College Students May Benefit from Procrastination

Six seconds from 4 a.m., eyes bleary, palms sweating, neck muscles taut as telephone wire-you've guzzled two cups of black coffee, downed an energy drink chaser, and you're still three hours away from finishing the first draft of your midterm project.

This frenzied scene is likely familiar to most college students. According to a meta-analysis by University of Calgary psychologist Piers Steel 80 to 95 percent of U.S. college students procrastinate.

Despite the questionable effects caffeine overload, procrastination of assignments can be viewed as a positive academic practice.

Steven Prentice, a time management expert and author of "Cool Time: A Hands-on Plan for Managing Work and Balancing Time," says procrastination is not as bad as it sounds.

Prentice says there are three benefits to active procrastination:

• The energy of avoidance can be applied toward completing other tasks.

• Waiting for all the facts to be presented can eliminate redundancy of effort.

• Using the extra time upfront to determine priorities can guide people toward truly effective tasks.

Morehead State University (MSU) junior Kayla Hall says, "Sometimes I feel like I work better under pressure. I've never had a problem turning things in on time and I don't think I've ever had a bad experience. Right now, I have a paper due tomorrow and I haven't even started writing it."

Ann K. Dolin, founder of Educational Connections Inc., says, "Procrastination is acceptable. It's what everybody does, even if not by nature, it may become habit over time."

Dolin says many people procrastinate because they are perfectionists, chronically disorganized, distracted by temptation and personal matters, have been rewarded in the past with good grades, or experienced no set-backs from procrasting in the past.

Catherine Chant, 46, a web editor from Assonett, Mass., says "The pressure that builds up when I procrastinate is a great motivator. Adrenline bolsters my creativity."

Another reason students procrastinate might be due to right brain dominant thinking. A popular theory suggests that the right brain and left brain sides of the mind process information differently, and each person has a dominant mode - either right brain or left brain dominant thinking.

Dr. Ann McGee Cooper, a creative problem solving expert and author of "Time Management for Unmanageable People," says, "Left brain people plan ahead, like others to be on time, like plans, and would never jump up and do something on the spur of the moment. Right brain are spontaneous, all over the map, and thrive on creativity."

"The right brain uses time to incubate," Cooper says. "Putting things off may seem irresponible, but a part of the right-brain thinker is gathering data and analyzing the assignment."

Students curious about right-brain learning tendencies can take an online right-brain left-brain test offered by The Art Institutes of Pittsburgh at http://rightbrainleftbraintest.com/ for "intellectual stimulation, education, and general knowledge."

But, with all it's potential for positives, procrastination does have its dark side.

MSU junior David Gillum says instead of paying attention in his desktop publishing class he played on Facebook and surfed the net.

"I felt like I already knew the program so it was okay to play," David says. "I lost two full days having to sit in the computer lab making up for the work I missed. It would have been a lot less stressful if I'd just done it up front."

Ann K. Dolin says procrastination can be productive if the task is short term or for assignments that are fairly straight-forward, like math homework. She cautions that procrastination is not the best choice when an assignment has a lot of incremental steps.

Dolin says students can improve their tendencies to procrastinate by starting with a to-do list that is concrete. For example, instead of writing "work on term paper" in a daily planner, write "identify four research sources for term paper topic."

"If the task is far out there, it's not on your radar screen," Dolin says. "When the little tiny task becomes part of your daily to-do list, it's immediate, in front of you, and you are likely to get it done."

Dr. McGee Cooper says if students are working with other people on a project, procrastination can be destructive to collaboration. She suggests moving up cut-off dates for projects or asking friends who are good with time management to mentor you, then model their behaviors and borrow their tips for time management.

"Be gentle with yourself and be curious," says Cooper. "The real secret is learning to eliminate destructive procrastination and to appreciate healthy procrastination."

Steven Prentice says, "I always advise people to take 10 minutes at the end of each day to look back over a day's work and assess its value and payoff. To quantify one's actions in terms of achievement and having a system of review and assessment is essential."

In addition to creating lists and modeling good time management behaviors, seeking partners, such as study groups, to help hold you accountable to deadlines can be helpful in curbing procrastination tendencies.

Seventeenth century English poet Edward Young labeled procrastination as "the thief of time." T wenty-first century time management expert Steven Prentice offers a different view:

"In a high-speed age, people still demand and expect quality. Often, taking time to correctly prioritize and schedule your activities allows quality to shine through," says Prentice. "As long as someone is able to prove that their procrastination has a strategic value, then they can feel both proud and justified."