Everyone, at least once in their lifetime has been a victim of procrastination. Procrastination is the action of delaying or postponing something. You may have pushed your homework back to give yourself some time to do more fun things like hanging out with your friends or you may even have pushed an important task back due to laziness. The first step in all forms of procrastination is laziness. You may have been too lazy to do that one assignment or to send that important email. It happens.

However, the more you push it back, the more anxious and stressed you seem to get with every passing day. The work you pushed back just becomes too much, the anxiety of having to do so much amount of work in such short amount of time becomes overwhelming. You seem to remember about the enormous pile of work overfilling your desk while you’re out with your friends, which ruins the happy, bubbly environment. Your once happy and stress-free day is gone. Even though, we know that this is going to happen, why do we still do it? Why do we choose to push back our work and face the overwhelming stress sooner or later?

It all has to do with how we feel about that particular subject. People tend to push back their more boring and gruesome work because “It’s too boring” or “I don’t want to do it”. Once again, this type of behavior corresponds to the human nature of laziness. We seem to not be able to get stuff done if it’s even an ounce of boring. Humans tend to go for the more fun and exciting part than the boring and stressful work. Who wouldn’t ditch their essay to go hang out with their friends? It’s just a part of human nature.

However, on the flip side, people might procrastinate because they fear failure. The anxiety of “what if I can’t do this correctly” or “what if I disappoint my family/peers” makes us not want to do that assignment. Of course, it’s also true to the exact opposite: “What if they start to expect too much from me?”

All of these are common reasons on why people tend to procrastinate even though they know the consequences. They choose to go through the stress and pull all-nighters than to split up the work into tinier parts and work through it through many days. Students aren’t the only ones to be the subject of procrastination. Many adults still procrastinate their necessary work. The habit of procrastinating carries on from adolescence to adulthood.

Even now, many students have a hard time not procrastinating. Procrastination is a serious issue that needs to be fixed. This addicting and horrible habit can result in better chances of giving up. Sometimes, the work that needs to be completed is too much so they just don’t do it, at all. These people become prone to giving up.

No matter how hard you try to fix this habit, it may never go away unless you fix it immediately. It may be difficult, but with the right counseling and the right parenthood, it can happen.

<Amy Jung /Santiago High School 10th Grade>