Am I Cursed? - A look into the bad habit of procrastination.

     I think I might be cursed. For much of my time as a student, both in high school and college, I have been a stage five procrastinator. No matter how big or small the task or assignment may be, I always find a way to save it until nearly the last possible second to start doing it. Like most people I know that procrastinate, once I start doing the task, I have no problem whatsoever completing it. I always put off writing papers (or blog posts.... whoops) until the last minute, but I actually enjoy writing and feel satisfied when I am finished. Most of the time, I just look for something else I would rather do like go to a baseball game, play video games, watch a movie, or stare at the wall just to further put off doing whatever assignments I need to get done. Of course, I can always do those things after I finish my work, but the way I see it, I have time to do my work after I do these other things. I think I keep doing it because I never really get punished for it. So many times I've waited until the night before to write a paper and stayed up all night to complete it. While I'm working on it I think, "This is it. This is the time you really messed up and you are going to pay for it." But then I get an A on the paper or I get told that I've done a really great job. So why would I change what I'm doing?

    Certainly, getting rewarded for undesired behavior is no way to break a bad habit. I am a self-motivated person, so I have tried to force myself away from these tendencies many times. I know I can achieve the same high quality results without adding any unnecessary stress or pressure to myself, and I believe it would make me happier. I've tried a number of things - making my own completion schedules, rewarding myself for getting things done ahead of time, enlisting the help of my friends and family to force me to do work when I say I don't want to, etc. - but they never work. What good is an arbitrary schedule when you know when the due date is? Why reward yourself after you've done your work when you can reward yourself now by doing other things? At the end of the day, your friends and family aren't going to keep wasting their energy to try to get you to do something that you don't want to do. So, after trying seemingly everything to break my procrastinating habits, I have decided that I am cursed.

    Procrastination has often been called "a devil's curse," so maybe I'm not too far off. There's a lot of reasons people procrastinate. It might have to do with someone's personality traits. I've read that someone's past trauma has caused people to develop procrastination habits. I already mentioned that I never seem to get punished for procrastination, so it creates a feedback loop that promotes the behavior. However, I recently read a 2009 study from the Association for Psychological Science on "Why We Procrastinate and How to Stop," and it has inspired me to try something new. Basically, the study asked various students to fill out questionnaires and respond via email. The questions all dealt with mundane tasks like opening a bank account or keeping a diary, but different students were given different instructions for answering the questions - some were asked about the nuts and bolts of each activity, while others were asked to give more abstract answers like what type of person was more likely to open a bank account. The study found that the students that responded with the nuts and bolts of each activity responded sooner than the students that were asked to give the abstract answers. The authors of the study noted that merely thinking of an activity in more concrete, specific terms makes it feel like it should be completed sooner and thus reduces procrastination.

To me, this makes sense because I consider myself to be a "big thinker." I always tend to look at the bigger picture when I think about activities. Its a part of my personality that has been linked to procrastination. So, I think I'll try to break everything down into more concrete steps to see if that helps me complete tasks ahead of time. Will I ever break my curse? I'm not really sure, but any new tactics and information is worth exploring to try to break a nasty habit that I've tried to get away from for a long time.

Here's the link to the piece about the study:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090112110106.htm#:~:text=Procrastination%20is%20a%20curse%2C%20and,regrets%20and%20damaged%20self%2Desteem.