The Harmful Impact of Procrastination on Productivity and Well-Being

Abstract

Institutional Affiliations: Date: Introduction Procrastination can be defined as involuntary delays to do something or doing something against one better judgment which proves to be self-harming (Pinxten et al., 2019). Self-awareness within an individual defines the negativities associated with procrastination. One becomes aware that he/she is avoiding a task in question and understands that such delays are a terrible idea. For this reason, it is wise to define procrastination as essentially irrational since people engage in it knowing very well it is going to have negative consequences on them. Procrastination becomes characterized by an individual's inability to cope with challenging emotions and negative moods like boredom, anxiety, insecurity, frustration, and self-doubt, among other adverse effects induced by specific tasks (Duru and Balkis, 2017). For this reason, arguing from a psychological point of view, procrastination proves to be an emotion regulation problem as opposed to the assumption of it being a time management problem. The task's nature can define deeper negative feelings towards it like self-esteem issues, anxiety, and insecurity, which may have adverse effects on the victim, including significant chronic stress and depression. Literature Review Beutel (2016) and his fellow authors define procrastination as the act of postponing action to avoid stress. These authors argue that procrastination proves to be a potential self-regulatory failure that leads to poor performance and reduced well-being. For this reason, it becomes clear that, regardless of the nature of the postponed task, procrastination exposes the victim to negative consequences that one could have avoided if he/she did not postpone the action. Beutel et al. (2016) researched the association of procrastination with distress and life satisfaction amongst 1,350 women and 1,177 men aged between 14 and 95. Their findings indicated that young men and women aged between 14 and 29years expressed higher procrastination levels, with men procrastinating more than women. They further confirmed that procrastination was highly associated with stress, anxiety, more depression, and reduced life satisfaction. Their research attributes procrastination to a self-regulatory failure which defines this research argument that connects procrastination to laziness. With the young generation serving as the most affected by procrastination, it confirms the assumption that laziness, especially amongst youths, leads them to delay their tasks to enjoy the immediate positive effects without considering the negative consequences after that. For this reason, Beutel et al., (2016) research would have gone a mile further to analyze the connection between procrastination and youth laziness which this essay will pay study in detail. In their article on “Procrastination and Stress: Exploring the Role of Self-compassion,” Sirois (2014) attributes procrastination's adverse effects to an individual's levels of self-compassion. A high level of self-compassion is the ability to understand why one suffers, especially after experiencing the negative consequences of procrastination and vice-versa. Based on their research, one can define self-regulation as an individual’s ability to make the proper judgment regardless of the situation one becomes exposed to at any given moment. Therefore, lacking such skills, especially amongst the youths, defines the source of their stressful life as attributed to procrastination effects, especially in their academic performance. Low self-compassion, as analyzed by these authors, serves as the primary determinant of stress amongst procrastinators. Once again, their research fails to dig deep in analyzing laziness as a potential determinant of increasing procrastinators' cases amongst youths and adults. In efforts to analyze the consequences of academic procrastination on student performance, Abdi Zarrin and Gracia (2020) experimented with 198 students from different universities within Iran. The experiment aimed to understand how lack of self-regulation and fear of failure affect academic performance amongst graduates. Just as confirmed by Beutel et al. (2016), Abdi Zarrin and Gracia's (2020) findings associated male students with higher levels of academic procrastination as compared to their female students whose fear of failure remained well defined. Such results indicate that procrastination becomes highly connected to self-regulation failures which this essay best describes as laziness. Though Abdi Zarrin and Gracia's (2020) research is so rich in analyzing the connection between self-regulation, fear of failure, and academic procrastination, it fails to address the extent to which laziness plays a vital role in determining academic procrastination amongst students. Balkis and Duru (2016) researched to examine the role of self-regulation failure in procrastination. Based on these authors, self-regulation failure serves as an individual inability to make the proper judgment regarding task attendance, leading to postponement to enjoy the positive effect of procrastination, like avoidance of immediate stress associated with the task in question. Balkis and Duru (2016) also investigated the effects of procrastination on students' academic satisfaction and well-being in their research. Their findings indicated that lack of self-regulation leads to procrastination, affecting students' academic performance and affective well-being negatively. Lack of self-regulation skills leading to self-regulation failures concerning task management can be attributed to laziness in one way or the other, which this essay aims to research further. Since the young generation serves as the primary victims of procrastination, Zhang (2018) and his fellow authors conducted their research to investigate the cause of the rising academic procrastination cases amongst undergraduates. As hypothesized by most of the authors discussed above, procrastination