My Thoughts on Procrastination

I have had problems with procrastination nearly all of my life. I often save work to the last minute not only because I would rather not do it, but mostly because I am much more motivated to complete tasks as the due date approaches closer and because my focus is higher, allowing me to generally complete work much faster if I'm working closer to a deadline. As the internet skyrockets in popularity, more and more people are finding new and improved distractions rather than completing work in a timely fashion. Therefore, in an effort to reduce procrastination, I offer two general suggestions to students and professors:

1: Assign more regular due dates for assignments. I feel that if work was assigned in smaller, more regular chunks, overall procrastination will decline. I believe that students would be less inclined to waste time on smaller assignments since they know that they will be able to finish faster than a larger assignment. For example, rather than having weekly homework over the week's lessons, teachers could assign problems each class period only on the day's lessons. From experience, I would much rather do three Thermodynamics problems a night, knowing there are only three left, rather than do nine problems on Sunday night.

2: Assign more group assignments and encourage students to work in groups whenever possible. I am much less inclined to waste time in a group scenario, especially when group members are relying on you to finish your section in time. I had a situation earlier in the semester where one of my Material Science lab group members did not complete his section of the lab until 10 P.M. the day before it was due, and since it was my job to compile and format all of the sections as well as write the abstract, I could not start my task without his work. On a normal assignment, working only with myself, I typically am not worried if I don't start until 10 P.M., but in a group situation, there is a certain stigma that appears if you let your team members down, as you have a group reputation to hold. While working in groups, I have seen that members are typically more encouraged to finish faster than if they had to work alone.

If due dates were assigned more regularly and group projects occurred more often, then I believe that students would tend to procrastinate less.