Active Procrastination as a Method of Studying

Devika Khattar, India

Procrastination is usually seen as a problematic way of getting things done for young adults or students. When students procrastinate, they divert time from academics toward other activities, returning to academics at a later time, or at the last moment. Procrastination is often associated with being lazy or poor time management1. Therefore, in general procrastination is portrayed in a bad light. However, for some students, procrastination is not necessarily a vice. When talking about procrastination, one should take into consideration that many students follow what it is called active procrastination. So, this article will follow the act of active procrastination in students or young adults.

Active Procrastination, describes the behaviour of students who prefer to work under pressure, choose to postpone assigned work, complete requirements by deadlines, and still attain satisfactory grades. With the coming of the internet, information that would otherwise require a lot of searching and scouting and would otherwise consume a lot of time becomes easier to access. The current generation of university students know the internet almost as well as they know how to breathe. For this set of students since the information is already there, time becomes a fickle concept where ‘the now’ is more important.

A lot of students actually believe that they work better under Pressure. This mainly focuses on Active Procrastinators as compared to passive, which is avoidant or maladaptive in nature. They may start writing a paper the night before it is due but would engage in the activity not as a last resort but with the anticipation of staying focused, meeting assignment expectations, and achieving the desired grade in a minimal amount of time. In an interview-based study in Germany, conducted by Hensley in 20162 the aspect of working under pressure emerged as a theme for students. These students considered themselves successful procrastinators and findings revealed various benefits of Procrastination, including, heightened creativity and the opportunity to reflect on a topic before working on it.

Moreover, there is also the problem of choice. The current population of students at university is all millennial, which is also the first generation born in the land of internet. Their home is the internet which influences the way they interact with the real world. They know everything about everything in a superficial way. Everything you need is a Google search away and the amount of information available is sky rocketing and with too much information comes too much choice which inevitably stops the student from starting anything mainly because, where does one start? Sometimes there is so much to say that one just doesn’t understand where to start and where to stop which leads to the cycle of pushing the work away in hopes of figuring it out eventually, calling back on Akerlof’s study that ‘the Now’3 is more important than the future.

In conclusion, for the longest time Procrastination has been considered to reflect motivational struggles and harms students academically. However, with the coming of the new generation of students whose reasons and motivation behind education acquisition are completely different from their predecessors it is necessary to note that procrastination is an easy and often times balancing way of handling academic as well as social deadlines. The new generation is interested in the degree and the grades with minimal effort. The goals have changed and clearly so have the methods but these methods only work with a deadline. Without a deadline the successful procrastinator is a sitting duck waiting for the pressure to come which inevitably never does because the pressure and the deadline are directly related. One doesn’t simply exist without the other and without a deadline the procrastinator never does anything.

1 https://ct.counseling.org/2019/10/procrastination-an-emotional-struggle/

2 Hensley,  C.L.  (2016).  The  Draws  and  Drawbacks  of  College  Students’  Active  Procrastination.  Journal  of     College  Student  Development.57(4),465-471.

3 Akerlof, George A. (1991) “Procrastination and obedience,” American Economic Review. 81(2), 1-19