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11 Procrastination

Warm Up

● Do you like to do things on time? Do you delay it sometimes?

● What are the things you complete fast?

● What are the things you postpone doing? Why?

Reading skills

It’s 7am. And you snooze the alarm button. You tell yourself, “Just five more minutes.” And you end

up getting late to school.

Tomorrow is the last date for submitting your project work. And you haven’t started it yet. You sit
up late in the night and do it in a rush, and of course it turns out to be a job done in a rather shoddy

manner.

Exams are just a week away. And you haven’t started your preparation. You know it’s pretty late
to start now. Nevertheless, you start because you have no choice. And the results? Not at all good.

Do all these sound familiar to you? Well, this is the cycle of procrastination and let’s face it:
We have all been there some time or the other.

So, what is procrastination?

Procrastination is the act of delaying or postponing tasks or activities. It can take many
forms such as putting off completing an assignment, avoiding making a difficult decision or

delaying starting a task that you find boring, uninteresting or challenging or simply because
you are feeling lazy. Procrastination happens despite knowing that your behaviour can have

negative consequences.

But why do people procrastinate?

People procrastinate for various reasons. Some people set high standards for their work,
and are afraid of making mistakes so, they may put off the task until they feel they are fully

prepared or have enough time to do it perfectly.

Some others may just fantasize or dream about completing tasks rather than actually doing

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