Procrastination Case

Procrastination

Here we go again. An assignment, project or presentation has been assigned and you have been giving more time than necessary to complete the assignment, however it's the night before the due date and panic, worry and stress has finally settled in. Sitting in front of your computer with blank stare thinking to your self what was I thinking or doing with my time. How is it that I got to this point? Well one answer could explain the delaying of work its called procrastination. Why do we do it? What is it and why is procrastination such a huge problem with college students and lastly is there a magic pill for this problem? Well let's find out.

Procrastination is the unnecessary delaying of activities that one ultimately intends to complete, especially when done to the point of creating emotional discomfort (Vary. Lay and Schowenburg, 1993). Recent research has shown that procrastination is common in general populations, and is almost universal among university students (e.g. Steel, 2007). Among all of the variables that have been investigated in relationship to academic procrastination, self-related variables like self regulation, self-efficacy, and self-esteem have received the most attention, with recent research pointing to the role played by self-efficacy for self regulation as a key variable inversely related to academic procrastination (Klassen, Krawchuk, & Rajani, 2008). How does this happen? Some researchers found the answer in flow, which described as the state of total involvement in an activity that consumes one's complete attention (Csikszentmihalyi 1990). Csikszentmihalyi and other researchers have suggested that procrastination among successful college students may

Procrastination 3

have little impact on performance because it allows them to achieve a sustained level of flow (Csikszentmihalyi; Lay, Edwards, Parker, & Endler, 1989; Schraw et al., 2007, Sommer, 1990, Tullier, 2000). Lay and colleagues found that procrastinators experienced a greater sense of challenge and peak experience immediately prior to examinations. Others reported that crammers performed better on tests and reported higher levels of flow than did none crammers. These authors argued that cramming increases flow because it increases the level of task challenge and demands a higher level of performance from the student (Brinthaupt and Shin 2001). Researcher's suggested that peak work experience is one of the adaptive aspects of procrastination. In their study, respondents indicated that procrastination ultimately increases the likelihood of achieving a deep state of flow because procrastinators work under pressure for an extended period of time in which all of their resources are focused on one goal ( Schraw and colleagues 2007). However, the finding that procrastination leads to the state of flow does not