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What Is Procrastination?

Why we keep putting things off, despite the consequences

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

• Common Justifications

Types of Procrastination

• The Negative Impact
• Strategies to Stop

It's tempting to keep putting off the tasks we don't enjoy. Even though we know it will lead to more stress later, it's common to avoid starting or finishing things we don't really want to do.

Procrastination is the act of delaying or putting off tasks until the last minute or past their deadline. It's not just a time management problem. Researchers suggest that it's a failure in self-regulation that leads us to act irrationally. We put things off, even though we know this delay will lead to negative consequences.

How Common Is Procrastination?

While some people are better at motivating themselves to tackle unpleasant tasks, procrastination is a highly prevalent problem. Among college students, nearly all admitted to procrastinating sometimes, while 75% described themselves as habitual procrastinators.

No matter how well-organized and committed you are, chances are you have found yourself frittering away hours on trivial pursuits (watching TV, scrolling through your Facebook feed, shopping online, etc.) when you should have been spending that time on work or school-related projects.

At a Glance

Whether you're putting off finishing a project for work, avoiding homework assignments, or ignoring household chores, procrastination can have a major impact on your job, grades, and life. In most cases, procrastination is not a sign of a serious problem. It's a common tendency that most people resort to at some point. Let's take a closer look at why it happens, its impact, and what you can do to stop procrastinating.

What Causes Procrastination?

Remember that time that you thought you had a week left to finish a project that was really due the next day? How about the time you decided not to clean up your apartment because you "didn't feel like doing it right now?"

We often assume that projects won't take as long to finish as they really will, which can lead to a false sense of security when we believe that we still have plenty of time to complete these tasks.

One of the biggest factors contributing to procrastination is the notion that we have to feel inspired or motivated to work on a task at a particular moment.

The reality is that if you wait until you're in the right frame of mind to do certain tasks (especially undesirable ones), you will probably find that the right time simply never comes along and the task never gets completed.

Waiting for motivation isn't the only problem that contributes to procrastination, however. The following are a few other factors that can play a role.

Researchers suggest that procrastination can be particularly pronounced among students. An estimated 75% of students procrastinate regularly, and around half of these students feel that this behavior is a persistent problem.

According to researchers, some major cognitive distortions lead to academic procrastination. Students tend to:

• Overestimate how much time they have left to perform tasks
• Overestimate how motivated they will be in the future
• Underestimate how long certain activities will take to complete
• Mistakenly assume that they need to be in the right frame of mind to work on a project

Present Bias

The present bias is a phenomenon observed in human behavior that may result in procrastination. The present bias means that we tend to be motivated more by immediate gratification or rewards than we are by long-term rewards. This is why it feels good in the moment to procrastinate.

For example, the immediate reward of staying in bed and watching TV is more appealing than the long-term reward of publishing a blog post, which would take much longer to accomplish.

Procrastination can also be a result of depression . Feelings of hopelessness , helplessness, and a lack of energy can make it difficult to start (and finish) the simplest task. Depression can also lead to self-doubt . When you can't figure out how to tackle a project or feel insecure about your abilities, you might find it easier to put it off.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Procrastination is also pretty common in people with obsessive-compulsive disorder . One reason is that OCD is often linked with maladaptive perfectionism, which causes fears about making new mistakes, doubts about whether you are doing something correctly, and worry over others' expectations of you.

People with OCD also often have a propensity toward indecision, causing them to procrastinate rather than make a decision.

Many adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) struggle with procrastination. When you're so distracted by outside stimuli, as well as internal thoughts, it can be hard to get started on a task, especially if that task is difficult or not interesting to you.

Is Procrastination a Mental Illness?

Procrastination itself is not a mental illness. But in some cases, it may be characteristic of an underlying mental health condition such as depression, OCD, or ADHD.

Why Do You Procrastinate?

We often come up with several excuses or rationalizations to justify our behavior. The following are just a few of the common reasons why people tend to procrastinate:

• Not knowing what needs to be done
• Not knowing how to do something
• Not wanting to do something
• Not caring if it gets done or not
• Not caring when something gets done
• Not feeling in the mood to do it
• Being in the habit of waiting until the last minute
• Believing that you work better under pressure
• Thinking that you can finish it at the last minute
• Lacking the initiative to get started
• Blaming sickness or poor health
• Waiting for the right moment
• Needing time to think about the task
• Delaying one task in favor of working on another

Press Play for Advice On Completing Tasks

Hosted by therapist Amy Morin, LCSW, this episode of The Verywell Mind Podcast shares how to get tasks done with a science-backed trick known as 'temptation bundling.' Click below to listen now.

