Procrastination

I would consider myself a procrastinator.  I would say that I started procrastinating in high school.  It started in high school because during that time I had a very busy schedule.  I would only get the things done that I needed to get done simply because I didn't have a lot of free time.  Procrastination is defined as it is to delay an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay." (Steel, 2007, pg. 66)  Procrastination depends on the temporal distancfe of the important activity and the state of being "worse off".  An example would be that an essay is due in one week.  It has a high positive utility and being "worse off" is also high.  By not writing the essay, in this case, would be the esult of procrastination.  There are several different ways that a person can procrastinate.  Some ways are by watching tv, sleeping, talking, playing, eating, or working.  Procrastinators can be defined by using psychological scales.  An example of this would be the General Procrastination Scale designed by Lay in 1986.  Procrastinators can predict that they will study less for an exam and do so.  This also means that they are more likely to cram by squeezing more of their study time into the last day before the exam.  Also, studies show that students identified as procrastinators had lower GPA's for the semester, delayed taking self-paced quizzes, and had more anxiety or anxieted-related symptoms that accompined their procrastination.  Procrastinators are also more likely to turn in their papers later or late, earn lower scores on their papers, and earn lower exam scores in the course.  In addition to that, procrastinators face a lot of difficulties at the end of a semester.  They reported having more stress, more symptoms, and more health center visits than the non-procrastinators did.  All the studies conducted all came to the same conclusion.  Procrastinators overall are "worse off" then non-procrastinators.  After learning about procrastination and its negative affects, I've decided I am going to try my best to stop eing  procrastinator.  It may take some time (as you can see this post is a little late) but hey Rome wasn't bult in a day! =]