It seems to be near this stage in every semester where I reach my point of maximum procrastination and minimum productivity. There’s a cycle to it. For the first few weeks, I am overflowing with motivation. Those stores run out, I start putting more and more things off and just prior to the halfway mark of the semester, I find myself missing assignments and scrambling to catch up on material I should have learned already. Only then, finding myself with no other option, do I start to plan my time effectively. This process of increasing procrastination that many others share begins innocently, with a single assignment.
I have an assignment that I’m not looking forward to, and I put it off until later. Later arrives, but I decide to work on my other homework first, and then I decide I deserve a break. An hour before the due date, panic arrives in full force. I work frantically to finish it in time, and somehow, miraculously, I manage to get it done. I finish it. I find myself thinking that it’s really quite impressive, considering how little time I spent on it, that I finished and even got a semi-decent grade. The relief is great, and the sense of accomplishment is immediate. This leads to less motivation to start projects ahead of time in the future, when procrastination has served me so well in the past. More assignments are set aside for later, more time is spent in the throes of deadline-induced panic, and fewer of my grades are what I want them to be. Despite this, less of my time is spent on homework and there’s a feeling of success when I beat the deadline, and so I knowingly continue down the same dangerous path. I justify this by saying that I do better under pressure.
And while it’s true that I am more productive in the short term while the overbearing presence of panic is upon me, in the long term I get less done, and the things that do get done are often done poorly. As the next couple of weeks pass, I allow for less and less time to work on assignments, until eventually I’m no longer finishing them in time at all. At this point there is no benefit in the system of procrastination that I’ve been using. The idea of procrastination as an efficient use of time simply isn’t believable anymore.
When everything is left for the last minute, nothing gets my full effort, because there simply isn’t time. Knowingly doing less than I could is unfulfilling, especially when so much of the time I spend putting things off for later is tinged with the shadow of a cloud of guilt and uncompleted tasks. I know I have to come up with a new strategy for balancing my time. I no longer have the level of enthusiasm that I began the semester with, and I’ve found that relying on the panic before a deadline to get something done isn’t a plan. I don’t work better under pressure, I just work faster. Taking more time for homework and projects and truly learning the material isn’t a very difficult change to make when that’s the only option. It seems very difficult when there is freedom to do anything at all and put off tasks without immediate repercussions, but knowing where that process leads can be motivation in itself. Procrastination isn’t a plan. The process isn’t pretty, but eventually I develop a balance and find that there is more gratification in being able to put one’s full effort in and get the grades deserved.