becomes highly experienced by youth, especially high school, college, and university age bracket. In their research, Zhang (2018) noted that out of the 1184 undergraduates they examined, over 70% of them procrastinated in at least one type of academic task. Such findings indicate that students delay attending some of their academic assignments to avoid stress and engage in activities that make them happy, not thinking of the adverse effects of such delays after that. Lack of self-regulation drives youth to engage in activities that suit their interest, as confirmed by Constantin (2017) and Shokeen (2018). Shokeen (2018) argues that many students tend to ignore that procrastination is a chronic problem whose effects on their academic and work-life cannot be ignored. Procrastination serves as a potential barrier to goal realization amongst students. Constantin(2017), on the other hand, argues that students' ability to perform is adversely affected by procrastination which becomes defined by their inability to self-regulation. These scholars’ research findings indicated that anxiety and depression enhance students' procrastination, leading to lower academic performance in general. It is pretty evident that procrastination, as argued by all authors within this literature review, is primarily common amongst youths and, most precisely, students in colleges and campuses. What do such findings imply? Students tend to avoid the stress associated with some academic task. However, such delays' immediate outcome tends to be some positive effects of procrastination, like relief. Still, students are strongly hit by procrastination consequences like academic failure and stress when the time comes to attend such a task without further delays. Based on all arguments considered in this review, it is clear that neither of the authors took the initiative of evaluating the extent to which laziness can serve as a significant determinant of the rising levels of academic procrastination amongst students. It is evident that students avoid some academic tasks and substitute them with activities that suit their interest which can become fostered by laziness, thus exploring this element connected to procrastination. Research Question: If procrastination, especially amongst students, isn’t about laziness, then what is it about? Do students procrastinate because of bad moods or complexities of academic tasks? Hypothesis: Student delays attending some academic tasks to avoid the stress of being engaged to enjoy relief which proves a potentials positive procrastination effect. The further hypothesis that though students procrastinate due to self-regulation failure, fear of failure, and stress, many students also procrastinate because of bad moods and laziness to attend to their tasks in time, assuming they have ample time the same. Methodology Participants Let us base the present study on a close examination of the American student population. A random sampling cluster multistage sampling becomes administered and consolidated 1000 students from six public and private colleges and universities within the United States of America. The study used students as the primary study sample to better understand procrastination origin from the primary victims. Based on each institution's proportion, 570 were male while 430 were female aged between 18 years and 32 years. To enhance a proper analysis of the connection between laziness and procrastination, among other potential drives of academic procrastination, the population under consideration provided further categorization. Out of the 1000 participants, the study categorized those engaging in friendly and unfriendly courses. Four hundred students, 250 male and 150 female took demanding courses like engineering and medicine while the rest 400; 150 males and 250 females were taking business-related courses and the rest 200; 100 male and 100 female were psychology-related study students. The sample population consisted of a mixture of White Americans, African Americans, and Chinese students within the American Universities, taking 40%, 45%, and 15%. Participants gave informed consent to allow for face-face interviews by qualified personnel independently at their preferred location. They could also fill in personality questionnaires with the YES or NO option on a list of questions and questions that required a more detailed answer from an individual participant. In general, for ethical issues and response rate considerations, all participants were asked to engage in the exercise anonymously. The study representative offered a little incentive for study participation. Ethics Statement For allowance of an ethical exercise, the research and the consent procedure's procedure were approved by the six universities' institutional ethics review board, where the participants were randomly selected. Since the sample participants consisted of students aged above 18years, the six universities' ethics committee approved the consent procedure without further directives of parental/guardians interventions. All sample participants were informed of the exercise procedure, the anonymity of all personal data, including each participant's names, data collection, and the consent element, before signing it into an agreement. The study posed little to no risk to the sample participant as no complicated procedures like invasive diagnostic or medical analysis was present in the study. Equipments/ Measures Students Procrastination Assessment Scale: Solomon and Rothblum serve as potential figures behind this scale's invention (Lenggono and Tentama, 2020). The scale aims to analyze academic procrastination from three perspectives: exam preparation, assignment preparation, and semester report preparation. It is a simple scale that offers the participant clear options to select from, ranging from rare to almost always with 1 point and 4 points consecutively. It serves as a robust procrastination questionnaire. 90% of students reported procrastination in one or two of the three perspectives analyzed...