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Some researchers classify two types of procrastinators: passive and active procrastinators.

• Passive procrastinators : Delay the task because they have trouble making decisions and acting on them
• Active procrastinators : Delay the task purposefully because working under pressure allows them to "feel challenged and motivated"

Others define the types of procrastinators based on different behavioral styles of procrastination, including:

• Perfectionist : Puts off tasks out of the fear of not being able to complete a task perfectly
• Dreamer : Puts off tasks because they are not good at paying attention to detail
• Defier : Doesn't believe someone should dictate their time schedule
• Worrier : Puts off tasks out of fear of change or leaving the comfort of "the known"
• Crisis-maker : Puts off tasks because they like working under pressure
• Overdoer : Takes on too much and struggles with finding time to start and complete task

Procrastinators vs. Non-Procrastinators

If you tend to put things off, you might wonder exactly what makes non-procrastinators different. According to the American Psychological Association, people who don't procrastinate tend to focus more on the task itself. Rather than worrying about how other people see them, they are more concerned with how they see themselves.

People who don't procrastinate also tend to be high in the personality trait known as conscientiousness , one of the broad dispositions identified by the Big Five personality theory. People with high conscientiousness also tend to be high in other areas, including self-discipline, persistence, and personal responsibility.

The Negative Impact of Procrastination

It becomes a more serious issue when procrastination is chronic and begins to impact a person's daily life seriously. In such instances, it's not just a matter of poor time management skills; it's a major part of their lifestyle.

Perhaps they pay their bills late, don't start work on big projects until the night before the deadline, delay gift shopping until the day before a birthday, and even file their income tax returns late.

Unfortunately, this procrastination can have a serious impact on many life areas, including a person's mental health and social, professional, and financial well-being:

• Higher levels of stress and illness
• Increased burden placed on social relationships
• Resentment from friends, family, co-workers, and fellow students
• Consequences of delinquent bills and income tax returns

How to Overcome Procrastination

You might find yourself wondering, How can I stop procrastinating?

Fortunately, there are a number of different things you can do to fight procrastination and start getting things done on time. Consider these your procrastination exercises:

• Make a to-do list : To help keep you on track, consider placing a due date next to each item.
• Take baby steps : Break down the items on your list into small, manageable steps so that your tasks don’t seem so overwhelming.
• Recognize the warning signs : Pay attention to any thoughts of procrastination and do your best to resist the urge. If you begin to think about procrastinating, force yourself to spend a few minutes working on your task.
• Eliminate distraction : Ask yourself what pulls your attention away the most—whether it's Instagram, Facebook updates, or the local news—and turn off those sources of distraction.
• Pat yourself on the back : When you finish an item on your to-do list on time, congratulate yourself and reward yourself by indulging in something you find fun.    

If you put things off sometimes, don't worry; it happens to all of us. It's often the tasks we dislike the most that get pushed off until the last minute. While common, it is important to remember that this behavior can have serious consequences, including hurting your relationships, your personal achievements, and your ability to succeed at work and school.

Fortunately, you can do things to reduce that urge to stall. Understanding why you're struggling to get started can help. Remember to create a to-do list of things that need to be done and start small. When you feel the urge to procrastinate, force yourself to do just one small thing. Sometimes, just getting started is half the battle.

Prem R, Scheel TE, Weigelt O, Hoffmann K, Korunka C. Procrastination in daily working life: A diary study on within-person processes that link work characteristics to workplace procrastination . Front Psychol . 2018;9:1087. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01087

Rozental A, Forsström D, Hussoon A, Klingsieck KB. Procrastination among university students: differentiating severe cases in need of support from less severe cases . Front Psychol . 2022;13:783570. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.783570

Bisin A, Hyndman K. Present-bias, procrastination and deadlines in a field experiment . Games and Economic Behavior. 2020;119:339-357. doi:10.1016/j.geb.2019.11.010

Rogowska AM, Cincio A. Procrastination mediates the relationship between problematic TikTok use and depression among young adults .  J Clin Med . 2024;13(5):1247. doi:10.3390/jcm13051247

Beutel ME, Klein EM, Aufenanger S, et al. Procrastination, distress and life satisfaction across the age range - A German representative community study .  PLoS One . 2016;11(2):e0148054. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0148054

Limburg K, Watson HJ, Hagger MS, Egan SJ.  The relationship between perfectionism and psychopathology: A meta-analysis .  J Clin Psychol.  2017;73(10):1301-1326. doi:10.1002/jclp.22435

