Why Do Students Often Procrastinate?
Nothing in life is more beautiful than doing things at the right time and season. This beautiful reality also applies to homework submission in school. Unfortunately, many learners find it challenging to submit their assignments on time because postponement affects their timeliness.
This behavior is so chronic that research shows 80-95% of all college students procrastinate doing their papers. Moreover, they do so for various reasons.
Why should a student push their classwork to another day when they have the time to do it today? To answer this critical question, we researched and found the leading ones, sharing why numerous college students engage in procrastination in this post. Who knows, maybe you’ll also learn to notice and overcome these traps?
No Plan or Failure to Stick to It
According to Oxford learning, most high school and college students procrastinate on their tasks because they lack coherent project plans for their assignments. They attack their tasks without planning how best they will follow through every stage. Also, it is common for students to postpone because they lack the discipline to stick to what they already set in place. The first reason affects high and primary school learners, while the second affects college scholars.
Unclear and Unrealistic Goals
Postponement is a problem for many scholars because they face their schoolwork with unclear and unrealistic goals. This problem mostly arises when dealing with large school projects that take a longer time to complete. For instance, some of them underestimate their assignments’ magnitude. They take a project that requires two weeks to complete and want to finish it within seven or ten days. Along the way, they discover they can’t manage it effectively. Consequently, they push the task to another day.
To overcome this challenge, plan your work based on your ability to do it well. If taking on too much at a time will compromise your quality, then do things in small manageable chunks. It’s better to do less within a reasonable timeframe and do it well rather than do everything at a go and then mess it up.
Poor Personal Life Routines
Your journey through college naturally conditions you to a particular routine form. However, if your routines are weak, they are most likely to cause procrastination problems. For example, if a female student loves some soap opera and watches it shortly before her homework, problems will crop. TV is addictive to most people, so she will quickly find herself glued to the remote control. Result? She will postpone her work to that “other day” that never comes. In a nutshell: establish your priorities well to avoid placing study times next to distractive activities.
Overly lenient Deadlines
Also, many students tend to procrastinate their work due to generous deadlines from their teachers. It doesn’t mean that lecturers should not give you enough time to do your assignments, no. The problem here is not usually with the deadline length. It’s usually a weakness on the students’ side to use it effectively. Unfortunately, they assume that the time is “too much” to start working immediately. They comfort themselves that they will start working later, only to find themselves drowning in tight deadlines. To avoid this trap, you need to see every generous deadline as sufficient time to do your work and start immediately.
Wrong Time Management
Students postpone their college assignments because they are poor at managing their time. Most of them lack the necessary metacognitive competence for effective studying. For example, they can’t schedule sufficient time for their studies or discern when to request for help. As a result, schoolwork is postponed because of the inappropriate evaluation of time.
Fear of Failure
Many learners also postpone their assignments because they fear to fail. When students overly preoccupy themselves with their quest for instant perfection, they become nervous when thinking about mistakes. The fear of mistakes leads to the fear of criticism. As a result, students avoid working on their projects because they don’t want to “taint” them with imperfection.