Why Do Students Procrastinate? (Best Techniques to Overcome Academic Procrastination)
Are you a student, and you can’t get yourself to study for your next exam? Are you still delaying the essay your teacher asked you to do?
You’re not alone. Studies found that between 80 and 95 percent of college students procrastinate, and about 75 percent consider themselves full-blown procrastinators.
But why are students so inclined to delay and postpone their studies and projects?
You’ll learn the real reasons why students procrastinate, according to research, and we’ll also go through some of the techniques that you can start to implement to overcome your negative habits.
Students procrastinate for many different reasons, but research has shown that perfectionism, fear of failure, mental exhaustion and feeling overwhelmed, poor organizational skills, task aversion, and negative emotions like anxiety and depression are the most common ones.
These factors that cause students to put things off vary from student to student, depending on things like personality traits, life experiences, the environment, etc.
Solutions to help you overcome your unhelpful behavior should be tailored to your specific situation.
Next, we will go over these contributing factors one by one to identify exactly what may be causing your negative habit of delaying your projects and assignments. And for each factor, we will provide a solution or “antidote” that can help you deal with the source of your behavior.
Table of Contents
Why Do Students Procrastinate? (The Underlying Causes)
Why do students wait until the last minute to work on their homework? Contrary to popular belief, procrastination doesn’t equate to laziness. Procrastination is even more complex and involves deep emotional and cognitive aspects.
Related Read: Laziness Vs Procrastination: Understand the Difference (Take Our Quiz)
Let’s explain some of these aspects. That may give you better insight into your own situation.
Perfectionism is when you have high expectations for yourself and avoid doing the work because you are afraid it will be less than perfect. You may feel overwhelmed and paralyzed by the fear of imperfection.
Usually, you have an “all or nothing” mentality, a black-or-white mindset. This can explain why you tend to postpone important projects because you want to either do them perfectly or not bother at all.
More on this thinking pattern in our article on perfectionism and procrastination.”
Fear of failure: this can be considered another facet of perfectionism.
This is when you avoid doing a task, starting a project, or studying for an exam because you fear that you will fail, and sometimes you predict that you’ll fail.
The idea of failing may be so paralyzing that you abandon the whole endeavor and start avoiding important tasks that may seem a bit challenging.
Some students would rather not study at all for the exam. So, if they fail, that will be a normal outcome for them, and at least they will not perceive it as failure.
You may believe that being unaware of your academic level is preferable to knowing that you are among a bunch of mediocre students.
Mental exhaustion and feeling overwhelmed: we’ve all been there, feeling so overwhelmed by the seemingly insurmountable load of work that is waiting for you for such a short time.
You have a lot on your plate. You feel that you can’t catch up, so you avoid studying or, worse, you abandon the whole endeavor. The bad news is that procrastination usually aggravates the feeling of overwhelm and avoidance, which causes the accumulation of more work and a cycle of doom that feeds off itself.
Task aversion: when you find the subject or the assignment boring, you may develop an emotional repulsion (aversion) towards the tasks.
This can cause a conflict between how the student feels about the “boring” assignment and how important it is to work on a subject or assignment in order to succeed.
Psychological distress: negative feelings such as stress, anxiety, and depression are known to cause or worsen procrastination. In turn, procrastination worsens anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. This dynamic creates a vicious cycle, which may prolong and aggravate your tendency to delay tasks and projects.
Some mental disorders, such as generalized anxiety, major depression, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), can be major contributing factors to procrastination. More on the relationship between ADHD and procrastination.
Poor organizational skills: your management and organizational skills may be to blame for delaying projects and assignments. You may have one or more of these problems with organization, including:
➣ You overestimate your ability to finish tasks in a short time.
➣ You attempt to do many things at the same time (multitasking).
➣ You have trouble prioritizing your tasks.
➣ You don’t plan activities in advance.
➣ You fail to eliminate distractions and interruptions.
Another 2016 study attempted to answer the question “why do students procrastinate in college?”, and found the following underlying causes:
- Aversiveness toward the task
- Low frustration tolerance
- Tendency to feel overwhelmed
- Poor time management
- Peer influence
What About Active Procrastination Among Students ?
Studies have linked procrastination among students with what is called “active procrastination” or “purposeful delay,” which is when the student deliberately delays working on a project and chooses to finish it days or even hours before the deadline.
Even though research on the effects of active procrastination on students has shown mixed results, some studies have linked this type of procrastination to better grades, better performance, better health, and better mental well-being.
This is in contrast to the negative effects that are usually found in studies on passive procrastination.
Read more on active procrastination.
Effects of Procrastination on Students
I was a student, and I know damn well the effects my procrastination has had on my mental well-being and my academic progress. The consequences are real and sometimes devastating for students.
Most research reported negative effects of procrastination on students, which mainly fell into three main consequences.
1. Lower academic performance
Researchers found that procrastination hurts the student’s ability to learn and succeed, often leading to lower grades and a higher rate of dropping out.