Altgassen M, Scheres A, Edel MA.  Prospective memory (partially) mediates the link between ADHD symptoms and procrastination .  Atten Defic Hyperact Disord . 2019;11(1):59-71. doi:10.1007/s12402-018-0273-x

Yan B, Zhang X. What research has been conducted on procrastination? Evidence from a systematical bibliometric analysis .  Front Psychol . 2022;13:809044. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.809044

Zohar AH, Shimone LP, Hen M. Active and passive procrastination in terms of temperament and character .  PeerJ . 2019;7:e6988. doi:10.7717/peerj.6988

American Psychological Association. The first step to overcoming procrastination: Know thyself .

American Psychological Association. The psychology of procrastination: Why people put off important tasks until the last minute .

Gao K, Zhang R, Xu T, Zhou F, Feng T. The effect of conscientiousness on procrastination: The interaction between the self-control and motivation neural pathways .  Hum Brain Mapp . 2021;42(6):1829-1844. doi:10.1002/hbm.25333

Svartdal F, Nemtcan E. Past negative consequences of unnecessary delay as a marker of procrastination . Front Psychol. 2022;13. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.787337

Schrager S, Sadowski E. Getting more done: Strategies to increase scholarly productivity .  J Grad Med Educ . 2016;8(1):10-13. doi:10.4300/JGME-D-15-00165.1

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Procrastination

Understanding academic procrastination, it's common, but not well understood..

Posted July 8, 2021 | Reviewed by Gary Drevitch

• What Is Procrastination?
• Take our Procrastination Test
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Procrastination is not an unfamiliar concept to students. Be it studying for a tough statistics mid-term, doing a boring and monotonous 2-hour transcription, or planning a daunting group project, students can often find solace in putting off doing tasks like these and find ways to disengage and browse cat videos on TikTok for hours. This type of procrastination is referred to as academic procrastination, as it’s related to putting off doing important things related to one’s coursework and schooling. I’ve invited my colleague and friend, Reza Feyzi Behnagh of the School of Education at SUNY, Albany, to write this post with me.

In the past two years and with the funding support from the National Science Foundation, Behnagh (a learning scientist) and Shaghayegh Sahebi, a computer scientist, together with their research team of graduate students, studied academic procrastination . (I have been a recent consultant.) They are looking at how students make plans, set goals , and break large projects into smaller chunks, how they go about studying and checking their progress, and whether and under what conditions they procrastinate.

To gain this understanding, they developed a mobile app (Proccoli) to help students plan and study for their coursework. Why Proccoli? Just like broccoli that kids avoid eating (or procrastinate eating until the end of their meal) while it is good for them, getting things done toward one’s goal might be unpleasant and daunting at first, but learning a cool concept, a nice grade, praise, or a degree or course to complete, make all the effort worth it. Their app is designed to help students set goals, break their goals into smaller chunks, keep track of their studies in a Pomodoro-style timer, and check out their progress in continuously updating charts.

The goal of the SUNY Albany team has been to model and understand academic procrastination in college-age students, how it happens and individual differences that affect it, and to be able to identify the ‘behavioral signature’ of academic procrastination, predict it, and ultimately to help students manage their emotions (e.g., anxiety , boredom ) and get things done!

How do we understand academic procrastination? Unless students tell us what they are doing, how long, how often, and when they are studying (are they pulling an all-nighter the night of their exam? Are they preparing well in advance?), there is no way for us to know for sure. The app and data we are gathering through the app give us a unique perspective to understand under what circumstances and how students procrastinate.

In the past two years, a large group of graduate and undergraduate students have used the app (80-120 a semester), creating hundreds of goals and subgoals (1100 goals and 400 in the past semester), logging and reporting hundreds of hours of study time. Part of our analyses point to two distinct clusters of students showing different learning dynamics (Yao et al., 2021): One group that studied more frequently and consistently since early on after setting their goal and another cluster of students who studied infrequently twice or three times before their deadline. We plan to align these study patterns with students’ grades and see if either group is more successful and which could be characterized as procrastination, considering other factors. Another interesting finding was that students who reported that they usually study to get a good grade or avoid getting a bad grade (i.e., performance goal-orientation) studied less regularly and less consistently, and their study pace dropped much faster than those with the goal of learning as much as they can from their schoolwork.

