It’s stealing your motivation, your goals, time.

Procrastination is the act of delaying or putting off doing a certain task. Procrastination steals your time, your efforts to put your mind into something more productive and it creates small habits that lead into bigger habits that could be destructive. Alexis Shofner, a junior at Bullitt East. “Procrastination is really bad and a lot of students do it now.” Alexis Shofner said.

Procrastination is stealing people away from the task that they need to work on, for example, a deadline that you need to write an essay was way past due and you’ve just started because you were lazy and just refused to do it. “The real reason people procrastinate is because their deadlines are far away so if they have shorter deadlines, their procrastination won’t be procrastinating.” Shofner said. Maybe shortening the deadline would give the limbic system(The part of your brain that controls the memory processing, emotional regulation and behavior) not enough time to make you feel lazy and procrastinating. 

Have you ever been yelled at by a teacher who calls you lazy for not doing your homework, or turning in an assignment late but you really had a valid reason for the work being late? Is that called procrastination? Maybe procrastination isn’t lack of motivation, maybe it was because people have something else they have to do. Maybe something at home came up and they’re really busy, or they were really confused.

Mary Allgood, an Algebra teacher at Bullitt East. “It’s only annoying when you know a student is capable of doing something and they’re just not doing it.” Allgood said. Maybe procrastination wasn’t laziness, but it was the fear of failure. The fear of coming home and being scolded by not doing something better than what you tried your best on, or maybe it was distractions. Distractions such as a video on social media that caught your attention, scrolling on your phone for what you thought was five minutes, but in reality it’s been three hours. 

“I feel like procrastination can be helpful at times, because it gives you time to think, but I think that it’s a sign of laziness.” Allgood said.

While there is no one-way to stop procrastinating, there are strategies to help to limit the times you procrastinate. I mean all of us procrastinate at some point in our lives, it’s the act of being overwhelmed by a ton of work that seems as if it’s just being piled up, but maybe there was a way to help–not get rid of– procrastination. “Words of reassurance and positive thinking.” Shofner said. Giving people motivation and lending a helping hand to those who may be struggling or stressed out.

“I think people procrastinate to put things off that they don’t want to do. Maybe they’re not interested in whatever it is they have to do, or maybe they’re just really, really busy. But I also think people procrastinate because they’re stuck and they just don’t like asking for help.” Allgood said. The fear of being humiliated, a lot of kids struggle with just trying to fit in and raising their hand for help and getting laughed at for not understanding something is really discouraging and often leads to people not wanting to ask for help.

“I think that you have to have study habits. In terms of school, you have to have study habits, for example, like with schoolwork, I think it’s very important that you have a routine that you go home and immediately look over whatever you need to do for the day. If you go home and instead, you immediately start playing video games, you’re definitely not going to get done with whatever you need to get done because you are procrastinating.” Allgood said.

*Editors Note*

Note, this article was nearly a month late due to Zack ironically enough, procrastinating.