How to Handle the Situation After Missing a Test or an Important Assignment
If you have ever missed a test or failed to turn in a major assignment on time, then you know that the longer you’ve been gone, the harder it becomes to work on that late project. What can you do to break the cycle of avoidance and delay?
Realize that your absence weighs heavier on your mind than the other person’s. Advisors are not losing sleep over late dissertation proposals and journal editors aren’t agonizing over missing manuscripts. The project is more important to you than anyone else.
Remember, when you do get in touch, the person is unlikely to be angry and punitive. We tend to be much harsher about our own tardiness than we are about other people’s delays. Advisors know it is difficult to write dissertation drafts. Journal editors are accustomed to academics who take a long time to turn around R&R manuscripts.
Lower rather than raise your standards when you’re running late. Don’t try to make your work more polished to make up for taking so long. Just try to get something sent out for feedback. End the cycle by chanting to yourself “A done dissertation is a good dissertation” or “A published paper is the only paper that counts.”
Get in touch even before you have the “completed product” ready for review. Try to get in touch as soon as you know that you are going to miss the deadline. Let the person know that you are working on your project. Facing your fear of the other person’s disapproval and re-establishing contact, will help lower your anxiety so that you can get back to work
Beware of setting deadlines you won’t be able to meet. If you are running late with a project, and you decide to resume contact, try not to set yourself...
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...or the point. You’re late. You’re sorry. You’re now doing your best to complete the project.
Try a “practice run” before clicking on the send button. I often advise coaching clients to write a draft of a difficult email without typing in the address to prevent sending an unfinished message accidentally. Often, clients report that once they’ve drafted a short ‘hello’ it feels surprisingly easy to send the email.
Keep in mind that even if you get a negative reaction when you revive contact, at least you’ve faced your dread of the unknown. Anticipating how the other person may respond to your missed deadline can feel like a black hole of potential admonishment. Even if your advisor or colleague is angry, at least you can begin to repair the relationship rather than allow resentment to fester. Get in touch and get it over with. You are likely to experience relief.
I know that for me when I am under a great deal of stress I am much more apt to complete things on time or even ahead of time, however, if I have plenty of time and know that the there is little to know time constraints aside from the actual deadline, I will either not complete the assigned task, it will be late, or I will complete it at the last possible moment. I know this about me as a fact, no different than I know I am a mother, and yet I have not been able to change it.
The best way to procrastinate is to interact with other people. That way you can lay part of the blame on someone else: "Well, Mom was talking to me about something important. I couldn't just walk away." I prefer to talk on the phone to friends who go to schools far away. We usually don't talk too often, so when we do, we have to make it count. For those that who don't want to spend a mountain of money on phone bills, any kind of messaging system on the Internet is a great way to communicate.
Pychyl, T. (2011). Procrastination: Oops, where did the day go? Psychology Today, 44(5), 58. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Procrastination has become such a bad habit for me. It is very hard to stop procrastinating everything once you have gotten into the habit of doing it. Once I had a term paper due for my religion class. It was to be ten pages long and we were told to spend a lot of time doing it. Being the procrastinator that I am, I waited to the very last minute to do it. I waited until the night before to do most of it. Needless to say, I was up very late that night. In this class there was always a part of the paper due on a certain date before the final paper was due. Having things due before the final paper is due keeps me on task and keeps me from procrastinating until the day before the paper is due. There was one paper which we had to get sources for a while before the paper was due and it forced me to keep up with the paper, rather than let it go to the last minute. This class has taught me that the earlier you start the more positive your final result will be.