Research showed that one of the main reasons for academic procrastination is all the aversive emotions one feels about a task, like a tough exam, a boring homework, a standardized exam that will determine one’s future entry to the university, etc. (see Ferrari, 2010 for a good understanding). Much research (e.g., Berking & Whitley, 2014; Eckert et al., 2016) looked at ways of managing these emotions so that the student can get started, stick to doing the task they have been avoiding, and as a result improve their self-efficacy – the belief and confidence that one is in control and is able to accomplish what they intend to do. In their study, the SUNY Albany team (and I) hope to implement several of the emotion regulation strategies shown to help acknowledge, tolerate, and manage negative emotions, so that we can see whether these strategies help students procrastinate less in their academic tasks and whether they help students start working on the tasks they’ve been avoiding.

Stay tune for our published results.

Declaration: This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1917949. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Berking, M., & Whitley, B. (2014). Affect regulation training (ART) . New York: Springer.

Eckert, M., Ebert, D. D., Lehr, D., Sieland, B., & Berking, M. (2016). Overcoming procrastination: Enhancing emotion regulation skills reduce procrastination. Learning and individual differences, 52 , 10-18.

Ferrari, J.R. (2010). Still procrastinating? The no regrets guide to getting it done . New York: J Wiley & Sons.

Yao, M., Sahebi, S., Feyzi Behnagh, R., Bursali, S., & *Zhao, S. (2021). Temporal processes associating with procrastination dynamics. In I. Roll, D. McNamara, S. Sosnovsky, R. Luckin, & V. Dimitrova (Eds.), Artificial Intelligence in Education, AIED2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 12748 (pp. 459-471). Springer, Cham.

Proccoli Application: http://www.albany.edu/proccoli/

Deacon Joseph Ferrari, Ph.D., is the St. Vincent dePaul Distinguished Professor of Psychology at DePaul University.

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12 reasons why students procrastinate…and what you can do about it

Mar 16, 2023 | Blog

“You found out about this project weeks ago; WHY did you wait until today to start working on it?” 

Procrastination.

It’s one of the most common concerns I hear from parents.

Whether it’s waiting to start a project until the night before the due date or beginning tomorrow’s homework at 10 pm, procrastination is a regular way of life for many students.

For parents, this can be incredibly frustrating , because it seems so easy to avoid ( “If you had just started your homework when you got home, you’d be finished already… now you’re going to be up half the night!” ).

It’s extremely tempting to call teens out for being “lazy,” lecture them on the costs of procrastination, or point out the bad decisions that got them into this mess.

Unfortunately, these responses rarely help.

When they’re lectured about the evils of procrastination, teens will passionately defend their strategy of leaving things until the last minute, claiming that it makes them more productive and it’s the best time to get things done.

But in my conversations with students during our coaching sessions — when they don’t feel judged or criticized and can let go of their need to justify their behavior — most students admit that they wish they could procrastinate less .  They know that procrastination stresses them out, causes them to lose sleep, and hurts their grades — and their lives would be easier if they didn’t do it.  They just aren’t sure how to get themselves to stop.

So, what’s the solution?

The solutions to use with students are different for each of these scenarios… which is why it is so important to identify the root cause for a student’s procrastination before giving them tips or advice about how to fix it.

For example, reminders about the consequences of an impending deadline may help a student who hasn’t been taking deadlines seriously but, for a student with a fear of failure or difficulty regulating emotions, it could actually make things worse by increasing their anxiety about the assignment and their desire to do something else in order to avoid these negative emotions.

There are a vast number of reasons why students — and people in general — procrastinate.  Here are some of the most common, with ideas for how to address them.

Top 12 reasons why students procrastinate…

1. forgetting about it.

For whatever reason — missing class, being distracted when the teacher announced the homework, not writing it down, or forgetting to look at the class website — sometimes students leave their work until the last minute because they genuinely have no idea that there’s any work to be done.  (That is, until a friend mentions it the day beforehand or until they walk into class the next morning.)  Technically speaking, this wouldn’t be classified as “procrastination” because the student is not resisting their work — they simply don’t realize they have any work!  But this is definitely a common cause of leaving things until the last minute.

Try exploring different ways your kid could keep track of their due dates – consider creating a visual system so they can see what’s coming up, like a weekly planner with a grid format ( here is our favorite ), OR a whiteboard calendar OR Google calendar

2. Lack of clarity about the desired outcome

When students are confused by an assignment, or don’t know exactly what is expected of them, they often put off the assignment in hopes that they will understand it better later. This is especially problematic for students who are uncomfortable with uncertainty or unknown situations.  Unfortunately, when they look at it the night before the deadline, they usually have no more information than they did before and no time left to ask their teacher for clarification.

