By: Winfred Odhiambo

You want to succeed in school. You want a have a great future and you want to be the best. You want all these things that will help you in the future, but you have one thing dangling over your head. Procrastination. The act of delaying tasks until the last minute, or past their deadline. Every high schooler’s best friend. This simple yet complicated concept has made many scholars fail academically and cause prominent levels of frustration and stress which makes them just quit school all together, not the best way to end your high school career. 

 Procrastination has the ability to make us feel guilty and frustrated about work that we should have done, and many of us procrastinators know that we can sit anywhere with all our schoolwork ready to be done just for it to be put if off for the next 2 hours, and then another 2 hours because we told ourselves we will start at 5:00pm but then its 5:02pm, so then we put it off for another 2 hours but at that point it late and we are tired and we do not want to do it anymore. Then we lay in bed thinking about all that time we had to do our work but never started, then we start to feel the guilt of doing something you know you should have done, and it is no one else’s fault but ours. Harsh, I know, I don’t like it any more than you do, but its reality, a reality that not only you face, but many other scholars, (“Think you procrastinate now? Wait ’til you get to college!”, 2014) article states that “Eighty-six percent of high school students said they procrastinate on assignments. In college, that number goes up slightly to 88 percent” So do not worry, you are not alone, but it’s a problem you’re not.  

The “Old habits die hard” phrase should be related to procrastination. Ask any person, they will tell you that unhealthy habits are extremely hard to break, and that it only takes the right motivation and patience to fully quit. Procrastination is one of the hardest habits to ever quit if the right mindset is not there, and there are plenty of reasons for this. One reason is the feeling of comfort and security students, and adults feel when given an extended period to complete a task. Students’ attitude towards an assignment that is due the next day is different from their attitude towards an assignment due in 3 weeks. The comfort students feel of having numerous days complete a task is very compelling to them, which eventually leads to an ongoing learned habit.

Isn’t it a relief when you know you have time to putt off stuff and have time for yourself? This is extremely attractive to many students, and once you find something that you like and attracts you, you will keep doing more of it, and the more you do something, the harder it is to stop. This habit is especially dangerous for scholars, as they can carry this habit into adulthood and higher their chances of poor execution of their future job.  

Its time we start accepting the truth procrastinators, we start accepting our destructing habit that may ruin us in the future. You see, when we start accepting our faults, it allows us to recognize and face the actual problem, which is what we all need. Keep telling yourself that your procrastination is not a huge problem as it seems and I promise you it will only get worse, this is coming from the person that had 3 weeks to complete a project and did not start until the morning of the due date.

I then told myself that I did not do well on it because I was to tired the morning of and I did not have enough time. I kept rejecting the actual problem because I was so fixated that I was doing nothing wrong, but I was, I was doing everything wrong. Anger, bitterness, and sadness are the only things you will feel when you do not accept your reality, because then you will not change, and your procrastination will become a bigger problem than it already was. 

Now, I know that what I have been saying is something you have been hearing for a while., “Stop laying off you work Chloe” or “you won’t have a future!” “Your teacher emailed me, Jake, you are missing tons of work, what have you been doing all this time!” But trust me, I’m not writing this to yell at you. As I said before, procrastination is an annoying habit, it emotionally and mentally stresses and drains you and makes the idea of quitting seem like the best idea in the world, but its not. You are not lazy; you are not a quitter and procrastination does not define you. But its up to you to live up to these truths, only you. Now get back to your homework.  

Photo source: https://www.klarityadhd.com/post/adhd-or-procrastination/