“Active procrastinators are people who make intentional decisions to procrastinate,” (Choi & Morgan) this type of procrastinator is often satisfied with his or her work after it is completed. On the other hand, these procrastinators may well not escape the dangers and costs of academic procrastination regardless of their knowledgeable decision to delay said work, which may possibly range from negative outcomes in tests to drop outs; with wasted time, impaired progress, missed deadlines, missed openings and poor grades falling in between. Academic performance is often greatly affected by procrastination, for instance, Phycology Professors at Florida State University, Dianne Tice and Roy Baumeister propose that if one starts the assignment late, even if the one believes he might have enough time, the procrastinators’ performance will worsen, either because of unexpected complications or by one of the various obstructions that occur on a day-to-day basis. One thing frequently leads to another, with a poor quality assignment, one may envision lower grades, staying behind the rest of the class and a lower GPA, which might affect ones’ opportunities later on. Not only is procrastination often caused by anxiety but procrastination also builds up anxiety. Constant
Since I can remember, I’ve had things to do and I put them off until the last minute. Sometimes putting things off until the last minute works out. At least half the time, assignments that I do the night before earn passing grades. On the other hand, there are plenty of times when I’ve avoided doing an assignment or studying for a test and not only am I a nervous bundle of anxiety, but I also end up bombing the test or getting a bad grade on the assignment. When it comes to procrastination, I’ve always had one or two friends who I could commiserate with-other people, just like me, who wait until the last minute to take care of something and then suffer all of the negative consequences that come along with that behavior. We look at all
This kind of procrastination kind eats away months or years of time, and can even ruin lives. It is pervasive, and a source of major stress. And it resists most attempts to overcome it.
Procrastination is when people put other tasks, like clubbing with friends, ahead of completing the project assigned. There are seven categories of procrastination listed by Hoffman and Julie within Stop Procrastinating Now! 10 simple & Successful Steps for Student Success which students may fall within. The first is the “perfectionist procrastinator” where students usually get the project done ahead of time but because of wanting the project to be perfect they turn it in late. The second type is the “relax, it can wait procrastinator” which are students who think they have enough time so they focus on other activates. The problem is that students misjudge how long to wait and end up handing their projects in late. The third is the “fantasizer procrastinator” which are students who think about how their project fits into the big picture. These students turn their project in late because of “ambitious (although unrealistic) dreams pertaining to his goals and thus seldom is able to begin the project” (Hoffman and Julie, 19). The fourth type of procrastinator is the “last minute procrastinator...
I am forever late. The ultimate procrastinator. This is by far my biggest challenge. It isn’t that I can’t get things done in a timely manner, they just never seem to work out that way. I am great at getting the research done, the outline complete and draft started. However, I easily get side tracked into
Ferrari, J. R. (2010). Still procrastinating: the no-regrets guide to getting it done. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley.
When it comes to our personal and professional lives, Managing your time efficiently should be a mastered ability. As a student, this could have a huge effect on performance and grades. Seeing that Time Management is imperative when it comes to college and success, recognizing bad habits, should be one of the first obstructions immediately eliminated from your daily schedule. Create new habits if you tend to procrastinate and start planning ahead to manage your most important priorities. According to David Allen (2001),"Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity" (p.59) "changes in the way you clarify and organize all things that command your attention-could represent a significant shift in how you approach some key aspects of your day to day work." Setting up deadlines and completing your assignments a few days before the due date will eliminate the procrastination stage. Creating a list with the most important priorities first, will help sort out your assignments and eliminate stress and feeling overwhelmed.
About 4 out of every 10 people avoid facing difficult task and deliberately look for distractions, and unfortunately there are distractors everywhere. When there is a significant period between when you intended do a job and the time you actually did it, you procrastinated.
People all procrastinate at one time or another. Procrastination is the practice of delaying work on important tasks in favor of less challenging ones. Chronic procrastinating hinders productivity and affects our state of mind by creating anxiety and stress (Reichelt). As deadlines approach, one often feels frustration and guilt for not starting on a task earlier. We often assume that projects won't take as long to finish as they really will, which often results in a mad scramble to finish the project in the twenty-four hours before the projects deadline. One of the biggest factors contributing to procrastination is the misconception that we need to be inspired or in the mood to work on the task at hand (Reichelt). However, the reality is that if you wait for the “right time” you will most likely wait for an indefinite amount of time and the task will never get completed.
Do not procrastinate. Choose a task and start working on it. Delaying a task will only make it that much hard to get started. Commit yourself to working on the task for a specific amount of time each day until it is completed.
My professional development topic was time management. Ironically, I missed the first professional development assignment. Due to poor time management skills, I did not get the assignment turned in before midnight when it was due. The last 2 semesters at Ivy Tech, spring and summer 2016, I have had poor time management skills. Procrastination is a thing I have always struggled with, and something I want to work on.