Encourage your student to get into the habit of reviewing their assignment statements / rubrics the day they’re handed out.  Ideally, it’s great to read these out loud and / or highlight the important sections, and turn them into a to-do list of steps they want to accomplish before the due date.  If it’s for a poster or project, they could even try sketching out a picture of what the end result would ideally look like.  This way, they’ll know exactly what they’re trying to achieve when they begin working on it.

3. Optimistic time estimates

Optimism is a wonderful quality…in most situations.  But when it comes to estimating how much time it will take to complete an assignment, optimistic time estimates can create big problems.  Students commonly overestimate the amount of time they have left to complete assignments, and underestimate the amount of time it will take to complete them.  Consequently, they fail to leave themselves enough time to complete the work.

It’s easier to estimate smaller quantities than bigger ones, so students’ time estimates will be more realistic when they’re considering how long it will take them to do smaller tasks. Encourage your student to break down the task into smaller pieces (e.g. “write one paragraph” vs. “write my English paper”) and estimate how long each one will take to complete, then track their time to see how accurate their estimates were so they can make more educated guesses in the future.

4. Overly-lenient deadlines

When teachers don’t enforce deadlines and allow students to turn in late work without a penalty, students learn that deadlines aren’t meaningful and cease to take them seriously.  Without meaningful consequences, external deadlines can start to feel as arbitrary as internal deadlines, which — while helpful — are not as effective at discouraging procrastination.

Think about other ways to create accountability for completing the task earlier, before the teacher’s official deadline.  For example, can they start the task 1 hour before their favorite show comes on, so they have to race to finish it on time?  Or could they schedule time to get together with a friend to study, so they have an incentive to finish filling in their study guide beforehand? 

5. Not knowing where to start

When students think of papers or projects as a whole, rather than as a series of steps, they can seem overwhelming and they don’t know where to begin.  So, they end up putting the whole project off, until it’s so close to the deadline that their worry about not knowing the “right” place to start is overshadowed by their fear of not having enough time to complete the work at all.

If your student is having difficulty starting a project, offer to help him or her identify the first steps to take.  This may mean asking questions to help brainstorm possible essay ideas, or typing the first few lines of an essay while your student talks out loud, to help them get started.  (This can be especially helpful for students with ADHD).  Usually, once they are started, continuing on their own becomes easier.

6. Poor study routines

Students’ after-school routines tend to be fairly habitual.  Once they are established, these behavior patterns are followed automatically, with very little conscious thought.  For example, students will sometimes start watching TV as a break after school, which automatically leads to procrastination because it’s hard to turn it off.  Or, students will have a pattern of leaving their most difficult work, their studying, or their long-term projects until the end of their homework time, when they have the least energy and the smallest amount of willpower.  These habits can cause students to procrastinate automatically, without even thinking about it.

Ask your student to consider what their ideal afternoon would look like…when would they ideally start their homework?  How long would they spend on it? How much time would they have left to relax before bed?  When would they do their hardest assignments vs. their easier ones, etc?  If this is different from the way they’re usually approaching their work, ask them to consider what they could do this week to move one step closer to their ideal.

7. Distractions

Sometimes students set aside time with the intention of completing their work, but end up distracted with other things.  These distractions can be external (social media, text messages, etc.) or internal (their own thoughts & impulses).  Either way, this results in them spending time that had been budgeted for their work in other ways.

Make sure they have a brightly lit, clutter-free environment with minimal distractions from TV, siblings, pets, etc. in which to focus on their schoolwork. 

8. Overwhelm

When an assignment seems very complex or time-consuming, even thinking about it can seem scary and stressful.  So, students often fall into the trap of putting it off.  Unfortunately, this ultimately backfires when they eventually do start the project… because now the inherent difficulty of the project is compounded by the fact that they have insufficient time to complete it. So, they end up with far MORE stress than they would have had if they had started earlier.

Help them brainstorm the first small step they could take to make progress on the project. This should ideally feel SO easy and simple (e.g. find one quote from Ch. 3 to include in my paper) that they’re able to get started with it right away!

9. Perfectionism/Fear of failure

Students preoccupied with making their projects “perfect”, nervous about making mistakes or “messing them up”, or afraid of criticism, are often so concerned about doing assignments incorrectly that they will put them off to avoid the anxiety they feel when they are trying to work on the project.  This can lead to the seemingly irrational behavior of avoiding the project even more as the deadline approaches (because they become less and less likely to be able to do a good job on it)… until, at last, they are so close to the deadline that producing an ideal assignment is no longer possible, and their only options are to do an imperfect job or turn in nothing at all.

