How to Identify and Get Rid of Procrastination in College Students
“I will do it tomorrow”. All of us are familiar with this phrase. A study proves that between 80 to 95% of college students have the habit of procrastination regarding their daily work, and half of the total college students are procrastinating to a degree which have negative mental, physical, or academic effects. We can define procrastination as the habit of putting off and delaying your task up to the last minute, or even past the deadlines. This habit is quite common in our college-level students. The procrastination of a college student can lead him to the bad performance with distress.
Today we will discuss how to identify the habit of procrastination and how to get rid of it?
- Self-monitoring:
A college student can identify his procrastination by involving himself in planning, and monitoring and reflecting his goals. In the self-monitoring, a student can examine himself on the scale of his course of action which directly affects his learning and achievements. Students should try to focus their attention on specific goals or behaviors. These areas could be comprehension reading, use of time and progress towards goals, study strategists, and test-taking skills. Self-monitoring here enable students to identify the areas of weakness and then sorting out how to get rid of it. This behavior changes the students for self-improvement by helping them with the information they have gathered.
- Reflective Journaling:
The students can write a journal to help them in regulating their learning. Those writings can be an effective way of evaluating oneself and their outcomes to do future planning. Proper journaling of student work as a reflection tool. It brings to pass our experience which can help to extract meanings out of them. Reflective journaling help students to increase their self-awareness as well as they can understand habits and addresses regarding the area which they can improve.
- Identify Deadlines:
Teachers should help students by giving them strict deadlines to complete their assignments and work. Teachers can break deadlines into smaller parts. Instead of giving one big project. Teachers should identify milestones and those milestones should be considered as deadlines for each step by students. Students should be able to present their report of progress on several specified checkpoints.
- Feedback should be Supportive:
Sometimes there are students with low self-esteem. They feel quite reluctant to bring forth their best work. This situation is only because of the fear of criticism for failing. So teachers should avoid passing out highly negative and critical feedback. Those feedbacks could be the cause of lack of self-conscious and nervousness in student. Teachers should be able to correct such students without giving negative feedback.
- Time Management Skills:
The students should be taught the skills to manage their time well by doing an effective study. A college student should be able to know how much time is needed for a certain task and how to manage it well. For this purpose, college management can give examples of role models. How students can follow and learn?
- Clear Instructions:
In most cases, it is observed that college students delay their work for the reason they can’t understand the instructions. When teachers are giving projects to students, they should be very clear about instructions, even if they had to help them with practical examples. In the best scenario, teachers should give written expectation and requirements for the assignments. This will enable students to read the instructions whenever they need to.
Tomorrow Never Comes:
What a beautiful phrase defining the real cause of procrastination. Students often assume that the project they are about to do will not take long. They believe strongly that still, they are having a lot of time to complete their tasks. In reality, the case is quite the opposite. If we wait for a certain task, (especially when we don’t like it) to find the right time to complete it never comes. Which ultimately resulting in complete tasks or projects. So the student should fully comprehend this statement that: “tomorrow never comes”. They don’t have to wait for the appropriate time. All they have to do is to start and finish as soon as possible.
Students should be aware of the fact that they can delay anything but time will not comply with them and the time which they will lose will never be found again.