That is because students who frequently delayed projects and schoolwork had poor quality work and diminished accuracy and punctuality.
The largest meta-analysis on the effects of procrastination on students focused on 33 studies involving a total of 38,529 participants, and confirmed that procrastination was negatively correlated with academic performance.
2. Psychological distress
Research found that procrastination in students was linked to higher levels of stress, depression, anxiety, and poor academic performance.
Research also found an association between procrastination and low self-esteem and low satisfaction in all areas of life, including the workplace and relationships.
It is worth mentioning that these studies could not conclusively determine the causality between procrastination and psychological distress, which means it is still not clear if procrastination is what causes you to feel anxious and depressed or if anxiety and depression cause you to procrastinate.
3. Health problems
A study investigating the health effects of procrastination on 122 college students showed that students who procrastinate tend to have poor health, higher levels of stress, and wait longer before seeking treatment.
Chronic stress and low mood associated with procrastination can contribute to the development and worsening of many illnesses, such as high blood pressure and upper respiratory tract infection.
On the other hand, chronic procrastinators tend to delay seeking medical attention when they are sick until symptoms get really bad, which can lead to serious complications.
Research About Procrastination of Students
For obvious reasons, the majority of procrastination research has been conducted on college students. Students are the most affected by delaying homework and projects to the last minute, thus the expressions “academic procrastination” and “student syndrome”.
Studies showed that procrastination is more prevalent in students, including those in elementary school, middle school, and graduate students. This tendency tends to increase during the course of the student’s academic years.
We can’t mention all the studies, but let’s go through some of the interesting ones.
Research shows that between 80 and 95 percent of college students procrastinate, and about 75 percent consider themselves procrastinators.
An interesting study done on college students found interesting results:
- 60% of the procrastinators are male students.
- Students procrastinate the most during the second and third years of their college studies.
- The psychiatric diagnosis most commonly associated with procrastinators is obsessive-compulsive disorder (27.5%), followed by malingering (17.5%), and generalized anxiety disorder (12.5%).
Researchers believe that procrastination may be influenced by internal and external factors.
Internal factors include personality traits, impulsivity, depression, fear of failure, perfectionism, etc.
External factors include the immediate environment, digital distractions, peer influence, etc.
More on distractions and procrastination.
The prevalence of procrastination also varies based on the type of task.
Research done on psychology students showed that 46% procrastinate on writing term papers, 30% on reading weekly assignments, 28% on studying for exams, 23% on attendance tasks, 11% procrastinate on administrative tasks, and 10% procrastinate on school activities in general.
Procrastination Quiz for Students: Take This Comprehensive Test of Academic Procrastination
This quiz you are about to take is a scientifically validated assessment of academic procrastination that reveals different facets of procrastination among students.
Called the “Procrastination Assessment Scale-Students Questionnaire (PASS)”, this test was developed by Solomon & Rothblum in 1984 to conduct research on procrastination among students.
The PASS questionnaire is a detailed and comprehensive 44-item scale composed of two sections: the first section evaluates the prevalence of procrastination in six academic areas, and the second section assesses the reasons behind procrastination.
How To Overcome Procrastination for Students ?
We can help you find solutions to your procrastination based on the underlying reason.
It is recommended that you experiment with several techniques and find out, by yourself, what fits you best, but we prefer to provide one technique per problem that is best suited to deal with that specific underlying factor, or what we will call “the toxic factor.”
Toxic factor :
perfectionism
Antidote :
cognitive restructuring
Cognitive restructuring aims at challenging the way you think, and by changing your negative thoughts, your emotions and behaviors will follow.
Perfectionism is mainly a cognitive problem because you base your behavior on an “all-or-nothing thinking” mentality.
You tell yourself: “I should either do it perfectly or not at all.”
The first step is to figure out what negative thoughts are driving your need to be perfect.
You then attempt to find the “cognitive distortions” within these thoughts. For instance, the black or white thinking style is a flawed way of thinking that needs to be dealt with.
Finally, you come up with a more rational alternative, such as “finishing an imperfect project and learning from it is better than doing nothing and being a sloth.”
More on this technique can be found in our article on perfection paralysis.
Toxic factor :
fear of failure
Antidote :
behavioral experiments
The main goal of behavioral experiments is to test your predictions that you will fail on the task.
Behavioral experiment is based on the very well-researched and highly effective cognitive-behavioral therapy.
You will be your own scientist and investigator, and you need to test the accuracy of your own thoughts.
What you need to do is identify what you fear the most about doing the task, test your theory, and draw a conclusion.
✱ Example:
➠ Issue: you avoid working on your class presentation because you fear you will fail.
➠ Your prediction: even if I work hard on this presentation, I will eventually fail.
➠ The Experiment (Test your prediction): start working on your presentation and divide it into smaller, manageable pieces. Allocate time to work on it each day. (Pomodoro can be very helpful here.)
