very hard and intensely right before the deadline and it is known that working hard is the opposite of lazy (Princeton University). Most procrastinators like to defend their habit by using excuses such as "I work better under pressure" or "I enjoy the excitement" and justifying it by pointing out that the same amount of work is done, regardless of if it was done early or later on just like they may suffer late while non procrastinators suffer early, yet they are both suffering (Tice and Baumeister, 454). Yes, the same amount of work was done but the stress is cause the procrastinator would be much higher do to attempting to meet the deadline while trying to produce a perfect paper. For the people who use the common excuses mentioned, the rush felt is actually an adrenaline rush and it only feels good because you are relieved that the task is done (Knezevic). Procrastinators seem to put off their tasks because they are anxious about doing poorly, yet they experience more anxiety as the due date nears closer and closer because they want to perfect their task in a short period of time and are worried they won't do so because they've waited too long. As a matter of fact, a study showed that "accelerated learning before a deadline has been found less successful than studying at an even pace" (Hafner et. al. 252). So that "rush" that procrastinators love so much actually doesn't do them any good, all it does it harm them. If we are given all of this time, why do we wait until the very end to accomplish what we need to get done?

In Konnikova's article "Getting over Procrastination," it was found that people who procrastinate are much worse at self-regulating. Self-regulation is stated as the ability to demonstrate self-control and put off immediate rewards for future benefits. In Konnikova's study, 70 percent of the observed procrastinators seemed to lack this behavior. So, what this is saying is that procrastinators have poor self-control and they look forward to the short-term benefits instead of the long-term benefits like not having to stress each day, yet leaving all of the stress for the long run, for the last day before the assignment is due. They seem to not look at the big picture. Instead of thinking that they can do a little bit of their work each day so that they don't have to cram at the end of the time period, they enjoy the freedom of not having anything to do each day and then would rather basically screw themselves and do it all in one day at the end. Think about this quote, "What if procrastination was simply the flip side of impulsivity? Just as impulsivity is a failure of our self-control mechanisms-we should wait, but instead we act now- so, too, is procrastination: we should act now, but instead we wait" (Konnikova).

So, we know that the lack of self-regulatory skills among students has a positive correlation with procrastination. "When positive outcomes of academic preparation are far away in the future, it seems difficult for students to transfer their good intentions into actions, to resist temptations and persist" (Hafner, et. al.). Once again, this is just another way to say that as much as us procrastinators want to get our task done, we put it off anyways because we simply cannot resist temptations of any kind. This becomes even more of a problem when it becomes evident in academics. Dysfunctional procrastination in an academic setting results in heavy levels of stress from putting off school-related tasks (Rothblum et.al.). Hafner et.al. argues that universities need to involve themselves in playing a more active role with helping first-year students to understand and work on time management and also points out the several studies show that low grades are associated with procrastination. First-year students come to college after being in high school for four years where teachers accept late work, look over absences, grade leniently, and understand when you need more time to work on as assignment. They are expected to be able to handle all of the work from classes while getting adjusted to a completely new life. In high school, I never studied a day in my life. Everything came easy to me and I breezed through school with a 4.7 GPA and no worries about college. Right now, I myself am dealing with biology (and almost failing), biology lab and the lab reports, chemistry, chemistry lab, english, calculus, and university 101 (which should be an easy A, except for my professor teaches grad students so we actually have a lot of hard work). It's a lot to handle your first year. I completely agree that universities should take it easier on first-year students and find a way to make the transition from high school to college much more manageable time-wise so that is makes it easier to not procrastinate. If we procrastinate, it leads to low grades, and low grades lead to stress, and nothing positive comes out of these factors.

I'm sure that you have heard procrastination relating to social media. This is true. Social media plays a huge part in procrastination, especially for the younger generations, which is only worse because those habits are developed and stick with the brain until you grow up, making it harder to not procrastinate when you are older. Knezevic points out in her article that a study done in 2008, before Twitter was a thing, showed that procrastination and Facebook use are linked. I don't think that there are many studies done on relating procrastination to social media because social media is so new to us and studies take a while to complete, be reviewed, and then published. But it definitely has a positive correlation to procrastination. On Twitter, I searched the hashtag "procrastination" and thousands of tweets came up, new ones refreshing every couple of seconds, mostly all of them having to do with procrastination. Emily Thompson tweeted "I'm spending more time tweeting about this essay than I am writing about it. #procrastination" and Laney McCartney tweeted "Props to the people who have enough self control to not look at their phone while doing homework. #procrastination." These are only two examples of procrastination tweets having to do with social media, although I could have mentioned over 100 of them if I wanted to. Our generation is so obsessed with the social media world that sometimes it's all we can focus on. We have trouble pumping out a whole paragraph without checking our phones less than five times. This is a serious issue that will only get worse as time goes on, especially since children these days are using technology at such a young age. Why are we wasting our time on technology instead of learning about the world outside?

