Procrastination can be particularly deceptive because the distracting tasks are often useful and necessary, but are not the most pressing tasks at hand. For example, a graduate student who works as a college instructor may find the urge to revise a syllabus just as a stack of final exams arrive to grade. Research psychologists estimate that at least 80% and as many as 95% of students procrastinate on at least some academic tasks.
Procrastination Damages Your Academics
Procrastination isn't simply a bad habit. It can harm your career and your well-being. Obviously putting off doing work and then submitting it late or not at all will harm your GPA. In fact, research with undergraduates suggests that procrastination is negatively related to overall assignment grades, final exam scores, and GPA. The habits you create now will continue throughout your career. Grad students who tend to procrastinate in completing their course work will later procrastinate when it comes time to work on their dissertation. Students who are ABD (all but dissertation) list procrastination as one of the top reasons for failing to complete the dissertation.
Procrastination Harms Your Health
Procrastination also has negative psychological effects. Most students feel guilty while they are procrastinating, may feel poorly about themselves, and may be plagued by self-doubt. Grad school is stressful. Putting off completing your work increases the stress. Many students believe that they work best under pressure and that procrastination keeps them sharp. Unfortunately rushed papers usually are not good papers. This is especially true of papers for graduate school classes which tend to require a great deal of research, reading, and analysis (as well as lots of pages!). Moreover, writing and studying under intense pressure can lead to burn out. Students who procrastinate report feeling higher levels of stress and experiencing more illnesses than non-procrastinators.
Why Students Procrastinate
If procrastination is so damaging, why do graduate students (presumably smart folks) do it? Procrastination happens under conditions of self-doubt, anxiety, and overwhelm. Quality education challenges students -- and that's comfortable. Assignments should be difficult. Good assignments push the envelope and force students to think. This process, by its very nature, is uncomfortable and downright overwhelming. Procrastination is often a response to being overwhelmed. It is also a function of poor time management skills and difficulties concentrating. Each these factors can be remedied. Lengthy lists of how to overcome procrastination will likely lead readers to procrastinate in changing their habits. Instead, as you consider how to reduce procrastination focus on the following three areas.
Overcoming Procrastination: Manage Distractions
The best way to manage distractions and ensure that you are able to concentrate on the task at hand is to create a work environment that is suited to writing and studying - and that is used only for your academic work.
Overcoming Procrastination: Manage Your Projects
Huge assignments like a 30 page paper or a 200 page dissertation are naturally and justifiably overwhelming. The most successful graduate students learn how to deal with the anxiety and ambiguity of gigantic projects by breaking them into smaller parts. And then they break each smaller part into component parts and so on until they have a (very long) list of tasks that are actionable (meaning that they entail a specific action and are doable). The only way to make a large project feel manageable is to dive in and identify exactly what needs to be done to tackle it. It's challenging to think about all the parts and tasks entailed in managing a large project, but force yourself to do so and you'll create a plan, instill order, and give yourself a concrete list of tasks that will help you focus and get the job done.
Overcoming Procrastination: Manage Your Time
It is not enough to create a suitable work space and a plan for completing your work. Time management skills are also critical for combating procrastination. While creating an overall list of tasks to be completed is part of project management, you must also create daily and weekly to-do lists to ensure that you have time to work on all of your projects and still have time for a personal life. Each week determine your schedule. How much time do you have to work on your projects? Set aside time to work on specific tasks. Each day determine what specific task(s) you will complete. Block out time. If you find that you tend to over or underestimate the amount of time needed to complete tasks, make changes to your schedule.
Using a calendar and to-do list as well as scheduling time to work on projects is important, but you must ensure that you actually work during those times. Set a timer to delineate work-time and help you focus during short periods. Also set a timer to take short breaks. Ultimately it is slow and steady that wins the race - and completes large projects on time with minimal stress.