➠ Examine the outcomes: as you go, assess how far you’ve come with your project and why it’s better to work on it than not. If you think that your project should be perfect, you should use some cognitive restructuring (back to perfectionism section).
⇒ Conclusion: You will notice that you are not failing as long as you are working on the project; you are progressing, and mistakes are part of the process.
If you do these experiments over and over, your thinking pattern will start to shift toward a more rational and productive attitude.
Read an in-depth article about Overcoming Fear of Failure.
Toxic factor :
mental exhaustion and feeling overwhelmed
Antidote :
time management techniques.
If you are feeling overwhelmed by the tasks ahead of you and feel you’ll never catch up, you should learn some basic techniques for time management.
Determine how much time is left for your projects or assignments (ex: three months left to the exam).
Set specific goals (get at least above-average marks to pass).
Divide big projects into smaller tasks.
Hatch an action plan and allocate time to work on your tasks (study 4 times a week for 3 hours).
Create healthy, consistent habits and daily to-do lists (exercise, meditation, and adequate sleep).
Track your progress to keep yourself motivated and accountable (habit trackers may be an excellent tool).
Remove distractions and interruptions (set your phone to airplane mode, disconnect from social media, and block internet access).
Use the Pomodoro technique when studying (25 minutes of work followed by 5 minutes of rest).
For more comprehensive time management techniques, read our article on Time Management and Procrastination.
Toxic factor :
poor organizational skills
Antidote :
use time management techniques (listed above).
Toxic factor :
task aversion
Antidote :
reward system and cost-benefit analysis.
We’ve all been there; we all had this class or subject that we despised. You may despise mathematics or literature and find it difficult to get yourself to work on something you don’t like. Well, you have two proven techniques that can help you get over your negative feelings.
1. Create a reward system, which means you reward yourself when you work on these subjects that you don’t really like.
It is common knowledge that procrastinators respond better to positive reinforcement than to punishment.
For instance, if you have an aversion to physics, reward yourself every time you finish an hour studying this subject.
Be creative with your reward list: a chocolate bar, a walk in the park, watching a movie, or a YouTube video
Bear in mind that relying solely on external rewards is not a great long-term strategy.
This reward system can put you on the right track to start getting things done and moving forward. As you progress, you need to find an inherent satisfaction in working on these subjects, and that is the goal of the cost-benefit analysis.
2. Cost/benefit analysis: with this cognitive technique, you will work on your internal reward system by highlighting the importance of the task or subject you intend to work on.
To start, create two columns.
On the left side, write down all the benefits of the subject and of working on it.
On the right side, write down the disadvantages.
For instance, you dislike mathematics.
✱ On the “Benefit” column, you may write:
➥ Math helps me have better problem-solving skills.
➥ Math helps me manage my finances.
➥ Math is used in practically every career in some way.
➥ Working on my upcoming math test will help me succeed in my academic year.
✱ On the “Cost” column, you may write:
➥ I don’t like math.
➥ I feel bored when I study math.
➥ I feel tired when I work on math assignments.
When you’re finished, go over the cost and benefit table to see how much more beneficial it is to study math rather than avoid it. You may want to read the cost-benefit table and analyze it again on a daily basis.
Repetition is important because it reinforces and consolidates these statements in your brain.
Toxic factor :
psychological distress
Antidote :
make lifestyle changes / seek professional help
Psychological distress can range from being worried about an exam or a deadline to having severe depression or anxiety that makes it hard to function.
It is important to spot the difference.
1. Lifestyle changes: adopt the 4 pillars of good mental health
➤ Exercise: practice aerobic and anaerobic exercise at least three times a week.
➤ Manage your stress: practice meditation to increase your focus and reduce anxiety and depression. more on meditation and procrastination.
➤ Eat a balanced diet: eat more fruits and vegetables, protein, and whole grains; limit processed foods, sugar, salt, and unhealthy fats.
➤ Get enough sleep: aim for 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night to keep your mind and body in good shape.
2. Seek professional help: if your symptoms don’t go away or are severe enough, it is important to seek professional help because it is difficult to deal with major mental disorders by yourself.
If you are hesitant to seek help for a mental health problem, specialized online therapy with professional licensed therapists is available, such as Talk Space, considered one of the leading online therapy platforms, covering a broad range of mental health services.
Key Takeaways:
Procrastination is very common among students, with studies showing that up to 97% of students procrastinate. Most research on procrastination has focused on this behavior among students, or what is called “academic procrastination.”
Research shows that chronic procrastination causes physical and mental health problems and poor academic achievement.
Students procrastinate for different reasons, including perfectionism, fear of failure, mental exhaustion and feeling overwhelmed, poor organizational skills, task aversion, poor concentration, anxiety and depression.
Identifying the underlying problems behind your procrastination may be the first step to addressing them accordingly. Some cognitive and behavioral techniques can go a long way.
By Sam David
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