One of the first concepts taught to children through their education is the importance of completing an assignment or task at the expected time. However, many individuals have continued to struggle with this concept even throughout their adulthood. This concept is known as procrastination. Procrastination, according to the authors of our textbook Gruman et al., (2016), is the act of postponing the completion of a task or assignment sometimes intentionally, sometimes not depending on different circumstances. As small of an act as it sounds procrastinating on a regular basis is a recipe for disaster, likely adding more stress to one’s plate. The main goal of this blog post is to find the connections between a student’s level of procrastination and thier ability to perform well academically. Overall, further emphasizing the negative impact procrastination has on those who do it.
Personally, I’ve witnessed many claim that procrastinating helps them produce work they would be more proud of compared to work they complete on time. In a recent study by Le et al., (2024) after collecting data from 566 high school students, the authors found that those who reported procrastinating on a more consistent level were more likely to perform worse academically than those who turned their assignments in on time (Le et al., 2024, p. 9). Building off of thier point, I think its fairly obvious that those who don’t follow instructions will fall behind in any area of life. If schools were able to implement some form of program that would allow children with a harder time adapting to new responsibilities, I believe we would see less adults dealing with problems related to procrastination.
When developing an intervention or program that can potentially aid children who have a hard time meeting deadlines it’s important to reference research on the subject that might be of help. For example, an article from Fuke et al., (2023) focuses on procrastination amongst young children and what factors or characteristics they have that could be used as future predictors. The authors found that children with lower levels of episodic foresight, the ability to think about things that may occur in the future, were more likely to procrastinate in an academic setting (Fuke et al., 2023, p. 590). By focusing on the future and how our actions can change it both positively and negatively, I believe schools will lower the amount of procrastination they see in thier student body.
In conclusion, procrastination is a common problem that causes many people unnecessary stress, especially students. As a college student myself I’ve 100% had my own experience with procrastination and learning how negatively it can impact how I perform academically, especially as I get closer to graduating. Although there’s an emphasis on timeliness and the importance of doing what you’re told in school I can’t help but think that all students would benefit from additional guidance on how to keep their future in mind, especially at a young age. Going forward I hope to see more research on other possible strategies that could be utilized to help students with thier ability to stop procrastinating.
References:
Fuke, T. S. S., Kamber, E., Alunni, M., & Mahy, C. E. V. (2023). The emergence of procrastination in early childhood: Relations with executive control and future-oriented cognition. Developmental Psychology, 59(3), 579–593. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001502
Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (Eds.). (2016). Applied social psychology : Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. SAGE Publications, Incorporated.
Le, A. T., Ober, T. M., & Cheng, Y. (2024). Validation of a procrastination scale: A multimethod–multimodal approach. Translational Issues in Psychological Science. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/tps0000411