Breaking Free from the Chains of Procrastination

Procrastination is a word that means to put off doing something, oftentimes until the last minute. Procrastination is also the word I give to a habit I have never been able to break. For as long as I can remember, I have been someone who puts things off for as long as I can, be it schoolwork, to housework, or even things I actually enjoy. As a result, the work that I produce from these activities that I procrastinate on tends to be mediocre at best. For most of my life, I have been able to procrastinate and do the bare minimum to get by, but this is not a healthy habit to have. Procrastination is a habit I intend to break. Of course, I cannot begin to break this bad habit of mine if I do not first understand why I do it in the first place.

In that case, a good place to start might be a less stressful setting, such as a vacation. “Studies have shown that people will perform automated behaviors the same way every single time, if they are in the same environment. But if they take a vacation, the behavior will change” (NPR). In essence, it may be easier to quit my habit if I change my environment. In regards to procrastinating, changing my environment could mean something as simple as choosing to work in a different place. Usually, when I have work that I need to do, I am instead sitting around my house while using my phone. Instead, I could try to study elsewhere. Perhaps, at the school library or at a coffee shop. It is possible that if I am in an environment that promotes productivity, such as a library, I too will be more productive. Changing my environment is such a simple solution. All I have to do is get out

Some steps that I can take to end my chronic procrastination habit are to “break my work into little steps” and to “break up the deadline” (Chua). These tips from Celestine Chua seemed to be the easiest for me to do in my efforts to stop procrastinating. Not only am I fearful of creating lackluster work, I am also fearful of the amount of effort said work would take from me. Some may call this fear laziness. However, breaking up the work I have to do would definitely cause me to feel less anxious about completing work on time. I tend to ignore and put off tasks because they seem to be an enormous effort. In fact, I even procrastinated writing this paper because task of writing this paper seemed to be too much effort, and the thought of writing it was anxiety-inducing. Next time, when I have an assignment I need to do, I can easily break it up into smaller, less intimidating parts. For instance, if I had a paper to write, I could create an outline one day, write a draft the next, and revise the paper until I felt that it was perfect. On that note, it would also be helpful to split up the deadline into smaller parts. Out of all the things that make an assignment intimidating, the deadline is by far the most terrifying factor. With the deadline of this paper steadily approaching, and this class coming to a close, I do not have much time to utilize this technique. Of course, in the future, I can split tasks