Use language that encourages progress.  Talk about when they can start the work, rather than when they will finish.  Praise effort rather than results, and treat mistakes as learning opportunities.  Celebrating progress, rather than completion, can minimize anxiety, perfectionism and fears of failure.

10. Difficulty regulating emotions

Recent studies have suggested that procrastination is less of a problem with time management than we had once believed, and more of a difficulty with emotional regulation.  Students who feel bored, tired, frustrated or nervous when they work on assignments will often pursue a strategy of trying to make themselves feel better in the short-term by downplaying the assignment (“it’s no big deal; it won’t affect my grade much anyway”) and distracting themselves with fun, rewarding activities in order to improve their mood.

Ask your student to consider which emotion they would need more of (or less of ) in order to make progress with their work, and come up with one thing they can do to get into that emotional state.  For example, if they need more motivation , they could listen to a song that makes them feel really motivated right before sitting down to start their work.

11. Too many commitments

If a student has so many scheduled activities and so little free time that their life feels like an endless string of obligations and chores, with little or no time off, they may use procrastination as a method to artificially create “free time” for themselves. Unfortunately, this type of “free time” is usually not very satisfying because it’s also accompanied with a sense of guilt for avoiding the things they “should” be working on.

If you think they might be overscheduled, talk with them about the activities and commitments they’re involved in and see if there are some things that they’d be willing to postpone or eliminate in order to have more time available to complete their schoolwork.

12. Resistance

Students will sometimes procrastinate as a form of rebellion when they view work as something that is being “forced” on them by an unreasonable teacher or authoritarian parents.  Procrastination becomes their way of resisting this authority.  When students think of assignments as something they “have to” do, schoolwork becomes a chore rather than a choice and they are more tempted to procrastinate on it.  Procrastination can then become their way of resisting the message that they are “supposed to” complete their work by showing teachers and parents “you can’t make me do it”.

Talk about homework as something they’re “choosing” to do, rather than something they “have to” do.  For example, ask them “what homework are you going to do tonight?”, rather than “what homework do you have to do tonight?” It’s a subtle difference, but can help students feel that they have more control and autonomy, which reduces the desire to resist the work through procrastination.

Which of the descriptions above sounds most like the behavior you’ve seen your student exhibit? Based on the description of their type of procrastination, what types of encouragement or support could you provide to help them get started with their work earlier, rather than leaving it until the last minute?

With any of these ideas, remember to offer your support, but don’t require your student to accept it! Keep in mind that, while you may be concerned about their procrastination, this is ultimately their problem, not yours — and, especially for resistant students, the more you push them to start their work, the more they are likely to resist.

What to do if you want more information or support:

If you are interested in learning more about the work we do with students to address the underlying causes of their procrastination, schedule a complimentary 30-minute ‘Parent Strategy Session’ . We will discuss the causes of your student’s procrastination, identify the approaches that will be most helpful for them, and talk about how academic coaching might be able to help them get back on track to reach their goals!

Establishing a Routine

• Set an alarm on your phone to remind you when to get back to work!

Setting Goals

• Very few people can actually work effectively with music playing. If you like to listen to music while you work but find you aren't getting anything done, try going without it for an hour to see if your concentration improves.

Asking for Help

• This doesn't work for everybody. If you find another person distracting, quit working with them.

How Can I Stop Procrastinating?

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• Good health can improve your study habits and can help you retain what you learn. Exercise, eat well, get plenty of sleep, and skip the alcohol and caffeine. Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 0
• Ask your parents or a friend to keep your smartphone so you don't get distracted. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Try to set an alarm or a task reminder in your phone. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Even the best students know that they can't work all of the time. Allow some relaxation time for yourself, particularly on the weekends. Good study habits make you work smarter, not harder. Thanks Helpful 121 Not Helpful 9

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• ↑ Katie Styzek. School Counselor. Expert Interview. 26 March 2021.
• ↑ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/how-to-stop-procrastinating/
• ↑ https://kidshealth.org/en/teens/focused.html
• ↑ https://kidshealth.org/en/teens/homework.html
• ↑ https://childmind.org/article/strategies-to-make-homework-go-more-smoothly/
• ↑ https://learningcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/take-charge-of-distractions/
• ↑ Ted Coopersmith, MBA. Academic Tutor. Expert Interview. 10 July 2020.
• ↑ https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/school-help-teens.html

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