Procrastination, there’s something strange about this phenomena. Sometimes I observe that students felt a little bit “proud” about this term. Sometimes it’s so “inspiring” for them… so they start to put it as their identity. I can see it in their IM status. Also in some social network service (like Friendster, Facebook or StudiVZ), they have some groups of people revered them self as a procrastinator… Yes it’s you! You don’t have to raise your hand. I know you… .

Don’t ask me why… I don’t know the answer, maybe because it’s sound so nice: procrastination… procrastination…

Procrastinating is basically delaying to do something that you should do until the last minute, if not totally abandoned them. There are some classifications of procrastination; one from Sapadin (1997) summarized it very well. According to Sapadin there are six styles of procrastination: the perfectionist, the defier, the dreamer, the crisis-maker, the overdoer, and the worrier. If you have access to the book, go and read them, it’s worth it! Next time I will post an article discussing these styles, if I’m not procrastinating again… just kidding. You know I already healed, right?

Academic procrastination is referring to procrastination which occurs in academic setting. To mention some examples: cramming all night before exam, asking for extended time for delivering paper, delaying cleaning that horrible dormitory room, delaying grading students paper (in the case of professors), etc. Sounds familiar right? This habit is really a huge problem in academic live, according to William Knaus, 90% of college students procrastinate. 25% of them are chronic procrastinators who end up not finishing their study or dropping out.

Actually everybody procrastinate for certain reason. like having too many things to do or a matter of priority. But most of us procrastinate just because feeling lazy; not motivated or just set the wrong priority. As it gets more chronic it could lead to feeling of guilt, depression and low self-esteem. Why did I mention about the wrong priority? As we know beside studying students usually also work somewhere for some extra pocket money. I observed that sometime students get so enthusiastic with their job and put their study aside. Maybe they argued that their job is so important, they can earn enough money not only for pocket money but also for supporting their live, and they start to belief that their job is more important than their study. One fact that I want to say is that the younger you are when you graduated is the better. A lot of graduate study confirms this fact. If you graduated there will be more opportunity out there: more challenging job, more salary, further education, etc. So stop delaying to graduate just because you belief than your condition now (as a student) is already good enough for you. Like Anthony Robbins said: don’t settle less than you can be!

OK now the important question: how can we kick this habit away? Here are some tips that I pick from here and there. Not really scientifically proven. But most of them work for me.

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