Academic Procrastination: A Bad Habit or Desirable Skill?

This was once a thesis proposal that my friend and I submitted but was not approved simply because they did not want students to start thinking that it's good to procrastinate. LOL. Fine.. Accepted that we might just probably contribute to students giving valid excuses of being late on submission of papers. But I still believe that Procrastination can be a desirable skill, and one day in the future maybe year 3000... The negative notion that procrastination is a bad habit would eventually change. YES TO PROCRASTINATION! LOL

An excerpt from our thesis proposal to support my belief that procrastination can be viewed as positive:

According to Chase (2003), the negative assumption that procrastination is a “bad habit” is no longer relevant in today’s world. Before technology became a huge part of people’s businesses and lifestyles, the world lived in a much slower pace. Therefore, tasks did not accumulate at the same rate as today. Quoting Chase (2003, p. 60), “There is a difference between putting off doing something because one does not want to do it, and putting it off because it is not important right now”. The key to be successful in the modern world is to possess a very effective and efficient time management skill. He refers that the act of procrastination can be a “desirable time management skill” (p. 60). With this new modern realization, procrastination should now be explored in a new perspective and that the popular assumption that procrastination is a negative trait should be re-examined.

An excerpt from our thesis proposal that differentiates positive and negative academic procrastination:

Schraw, Wadkins, & Olafson (2007) introduced six different types of academic procrastination behaviors and referred to them as: cognitive efficiency, peak experience, flow, laziness, no fear of failure, and postponement.

The first three academic procrastination behaviors are collectively known as the adaptive behaviors of academic procrastination because students procrastinate this way if they are able to adapt or adjust well with the task needed to be done. [that is, procrastination as being positive]

1) Students who procrastinate to allot time in preparing themselves and making an assessment on how they shall proceed with the task are said to practice their cognitive efficiency.
2) Students, who procrastinate to reach their peak experience, prefer working under pressure because it forces them to work efficiently.
3) While students, who have a hard time starting a task, procrastinate until they become totally engaged in doing the task so that they get into the flow.


The other three academic procrastination behaviors, on the other hand, are collectively known as the maladaptive behaviors of academic procrastination because students procrastinate this way if they have difficulty coping up or adjusting with the task that needs to be done. [that is procrastination as negative]

4) Laziness pertains to students who procrastinate because they perceive the task as “boring, irrelevant & useless”.
5) No fear of failure refers to students who feel lenient about the class or the teacher therefore ending up intentionally delaying the required school task.
6) And lastly, postponement, as a means of procrastination, happens when the student has a stronger preference of wanting to have time for leisure or other social and recreational activities.

SO.. WHAT KIND OF PROCRASTINATOR ARE YOU? =)

Please ANSWER MY 10 QUESTIONS SURVEY !

Help me in my fight to prove (or justify) that our procrastination is just some excuse to produce better quality output! :)

SURVEY LINK 

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Reference:
Chase L. (2003). Procrastination: the new master skill of time management. Agency Sales
Magazine, 33, 60-62.


Schraw G., Wadkins, T. & Olafson, L. (2007). Doing the things we do: A grounded theory
of academic procrastination. Journal of Educational Psychology, 99(1), 12-25.