There are many reasons why people should procrastinate more. photo by Ben Scherer
You know what they say: “push things to the last minute, and they only take a minute to do.”
According to an American Psychological Association article, 80-95% of college students procrastinate. Furthermore, a Gitnux article states that around 50% of high schoolers procrastinate. These numbers imply that many students are in the same boat when it comes to procrastination. But is procrastination good? Procrastination often leads to negative effects such as stress, anxiety, and other negative effects. But after all, why should we do some boring, tedious, task, when you can do something better like watching a movie, when in the end, you can put it off to the last minute? Here are the top three reasons why you should procrastinate more.
Reason number one: procrastination is a genius method to avoid the pain of doing boring tasks. Instead of completing a task, why not just push it to the last minute to make the pain not last as long? For example, if you had to write a boring research paper for history, it would be completely logical to push it off at the last minute because delaying the paper allows you to delay the pain of boredom, giving you a sense of relief until the paper needs to be turned in.
Reason number two: you get work done “faster.” When you push a task to the last minute, you typically get that adrenaline rush to complete the task before the due date has passed. So if an assignment was designed to take a week to complete, it could definitely be put off until the hour before the due date. Voilà, you just saved 6 days and 23 hours. You can do so much with that time. Sophomore Emerson DeZeeuw Spencer says that procrastination helped him because “when [I push an] assignment to the last minute, it helps me lock in, and I am able to do the assignment faster.”
Reason number three: procrastinating helps you complete unnecessary tasks. According to Parkinson’s Law, “work expands to the time allowed for it,” meaning that if a deadline was set for a week, the task would have to be completed within a week. This implies that if you have time, you can do important stuff like: playing video games, sleeping, and other activities other than doing the task that needs to be done. So procrastination ensures that you complete tasks that are unnecessary.
These are the top three reasons why you should procrastinate more. But if you procrastinate a lot, why not get better at it? After all, procrastination teaches you that you can do a month’s worth of work in a week. So here are three ways to get better at procrastination.
Number one: the “I will start at 5:00 p.m. – no excuses” method. This method is effective because it often leads to further procrastination. For example, when using this strategy, it is often likely that the task will be pushed off to 6:00 PM. You likely find a reason why 6:00 PM is better than completing the task at 5:00 PM. (Quote)
Number two: find distractions that prevent you from doing what needs to be done. This will help you procrastinate even more as it helps distract you from doing the important tasks. This is a brilliant way to avoid doing work that you should be doing.
Number three: if you push a task off to the last hour, it will only take an hour. Since you procrastinated, you now have the consequence of getting a huge adrenaline rush to finish the task right before the deadline. This ensures that you will get what needs to be done in a matter of no time.
Procrastinating shows how wonderful pushing tasks to the last minute is. This choice ensures that when doing a boring task, it is better to spend your time doing something other than a boring task. So the next time you get a boring task or assignment, it is always a good choice to procrastinate.