Even though there have been other studies done on procrastination, I conducted a survey myself to show how people we know are affected by procrastination so that it would be more personal. I asked 28 students who attend the University of South Carolina if they procrastinate or not. Then I asked of the people who DO procrastinate if they experience negative effects from procrastinating, such as feeling stressed, anxious, under pressure, etc. Out of 28 students, 24 said that they procrastinate while 4 said that they do not. Of the 24 students who do, 22 said that they experience negative effects while 2 said that they do not. Therefore, 91.6% of students who procrastinate experience negative effects from it. Obviously this is a pretty large number, which shows that a large number of student fall victim to procrastination and are affected by negative factors that are not good for our body.

"Procrastination is a self-inflicted wound that gradually chips away at the most valuable resource in the world: time" (Jaffe). If we wouldn't procrastinate, we wouldn't be wasting all of this precious time, that we don't realize goes by too fast, until it is too late. But it's not like procrastination just happens without us being able to do anything. We procrastinate on our own- it is not forced. Jaffe points out that people usually learn from their mistakes so that the mistake is not made again, but for chronic procrastinators, they seem to not understand that concept. When they make the mistake of waiting and suffer the consequences, they do not learn from it, yet they do it again and again. Jaffe concludes that there is an emotional side to procrastination and the previous situation lies within emotions. Jaffe says, "Ironically, the very quest to relieve stress in the moment might prevent procrastinators from figuring out how to relieve it in the long run." He then goes on to talk about how procrastination does not only dip into cognition, personality, and emotion, but it also dips into the realm of neuropsychology. The frontal systems of the brain involve themselves in processes that overlap with self-regulation (Jaffe). So not only is procrastination bad for your immune system due to stress and anxiety or bad for your grades, but it is harmful to your mind. Our brain is continually developing, so it would be harmful to get it into the habit of procrastination where our brain would think it is normal to lack self-regulation skills.

So, is there a way to break the habit of procrastination? Or are we just doomed with it for life? Well, the answer is you have to be willing to break the habit. If someone doesn't want to stop smoking cigarettes, yet they own an e-cig, they won't stop. But someone who truly wants to stop smoking will use their e-cig, or whatever technique works for them, and eventually break their habit. This is the same for procrastination. An online article from Princeton University offers four smart steps to overcoming procrastination. The first one is that you must realize that you procrastinate, that it is a problem, why you do it, and that you want to fix it. Second, instead of setting long-term goals you should set short-term goals as well. Like instead of telling yourself you need to have your essay done by the deadline, tell yourself that you need to write a paragraph each day as a short term goal, that way you will not be bombarded with too much work at the end. This will help you to work on time management and learn to set reasonable goals. Third, you should find good reasons for wanting to get your work done. Instead of motivating yourself to finish your work so you can show off, motivate yourself by making yourself feel better and less stressed. Come up with productive reasons to work towards your goal. Finally, fourth, you must remain motivated through your reasons. You should not give up, but try harder. Engage yourself in classes, get involved, and ask questions. You will not learn anything if you are not there, physically or mentally. With these steps that the article offers, beating procrastination should be a little easier. But remember, it is up to YOU to break the habit. These steps are like an e-cig, they are no good unless you put them to use with the intention of breaking your habit.

In conclusion, procrastination is a lifestyle, a habit, and one that is extremely hard to break. It effects us cognitively, neurologically, and psychically in negative ways such as making us stressed, anxious, not being able to sleep or eat, and develops as a habit to the brain while it is still developing as we get older. We must take procrastination seriously, for it is harmful to us in numerous ways, and do our best to break it. With the facts and statistics given, we should realize what procrastination is doing to us and want to stop putting everything off. Once we realize this and want to act upon it, we can take the steps provided to us and use them to work towards our goal of not procrastinating anymore so that we can live a healthier, more relaxed lifestyle without wasting time.
