Is procrastination ruining your life?
Don’t worry, science has a solution!
Hey everyone Crystal here with DNews!
We’ve all been there.
You procrastinated on writing a paper or studying for an exam and now your grades are going
to suffer and there is nothing you can do about it.
Now it’s true that there may not be any way to significantly improve your performance
on a project you procrastinated on, but science says there is a way to improve your performance
and reduce your tendency to procrastinate on studying for your next project.
The solution?
forgive yourself.
Researchers at Carleton University revealed that students who reported high levels of
self-forgiveness for procrastinating when studying for their first exam, were less likely
to put off preparing for their next exam.
Procrastination is characterized by short-term avoidance past the time most likely to produce
optimum performance or completion of a task and this study suggests that students who
self-forgive will be able to “get over” the fact that they hate studying, and be less
likely to attempt to improve their mood by avoiding the task entirely.
Learning to forgive yourself for procrastinating could also could promote general improvements
in feelings of your self-worth and positive mental health.
Which could help switch your behavior from “avoidance” which is a passive way to
deal with you problems, to “approach” an active way to attack problems.
Extrapolating further, people who engage in positive behaviors like forgiveness and positive
self-talk are more likely to experience reduced stress and experience good outcomes like goal
achievement.
So telling yourself “This sucks, I hate this” instead of “I can do it” is actually
hurting your chances of doing well on that test.
A study of self-talk published in the European Journal of Social Psychology discovered that
even speaking to yourself in the first person (using “I” statements) is not as effective
as speaking to yourself in the second-person (using “you” statements).
For instance “I can do it” is less effective at improving task performance than “you
can do it”.
This measured improvement could explain the observation that we tend to switch into second-person
language when we are encountering significant challenges and in more demanding situations.
So how we treat ourselves really matters!
and I guess what I am trying to say is … “You can do it”! Forgive yourself for watching
this video and get back to work!
Do you have a problem with procrastination?
Tell us about it down below in the comments and be sure to subscribe to DNews.
You can also come find me on twitter at PolycrystalhD