The Characteristics Of Procrastination

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Recently, the percentage of young students, who did not work on their projects or homework until the last minute before a deadline, presented a rising trend. Although in fact, everyone more or less dallies over some work, some people have made it a way of life, which is normally considered as the behavior defined by procrastination. As some previous researches indicate, 80%–95% of college students engage in procrastination (Ellis & Knaus, 1977; O’Brien, 2002), and almost 50% of them procrastinate consistently and problematically (Day, Mensink, & O’Sullivan, 2000; Haycock, 1993; Micek, 1982; Onwuegbuzie, 2000a; Solomon & Rothblum, 1984). Absolutely, the number of procrastinators has been considerable since the past. Procrastination, as a most …show more content…

Procrastinators tend to be impulsive, distractible, and lacking in self-control; thus, they are very sensitive to delays. If wanting to overcome procrastination, it would be ideal to influence these characteristics directly, although procrastinator’s personality traits are fairly stable (Piers Steel, 2007). As a result, it could be a good idea to start by setting realistic goals and develop a personal positive link between tasks and the concrete goals. Then, for procrastinators who are easily distracted by other things, stimulus control can be helpful. It helps to direct behavior by indicating what is appropriate under any given circumstance. To prevent procrastination, people surrounding procrastinators can keep sending cues to them that confirm their realistic goals and banish any sign that reminds them of temptation. (Piers Steel, 2007). Many researches indicate the effectiveness of this approach. For instance, procrastination decreased for students who studied in the same location (Ziesat, Rosenthal, & White, 1978), a finding that might confirm the merit of offices. Moreover, there is a considerable amount of research has shown that goal setting does reduce procrastination. For example, Boice (1989) found that academic writers who setting daily writing goals were able to keep their pace with a healthy schedule of publications. Similarly, in a self-paced course, Brooke and Ruthven (1984) together with Lamwers and Jazwinski (1989) used contracts for periodic work completion to decrease procrastination. Also, Wesp (1986) used daily quizzes to diminish procrastination in a self-paced course. Each set of quizzes was repeated until students can achieve mastery of a section. Therefore, a new set was administered, providing a constant incremental goal to work

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